For many people, Saudi Arabia is known for
its oil, the pool of liquid that has brought wealth to the authoritarian-led absolute monarchy. But there is another valuable resource beneath
the dry Arabian Desert, namely groundwater, that enables huge agricultural areas to be
cultivated in the middle of the desert. - Music - There are only 18 countries on the planet
without rivers. Saudi Arabia is by far the largest of them. The case with a lot of these countries is
that they are small island nations that often do not have high landforms where rivers could
arise. In the Gulf region, it’s a different story. Here, the landscape is characterised by the
Arabian Desert. By definition, a river is a permanently flowing
body of water. In Saudi Arabia, there are so-called Wadis. These are dried up riverbeds, some of them
trough which water flows seasonally. For example, the Wadi Hanifa, which runs through
the country's capital Riyadh. This map shows elevation in Saudi Arabia. The Asir Mountains stretch along the coast
to the Red Sea. Here, the climate is cooler and during the
Indian Oceans monsoon season there is significant rain in this area, as visible by this precipitation
map. Due to water scarcity, it is an enormous challenge
for Saudi Arabia to maintain agriculture and avoid being almost completely dependent on
imports. In order to more efficiently use rainfall
for agriculture and water supply several Dams were built, especially in the south-west of
the country, creating reservoirs. Noteworthy is the Baysh Dam, as well as the
King Fahad Dam, which has the largest reservoir in the country. In the rest of the country, rain is both rare
and irregular and is therefore not sufficient for maintaining profitable livestock and agriculture. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a political
desire to gain self sufficiency and the country pushed ahead with a number of initiatives
to modernise the agricultural sector. And if you look at the desert from space,
you now see large agricultural areas full of crop circles that result from the center
pivot irrigation. The water required for this is pumped from
deep below the surface. From aquifers that filled up during the Ice
Age when the climate in this region was significantly cooler. With the help of this water, which accumulated
thousands of years ago, large areas can be used for agriculture. But there are also lots of difficulties. After all, the groundwater in this region
is virtually non-renewable because there is hardly any rain. Saudi Arabia is suffering from a rapid depletion
of water in its underground aquifers and the country's agriculture sector is disintegrating. The groundwater level at the Al-Ahsa Aquifier
has dropped by 150 meters, which is about 492 feet within just 25 years. And the circular green fields in the desert
are rapidly fading. In 2008 Saudi Arabia had to adjust course. They gave up on the idea of turning their
deserts into fertile farmland. This statistic shows the annual wheat production
in Saudi Arabia. The reforms of the 1980s led to an immense
increase. But ever since 2008 this number went completely
down. And when we lay over the amount of imported
wheat we see the change in strategy that occured in 2008. The Initiative for Agricultural Investment
Abroad was launched. The goal is to buy and manage land in other
countries in order to save water at home. Saudi food companies are aquiring farmland
in Argentina and, trough subsidiary companies, in Arizona and California. They mainly grow alfalfa hay, which is then
imported to Saudi Arabia and used as cow feed. And by doing it this way, they don’t have
to stress their own aquifiers as much, so - essentially, they are importing water. They also lease land in Sudan, as well as
in Zambia and to a large extent in Ethiopia. There already is a lease between the Saudi
Star PLC for an area of 140,000 hectares in Ethiopia. And the long-term goal of the Saudi company
is to rent up to 500,000 hectares. Such investments can create water conflict,
as many of the regions in which land is leased already suffer from water shortages themselves. To guarantee water supply for its citizens,
Saudi Arabia is also heavily investing in seawater desalination. It is now the largest producer of desalinated
water in the world. So for example, the majority of water in Medina
is pumped there from a desalination plant on the Red Sea. Drinking water in the capital Riyadh mainly
comes from the Jubail desalination plant on the Persian Gulf, roughly 500 km or 310 miles
away, from where it is pumped inland via pipeline. And as of January 2019, it produces around
1.4 million cubic meters of water every single day. The water supply in Saudi Arabia is heavily
subsidised. The government has commissioned a number of
private companies from all over the world for these desalination plants. In order to keep costs low for the consumer,
the government buys the water from these companies and sells it to households at a significantly
lower price. There are efforts to increase these household
tariffs in order to create more incentives for water saving. But a tariff increase is unpopular, and the
last time tariffs were raised in 2016, the price increase led to an uproar, and the eventual
replacement of the water minister. A common method for desalination of sea water
is trough thermal desalination. There are a number of different technical
processes here but basically it is achieved by boiling water and therefore separating
it from the salt. The other more energy efficient method is
desalination trough reverse osmosis. In Reverse Osmosis, the seawater is pressurised
and forced trough a membrane which only lets’s trough the water molecules, and therefore
separates them from the salt. Currently, about half of the drinking water
comes from desalination. But as plausible as desalination may seem,
there are a number of disadvantages to it, especially in terms of its environmental impact. A byproduct of the desalination process is
Brine, which is the heavy salt concentration liquid that is left over at the end. This wastewater brine is usually returned
to the ocean where it can create environmental damage. Saudi Arabia is able to desalinate large amounts
of water because it can produce the necessary energy using fossil fuels. In thermal desalination, fossil fuels are
used to generate the necessary heat, and in reverse osmosis, the electricity necessary
is largely produced using natural gas. So these are not particularly sustainable
approaches to solve the water problem. Saudi Arabia is therefore also investing in
solar-powered plants, such as the world's largest in Al Khafji. But the country is still very dependent on
fossil fuels and fossil waters. And the importance of finding sustainable
solutions to these enormous challenges is demonstrated by the depletion of groundwater
levels in the previous decades.
We need something even better, something that won't hurt the environment. 🌎 #welovetheearth
I think the Title should be " Saudi Arabia's Water Solution".
شفت وش كثر مراكز تحلية المياه؟! يستخدم فيها الغاز لتحليتها وحنا من اكبر دول العالم في احتياطيات الغاز.
صحيح اننا مب سويسرا تمطر ٤ مرات في اليوم، لكن الحل اننا نعتمد ونزيد استهلاك الغاز اليومي وكمية الإنتاج، لسد الحاجة وفائض بعد، وخفف الدعم عشان تكسب فلوس.