Attacks on ME desalination plants highlight risks of near-total dependence on ‘fossil fuel water’
Recent attacks in the Middle East on desalination plants, facilities that remove salt from seawater, raise the potential for a humanitarian crisis if the region’s freshwater production facilities are subjected to more widespread destruction. The attacks also underscore the region’s heavy reliance on an energy-intensive method of producing drinking water that is powered almost entirely by fossil fuels.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of striking a desalination plant in southern Iran. The U.S. has since denied any role in the attack. The next day, Bahrain accused Iran of damaging a desalination plant in a drone attack. The targeting of freshwater production facilities follows attacks on schools, airports, hotels and refineries since U.S Operation Epic Fury began in February. Attacking desalination plants is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which established humanitarian laws for the treatment of non-combatants in war.
“It has erased previous red lines about attacking energy infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, and then the final red line of attacking desalination infrastructure,” Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, said of the Iran War. “It’s the most grievous kind of war crime that you can dream up.”
Of the world’s nearly 18,000 desalination plants, nearly one-third are located in the Middle East, with 2,382 facilities in Saudi Arabia alone, according to a recent study published in the journal npj Clean Water.
In the Middle East and North Africa, 83 percent of the population already faces severe water scarcity, a figure projected to rise to 100 percent by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. The Middle East is home to 6 percent of the world’s population and holds less than 2 percent of the world’s renewable freshwater. The rapid growth of the region’s cities has increased reliance on desalination.
“All of these great Gulf cities, Riyadh, Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they’re not possible without man-made, fossil fuel water,” Low said. [Continue reading…]