collected snippets of immediate importance...


Saturday, April 28, 2007

water and agriculture in MENA:
Nearly 80 per cent of all water which falls in the region is used, compared with only two per cent in other regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. The water crisis is expected to worsen further in light of high population growth and climate change. In fact, it is estimated that per capita water availability in the region will fall by half by 2050.
(...) In the Arab world, only 10-15 per cent of the water is used for household, commercial and industrial purposes, while 85 per cent is being consumed by the agricultural sector. But in many MENA countries, this sector's contribution to employment and gross domestic product (GDP) is very limited. In Jordan for example, employment in agriculture is less than four per cent of the total labour force, and its contribution to the GDP is less than three per cent. Yet the agricultural sector consumes more than 75 per cent of the country's water resources. Meanwhile, in Oman the agricultural sector uses more than 90 per cent of the country's water, it only employs about 6.5 per cent of the labour force and its contribution to the GDP is about 1.5 per cent. ... In the absence of enough jobs and lack of effective social safety nets, reform policies targeting the agricultural sector would severely affect people who are linked directly or indirectly to this sector. The biggest riddle is that although an eventual water crisis was evident decades ago, MENA countries chose to avoid the controversial issue.

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