Abstract

In many respects the worsening water scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa has become an object-lesson in the water crisis facing the wider world as climate change becomes a reality. Although northern and southern temperate zones are likely to see increases in precipitation, the equatorial region will face increasing desertification as access to water declines in the face of continuing demographic growth. Competition over increasingly scarce resources will have major geopolitical and security implications and the Middle Eastern and North Africa region will act as a paradigm of what happens in a biome of water scarcity.