Water-Energy Nexus 1 (2018) 142–144

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Water-Energy Nexus
CHINESE ROOTS
GLOBAL IMPACT
journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/water-energy-nexus/

Water for the millions: Focus Saudi Arabia

Dornadula Chandrasekharam ⇑
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, 502285, India
King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
University of Southern Queensland, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Food security is essential for any country. Due to the lack of water resources, countries rely on food
Received 22 September 2018 imports to satisfy the needs of millions. Oil rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, imports agricultural products
Revised 24 December 2018 for the same reason. This is a short-term solution to circumvent the issue of water scarcity and in future
Accepted 12 January 2019
such policy will push the country to desperation. Saudi Arabia withdraws 20 billion m3 of groundwater
Available online 21 January 2019
per year, while the annual recharge of groundwater is only 2.4 billion m3. This additional quantity of
groundwater is extracted from non-renewable (fossil) groundwater from trans-boundary Saq-Ram sand-
Keywords:
stone aquifer of Mesozoic age, with a proven reserve of 103,360 MCM. An amount of about 394 MCM/y
Saudi Arabia
Water demand
flows out of the country. The current 17,300 km2 of irrigated area will shrink in future due to water short-
Food security age, thus reducing the GDP contribution below 3%. The best option is to harness geothermal energy to
Desalination operate the desalination plants. Saudi Arabia can generate desalinated water at the rate of 0.03 US$/m3
Geothermal energy (without subsidy). Saudi Arabia cannot afford to overlook this option.
Irrigation Ó 2019 The Author. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/4.0/).

What should be Saudi Arabia’s strategy for food security?
Earth is a special planet, where life-sustaining water is available
in plenty. Water is vital for socio-economic development of any
country. Civilizations flourished along the riverbanks and perished
when the rivers dried. Water is an important commodity for food
security. Even wealthy and oil rich countries are unable to provide
adequate safe water for drinking and for growing staple food crops
to support its growing population. Green water is available in cer-
tain regions of the world that receives fair amount of rain. Both
green and blue waters support food production. In high rainfall
regions, green water support agricultural production throughout
the year. Over exploitation of groundwater due to green revolution
has a tremendous impact on the water and food security.
Regions that flourished with copious food production became
barren due to fall in water table and decrease in soil moisture. Both
natural and anthropogenic activities resulted in green water scar-
city that affected food security. Natural causes are related to
change in climate pattern and large CO2 emissions that led to
decrease in rainfall in certain regions and induced flash floods in
other regions. Anthropogenic activities include soil mismanage-
ment, excess withdrawal of groundwater, beyond the dynamic
⇑ Address: Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, 502285, India.
E-mail address: dchandra@iith.ac.in
storage capacity of the aquifers and unplanned infrastructural
development that blocks infiltration of rain into the aquifers. Both,
non-availability and excess availability of water, causes misery and
bring in drought conditions. Both of these incidences have caused
decrease in food production and food security. Over the last dec-
ade, green water sources have decreased drastically, threatening
countries with food scarcity. This is a typical scenario in the Gulf
countries. Whether it is blue or green water, the total amount of
available fresh water is 11–13% of the total annual precipitation
on the continents and the entire population on the earth uses 2%
of the precipitation (Gleick, 1993). A small portion of 0.77% caters
for drinking and agricultural need (Lal, 2015). This amount is inad-
equate in the next two decades as the demand for fresh water is
projected to be in the range of 4300–5000 km3/yr from the current
demand of 4000 km3/yr (Gleick, 1997, Raskin, 1997, Shiklomanov,
1997, Raskin et al., 1998, Alcamo et al., 2000, Seckler et al., 2003).
Oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia can import agricultural prod-
ucts to secure food security, as it is doing now (Fig. 1). Although
methods to increase wheat production have been suggested (Atta
et al., 2011) such solutions are not adopted. On the contrary, Saudi
Arabia increased its wheat imports from 1.92 million tonnes in
2013 to 3.03 in MY (mid year) 2014 (USDA, 2013,
Chandrasekharam et al., 2016). This is a short-term solution to
circumvent water scarcity.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wen.2019.01.001
2588-9125/Ó 2019 The Author. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 D. Chandrasekharam / Water-Energy Nexus 1 (2018) 142–144 143

Fig. 1. Food imports by oil rich countries (adapted from UNDP (2013)).

Fig. 2. Water demand by domestic and agricultural sectors since 2000 by Saudi
Arabia (adopted from Abderrehman (2006)).
Food exporting countries may not have sufficient water either
to grow food and feed the millions in future. This situation may
result in water insecurity and if necessary action is not taken today generated from fossil fuels to desalinate 1 m3 of seawater
to mitigate this issue, this may trigger a geopolitical issue that may (Ghaffour et al., 2014). The electricity cogenerated during this pro-
become a threat to the entire global economy. Considering the cur- cess is insignificant compared to the cost of production of fresh
rent pattern of rainfall, falling water table levels and demand for water. Moreover, nearly 13 Mt of CO2 is being emitted during this
food, it appears that the world is heading towards water and food process (Chandrasekharam et al., 2016). Saudi Arabia’s reliance on
scarcity risk in the near future due to intense water crowding. fossil fuels to generate electricity and produce fresh water
This will happen when the water supply demand exceeds (through desalination) is economically and politically unsustain-
1000 p/Mm3 yr (people per million cubic meter per year) from able, and if this trend continues, then the country could become
the current supply of 600 p/Mm3 yr. The worst affected regions an oil importer in the next two decades (Ahmad and Ramana,
are going to be the gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, which are oil 2014). This situation may lead to destabilization of the global econ-
rich but with poor fresh water reserves (Postal, 1998, Grey and omy. Saudi Arabia is operating largest number of desalination
Sadoff, 2007, Falkenmark, 2013) and savannah zone, that covers plants (Fig. 3). With government subsidy, the cost of desalinated
40% of the land area in the world (Rockstrom, 2003). These Gulf water is 0.03 US$/m3, while the average cost of desalinated water
countries have no option but to depend on seawater. The entire is about 6 US$/m3 globally.
world will be self-sufficient in food and energy production if a cost This subsidy will not last for long. Now the governments have
effective method to generate fresh water from seawater is evolved. realized that water is a resource of strategic importance and con-
Currently fresh water generated from desalination is expensive cerns human and national security (Amery, 2015). The solution
because the fossil fuels are being used as energy source. to this problem lies in country’s large geothermal resources locked
Annually Saudi Arabia withdraws 20 billion m3 of groundwater, up in the western Arabian shield region. These resources include
while the annual recharge is only 2.4 billion m3. This additional both hydrothermal and Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS:
quantity of groundwater is extracted from non-renewable (fossil) Chandrasekharam et al., 2016, 2015a,b). The most cost effective
groundwater from Saq-Ram sandstone aquifer of Mesozoic age, method to obtain fresh water from the sea is adopting technology
with a proven reserve of 103,360 MCM (Chandrasekharam et al.,
2016). Neighbouring countries also share this aquifer. About
394 MCM/y of water flows out of Saudi Arabia to neighbouring
countries. During the last two decades, the water table in this aqui-
fer has fallen by 60 m. While water from the Saq-Ram aquifer is
being utilized by the agricultural and domestic sectors, industrial
and municipal needs are supported by water sourced from
desalinated of seawater (FAO, 2008, Kajenthira et al., 2012).
Nearly 17,300 km2 of area is irrigated to grow wheat, barley and
dates. Even though agriculture contributes over 3% of GDP, due
to severe water shortage for irrigation, the country has stopped
growing wheat and increased wheat imports to meet the demand.
This situation is alarming because the country’s agricultural sector
is not able to support per capita wheat (in the form of ‘‘pita”-white
bread) production of 88 kg/yr to its 28 million population due to
high quantity of fresh water demand (Fig. 2). The country’s food
supplies are sourced outside the country.
At present, Saudi Arabia uses energy intensive thermal
multistage flash desalination process, using 12 TWh of electricity Fig. 3. Desalination plants in Gulf countries (Adapted from Fath et al. (2013)).
144 D. Chandrasekharam / Water-Energy Nexus 1 (2018) 142–144
Fig. 4. Unit cost of electricity generated by renewables (Chandrasekharam et al.,
2017).
based on solar or geothermal energy. Solar photovoltaic is not cost
effective since it needs supporting facilities while geothermal can
supply baseload electricity and the system can work at >90% effi-
ciency throughout the year at affordable cost (Fig. 4).
This energy can provide fresh water for domestic and agricul-
tural sectors and make the country food and water secured. Thus
the country may emerge as leader in supporting agricultural sector
in all the gulf countries.
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest in this manuscript.
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