Water Scarcity Management in the MENA Region from a Globalization Perspective
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Local/Global Encounters
Water Scarcity Management in the MENA Region from a Globalization Perspective
MOUNIR BELLOUMI AND MOHAMED SALAH MATOUSSI
ABSTRACT In the perspective of globalization, the Middle East and North Africa countries must revise soundly their irrigation strategies, pay more attention to virtual water trade and resolve problems of transboundary water resource management, if they want to maintain an irrigation sector able to secure a minimum food security. KEYWORDS MENA region; irrigation; virtual water trade; transboundary water
Introduction Water resources development and management in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have been driven by the highly specific characteristics of climate, geography and the resource itself.1 This article focuses on major weakness from which the MENA agriculture economy suffers. Specifically, other things held constant, irrigation cost differential allows the humid latitude economies, especially in the North, to produce crops at a cost lower than that in the arid and semi-arid MENA region. Consequently, when artificial trade barriers are lifted according to the World Trade Organization, the MENA agriculture will lose its already modest and declining share in international, as well as the local markets. As a way out, the article calls upon the MENA region to restructure its agriculture economy, pay attention to virtual water and resolve problems of transboundary water resource management.
Redefinition of the irrigation strategy The irrigation sector, which contributes to the stabilization and the regulation of a highly variable and fragile agriculture in the MENA countries, requires nowadays a sound redesign and a radical redefinition of its strategy to be able to tackle the huge challenges that threat the viability of the region. The following emerging constraints must be explicitly integrated in the new strategy: The increasing international competition in a changing world where globalization is taking place. The exponentially growing costs of the new water resources mobilization. Development (2008) 51, 135–138. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100449
Development 51(1): Local/Global Encounters The reallocation of the resource to nonagricultural sectors (residential, commercial, industrial, environmental, etc.), which have higher economic yield. A conception of a strategy that promotes a sustainable irrigation sector must take care of: The comparative advantages of certain irrigated crops in the region (biological products, early fruits and vegetables, specifics crops, etc.). The promotion of new irrigation techniques and new management instruments (decentralization, participatory allocation and the rehabilitation of the traditional techniques). The imagination and the implementation of better commercial techniques inside as well as in international transactions.
Virtual water trade Allan (2003) defines virtual water trade as the ‘water imported in terms of products, especially wheat, that have been produced with water farming sector in U
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