Conclusion

Abstract

While in the humid and temperate parts of the world, water was regarded until very recently as a free gift of nature which was always available in abundance, people in the Middle East since antiquity have appreciated the socio-economic value of water, and have treated it as a valuable finite resource to be revered as the essence of life. Indeed, in this part of the world, water has been the fundamental factor in determining the rise and fall of civilisations, and its scarcity, as an environmental phenomenon, has deeply affected their social, cultural, economic, and political structure (see Chapter 1). However, the decisive role of water is no longer confined to arid and semiarid regions. During the last few decades, due to expansion of populations, agro-industrial pollution and aspirations for greater economic development, in other parts of the world the pressure on limited fresh water supplies has approached the ‘water barrier’ beyond which the need for safe water becomes a dominant concern. Indeed, one can hardly find a country which is not, in one way or another, at the edge, if not in the middle, of a water crisis.