of water?
How do you think we will meet our requirements in future?
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Answer:
Options for the Future: Balancing Water Demand and Water Resources
The conventional freshwater sources now available in the region are barely sufficient to maintain the study area's current quality of life and economy. Jordan, for example, is currently overexploiting its groundwater resources by about 300 million cubic meters per year (million m3/yr), lowering water levels and salinizing freshwater aquifers; similar examples of overexploitation are occurring throughout the study area. Attempting to meet future regional demands by simply increasing withdrawals of surface and ground water will result in further unsustainable development, with depletion of freshwater resources and widespread environmental degradation. Because these conditions already exist in many parts of the study area, for example in the Azraq Basin and the Hula Valley, as described in Chapter 4, the reality of a constrained water supply must be considered in formulating government economic plans and policies. It seems likely that demand and supply can be brought into a sustainable balance only by changing and moderating the pattern of demand, or by introducing new sources of supply, or both. Above all, water losses should be minimized and water use efficiency increased substantially.
Managing Demand
Water shortages have already been faced in the study area as a result of droughts, and they have been overcome by managing demand. The reduction in Israeli water use from 1,987 million m3/yr in 1987 to 1,420
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Suggested Citation:"5 Options for the Future: Balancing Water Demand and Water Resources." National Academy of Sciences. 1999. Water for the Future: The West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel, and Jordan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6031.×
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million m3/yr in 1991—with no net loss in agricultural production or economic growth (Biswas et al., 1997)—indicates what can be accomplished in the way of demand moderation. In practice, demand for water can be influenced by conservation measures in urban, agricultural, and industrial sectors, and by economic (pricing) policies. It is important to recognize that, while demand management efforts may economize on water effectively, they are also rarely costless. In this section, a number of demand-management policies are described and discussed in light of the committee's five evaluation criteria (see Chapter 3 for a full statement of the criteria).
Conservation
Given the inevitability of population growth, it is imperative that per capita consumption of water in the study area be addressed through conservation measures in all three major sectors of water use: urban, agricultural, and industrial. There are significant disparities in per capita water use within the study area, and there will doubtless be pressures to raise the lowest consumption rates to parity with the highest rates. However, some middle ground must be reached to bring quality of life and economic development into balance within the practical constraints imposed by the region's available water. This balance requires lowering the study area's capita water use without significa