A Strategy for Managing Water in the Middle East and North Africa

Water has always been of central concern to life in the Middle East and North Arica (MENA). Early civilizations emerged along the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile, and the struggle for water shaped life in desert communities. But concerns of the past are dwarfed by those of the present century. Burgeoning populations are placing unprecedented pressures on the resource, calling urgently for new approaches to water planning and management if escalating conflicts are to be avoided and if environmental degradation is to be reversed. The new Water Resources Management Policy, approved by the Board in May 1993, requires a shift in focus from the needs of individual water-using sectors to an integrated management approach. Water is to be explicitly treated as a key resource for economic and social development, with emphasis placed on managing water demands and water quality in the interests of the whole community. This booklet sets out the implications of the new Bank policy for the MENA region, calling for a concerted effort by government and Bank staff to address water resources in a coordinated and sustainable manner. It proposes a practical, step-by-step approach to achieving this objective that could lead to new Bank-supported operations to address the water sector as a whole.