What does the Arab world do when its water runs out?

Middle east water facts• 10.7% Food-price inflation in Egypt during 2010.• 25% Expected increase in Saudi water demand up to 2020.• 2.9% Yemen population growth each year.• 14 cubic kilometres of water loss from Dead Sea in the past 30

years (1980-2010).• 240 cubic metres per person annual water use in Israel.• 75 cubic metres per person annual water use in Palestinian

West Bank.• $0.53 Cost per cubic metre of desalinated water.• 120 Desalination plants throughout UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi

Arabia, Kuwait and Iran

• Desalination has allowed dictators and elites to continue to waste water on a massive scale. Nearly 20% of all Saudi oil money in the 1970s and 80s was used to provide clean water to grow wheat and other crops in regions that would not naturally be able to do so. Parks, golf courses, roadside verges and household gardens are all still watered with expensively produced clean drinking water. The energy – and therefore water – needed to keep barely insulated buildings super-cold in Gulf states is astonishing

• Countries now recognise how vulnerable they are to conflict. The UAE, which includes Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has started to build the world's largest underground reservoir, with 26,000,000m3 of desalinated water. It will store enough water for 90 days when completed. The reasoning is that the UAE is now wholly dependent on desalination to survive

• Water shortages, concludes the Blue Peace report, are now so alarming that in a few years opposing camps will have little choice but to co-operate and share resources, or face ruinous conflict. That way, it says, instead of a potential accelerator of conflict, the water crisis can become an opportunity for a new form of peace where any two countries with access to adequate, clean and sustainable water resources do not feel motivated to engage in a military conflict. It sounds optimistic, but the wind of change blowing through the region suggests everything is possible.

Three Gorges dam

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aU43suUvg&feature=player_embedded#at=103

Rain water harvesting

Mapping groundwater

Poo Gloos

• Poo-gloos affectionate nickname given to Bio-Bomes, the igloo-shaped pollution-eating devices that could mean miracles for waste water treatment in areas that can't afford multimillion dollar installation

Meat eater’s diet = 2 vegetarians diet

• Meat eater’s diet requires ,5400 litres of water a day to produce.