Water resources management in an arid environment: the case of Israel

Israel is a semi-arid country, and a significant increase in population combined with sustained economic growth now place enormous pressure on the country's scarce water resources. To date however, the Israeli government has been successful in addressing this problem. Rigorous enforcement of policy, institutional and legal measures has been very effective, and in many aspects the country is a worldwide leader in water resource management. This paper therefore reviews Israel's efforts in this area in order to identify lessons that may provide useful insights for developing countries - such as China - whose future economic growth is also threatened by water scarcity. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The second section briefly discusses current water resource availability in Israel. Section three discusses the legal framework for water resources management. Section four reviews the role of water resources institutions. Section five summarizes major technical strategies for water resource management. Section six discusses economic instruments such as water tariffs, subsidies, water trading, and private sector participation. Section seven contains concluding remarks.