Drain on the Mediterranean: rising water usage

In a dramatic illustration of a broader regional crisis, a Turkish lake three times the size of Washington, D.C., has dried up in the past 15 years.

from the January 15, 2008 edition

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The Turkish government has a plan to divert water from the Goksu River to the Konya Basin for agricultural use and to fill the depleted lakes and wetlands. To date, the focus of most countries confronting water shortages has been to increase supply, often through massive infrastructure projects like dams, says Gael Thivet of the Blue Plan. More emphasis, experts say, needs to be placed on saving or reusing water, as well as on reducing demand.

Doubled water usage

Freshwater has always been a scarce commodity in the semi-arid Mediterranean. It has 7 percent of the world's population, but only 3 percent of its freshwater resources. And the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report predicts that global warming may lead to less rainfall and more evaporation in the region, further reducing the supply of water.

Half the world's "water poor" – that is, people whose access to freshwater is deemed inadequate – live in the Mediterranean region, mostly on the sea's eastern and southern shores. By 2025, the Blue Plan predicts that due to population growth and expanding agriculture, the number of water poor in the region could be as high as 165 million in 2025, up from 108 million in 2000.

But human demand for this vital resource is booming. During the second half of the 20th century, water usage in the Mediterranean doubled. While a handful of countries, like Israel and Cyprus, have reduced or stabilized their water use, in most countries the demand for water is expected to continue to rise in coming decades.

"We started talking about it more than 30 years ago," says Michael Scoullos, chairman of the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean, a network of organizations working on water issues in the region. "The pioneers are always considered Cassandras – this is the problem. But now clearly we've reached the crisis point.... We've done just enough to break and slow down the destruction, but not to reverse the situation."

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Water-intensive crops and inefficient methods such as sprinklers are draining the region's resources. Melanie Stetson Freeman - staff Turkey's disappearing lakes