DOHA, Qatar // An amount of freshwater almost the size of the Dead Sea has been lost in parts of the Middle East due to poor management, increased demands for groundwater and the effects of a 2007 drought, according to a Nasa study.
The study, to be published tomorrow in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, examined data over seven years from 2003 from a pair of gravity-measuring satellites, which is a part of Nasa's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment.
Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 144 cubic kilometres of its total stored freshwater, the second fastest loss of groundwater storage after India.
About 60 per cent of the loss resulted from pumping underground reservoirs for ground water, including 1,000 wells in Iraq, and another fifth was due to impacts of the drought including declining snow packs and soil drying up.
Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs accounted for about another fifth of the decline, the study found.
"This rate of water loss is among the largest liquid freshwater losses on the continents," the authors wrote in the study, noting the declines were most obvious after a drought.
The study is the latest evidence of a worsening water crisis in the Middle East, where demands from growing populations, war and the worsening effects of climate change are raising the prospect that some countries could face severe water shortages in the decades to come.
Some, like Yemen, blame their water woes on the semi-arid conditions and the grinding poverty, while the richer Arabian Gulf countries face water shortages mostly due to the fast pace of development and growth of their cities.
In a report released during the November UN climate talks in Qatar, the World Bank concluded that among the most critical problems in the Middle East and North Africa will be worsening water shortages.
The region already has the lowest amount of freshwater in the world. With climate change, droughts in the region are expected to turn more extreme. Water runoff is expected to decline by 10 per cent by 2050, while demand for water is expected to increase by 60 per cent by 2045.
One of the biggest challenges to improving water conservation is competing demands, which has worsened the problem in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins.
Turkey controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, as well as the reservoirs and infrastructure of Turkey's Greater Anatolia Project, which dictates how much water flows downstream into Syria and Iraq, the researchers said.
There is no coordinated water management between the three countries, and tensions have intensified since the 2007 drought because Turkey continues to divert water to irrigate farmland.
"That decline in stream flow put a lot of pressure on northern Iraq," Kate Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the University of California Centre for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine, said.
"Both the UN and anecdotal reports from area residents note that once stream flow declined, this northern region of Iraq had to switch to groundwater. In an already fragile social, economic and political environment, this did not help the situation."
Jay Famiglietti, principle investigator of the new study and a hydrologist and UC Irvine professor of Earth system science, plans to visit the region later this month, along with Ms Voss and two other UC Irvine colleagues, to discuss their findings and raise awareness of the problem and the need for a regional approach to solve the problem.
"They just do not have that much water to begin with, and they're in a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change," Mr Famiglietti said.
"Those dry areas are getting dryer. They and everyone else in the world's arid regions need to manage their available water resources as best they can."
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Prop idols
Girls full-contact rugby may be in its infancy in the Middle East, but there are already a number of role models for players to look up to.
Sophie Shams (Dubai Exiles mini, England sevens international)
An Emirati student who is blazing a trail in rugby. She first learnt the game at Dubai Exiles and captained her JESS Primary school team. After going to study geophysics at university in the UK, she scored a sensational try in a cup final at Twickenham. She has played for England sevens, and is now contracted to top Premiership club Saracens.
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Seren Gough-Walters (Sharjah Wanderers mini, Wales rugby league international)
Few players anywhere will have taken a more circuitous route to playing rugby on Sky Sports. Gough-Walters was born in Al Wasl Hospital in Dubai, raised in Sharjah, did not take up rugby seriously till she was 15, has a master’s in global governance and ethics, and once worked as an immigration officer at the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi. In the summer of 2021 she played for Wales against England in rugby league, in a match that was broadcast live on TV.
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Erin King (Dubai Hurricanes mini, Ireland sevens international)
Aged five, Australia-born King went to Dubai Hurricanes training at The Sevens with her brothers. She immediately struck up a deep affection for rugby. She returned to the city at the end of last year to play at the Dubai Rugby Sevens in the colours of Ireland in the Women’s World Series tournament on Pitch 1.
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