{"id":41908,"date":"2019-12-12T07:22:09","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T07:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41908"},"modified":"2019-12-12T07:22:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T07:22:09","slug":"date-palm-arab-region-symbol-of-prosperity-listed-by-unesco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41908","title":{"rendered":"Date palm, Arab region symbol of prosperity, listed by UNESCO"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nSUR, OMAN: \u201cWe have water, and it\u2019s the most important thing in a house,\u201d says Abdullah Al-Harthi from the port city of Sur in Oman, a country that relies on desalination plants.
But for Oman and the other Gulf countries dominated by vast and scorching deserts, obtaining fresh water from the sea comes at a high financial and environmental cost.
In Sur, south of the capital Muscat, water for residents and businesses comes from a large desalination plant that serves some 600,000 people.
\u201cBefore, life was very difficult. We had wells, and water was delivered by trucks,\u201d the 58-year-old told AFP. \u201cSince the 1990s, water has come through pipes and we\u2019ve had no cuts.\u201d
But these benefits \u2014 relying on energy intensive processes that produce carbon emissions \u2014 do not come without a cost, particularly as global temperatures rise.
The United Nations says 2019 is on course to be one of the hottest three years on record.
And there is another impact: the desalination plants produce highly concentrated salt water, or brine, that is often dumped back into the ocean.
Researchers say more than 16,000 desalination plants around the globe produce more toxic sludge than freshwater.
For every liter of freshwater extracted from the sea or brackish water, a liter-and-a-half of salty slurry is deposed at sea or on land, according to a 2019 study in the journal Science.
All that extra salt raises the temperature of coastal waters and decreases the level of oxygen, which can conspire to create biological \u201cdead zones.\u201d
The super-salty substance is made even more toxic by the chemicals used in the desalination process.
Oman\u2019s bigger neighbors produce the bulk of the brine.
More than half comes from just four countries \u2014 Saudi Arabia, at 22 percent, United Arab Emirates with 20 percent, and smaller shares by Kuwait and Qatar, according to UN data.
\u201cBrine production in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar accounts for 55 percent of the total global share,\u201d according to the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
It said new strategies are needed \u201cto limit the negative environmental impacts and reduce the economic cost of disposal.\u201d
This would help \u201cto safeguard water supplies for current and future generations.\u201d
At the Sur plant, \u201calmost no chemicals\u201d are used during the pre-treatment phase, as the water is naturally filtered through the cracks of karst rocks, said Mahendran Senapathy, operations manager at French company Veolia which runs the plant along with an Omani firm.
There are other ways to safeguard freshwater supplies, from encouraging savings and efficiently to recycling wastewater.
Antoine Frerot, chief executive of Veolia, said wastewater recycling will help resolve the problem of water scarcity.
He also pointed out that \u201creused water is less costly,\u201d nearly one third less than that won through desalination.
Omani authorities continue to mount campaigns urging people to use water wisely, mindful that other demands \u2014 especially the energy sector \u2014 also guzzle up large amounts.
Across the Gulf, huge amounts of water are used not just for homes, gardens and golf courses, but also for the energy sector that is the source of the region\u2019s often spectacular wealth.
On the edge of the Arabian peninsula\u2019s \u201cEmpty Quarter,\u201d the world\u2019s largest expanse of sand, lies the Khazzan gas field, operated by BP and the Oman Oil Company.
The method used to extract the gas here is hydraulic fracturing \u2014 more commonly known as fracking \u2014 said Stewart Robertson, operations manager at the site.
The method requires huge amounts of water. The site is supplied by a facility that provides 6,000 cubic meters of water a day, extracted from an underground aquifer 50 kilometers (30 miles) away.
Fracking involves directional drilling and then pumping water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to fracture rock and release the hydrocarbons.
The rock formations that hold the gas are \u201clike a big sponge with lots of little holes in it,\u201d said Robertson, explaining that fracking is the process \u201cto open those holes slightly to take the gas out.\u201d
So the more the region extracts oil and natural or shale gas, \u201cthe more they need water,\u201d said Charles Iceland of the World Resources Institute.
\u201cThe Middle East is projected to need more and more energy,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that means the situation is going to get worse.\u201d
\u201cOn the other hand,\u201d he said, \u201cif they can produce power using solar photovoltaic technologies, which are getting reasonably priced in the Middle East, that would take care of a lot of the problem because solar PV doesn\u2019t need much water.
\u201cYou need just some water to clean the solar panels.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUR, OMAN: \u201cWe have water, and it\u2019s the most important thing in a house,\u201d says Abdullah Al-Harthi from the port city of Sur in Oman, a country that relies on desalination plants.But for Oman and the other Gulf countries dominated by vast and scorching deserts, obtaining fresh water from the sea comes at a high…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}