Brussels, 01/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - Water, the source of life for 490 million people living around the Mediterranean basin and an increasingly rare resource in some of these regions, is raising concern among experts - especially with EMWIS12
(the Euro-Mediterranean Information System on know-how in the Water sector), which published a report on this subject at the end of March.
EMWIS examined the situation in all countries bordering the Mediterranean - five African countries, six Asian and eleven European, and draws a mixed picture: “in relation to the populations, an unequal distribution of water resources can be seen - ranging from an overabundance in Albania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia (over 10,000 m3 per year per inhabitant) to extreme poverty in the Palestinian Gaza Territories and in Malta (less than 100 m3 per year per inhabitant)”. The consequence would seem to be that “following the differences of demographic evolution forecast, the gaps between water resources per head are only going to become greater (…) [although] three quarters of jobs in the world depend on water. Indeed, the shortages and problems of access to water are likely to limit economic growth in the coming years” and make the discrepancy in development between the shores of the Mediterranean worse.
EMWIS is an initiative bringing together several bodies that are responsible for the region in terms of the environment and member states from the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). (Original version in French by Fathi B'Chir)