Attacks on water resources are not a common occurrence during war, but they have become a fact in the conflict in the Middle East with strikes on seawater desalination facilities, which are vital for millions of people in the region, writes Agence France-Presse, BTA reported.
A desalination plant in Bahrain was damaged yesterday in an attack by an Iranian drone, local authorities confirmed. This came a day after Iran accused Iran of a similar strike on Qeshm Island, which reportedly disrupted water supplies to 30 villages.
These attacks are still being contained, but "the first one who dares to attack water supplies will trigger a war far larger than the one we are witnessing today," Esther Crozer-Delburg, a water economist, warned in an interview with AFP.
Why is desalinated water so important?
In one of the driest regions in the world, where water availability is ten times less than the global average, desalination plants play a vital role in the economy and the supply of drinking water for its millions of inhabitants, according to the World Bank.
An estimated 42 percent of the world's seawater desalination capacity is is located in the Middle East, according to a recent study published in the journal “Nature“. In the UAE, 42 percent of drinking water comes from these installations, 90 percent in Kuwait, 86 percent in Oman and 70 percent in Saudi Arabia, according to a 2022 report by the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri).
“There, without desalinated water, there is nothing“, summarizes Esther Crozer-Delbourg. This is of particular strategic importance in large cities such as Dubai and Riyadh.
In 2010, a CIA analysis stated that “the disruption of desalination plants in most Arab countries could have more serious consequences than the loss of any other industry or raw material.”
What threatens water desalination plants?
In addition to the attacks carried out over the weekend, these plants are also vulnerable to power outages and potential contamination of seawater, particularly from oil spills, several experts told AFP.
“We have strengthened security and access control in the immediate vicinity of the plants,” Philippe Bourdeau, director of the Africa/Middle East regional office of French company Veolia, told AFP. (Veolia), which supplies desalinated water to the Muscat, Sur and Salalah regions in Oman and Jubail in Saudi Arabia. “Recent events certainly require us to be very careful. We are closely monitoring the situation at the facilities“, he added, specifying that “in some countries, authorities have deployed missile batteries around the largest plants against the threat of drones or missiles“.
In the event of an oil spill, operators have tools to minimize the damage.
What are the precedents?
There have been several attacks on desalination plants in the past 10 years: Yemen and Saudi Arabia have attacked each other, and Gaza has suffered from Israeli strikes, reports the California-based think tank “Pacific Institute“ (Pacific Institute), which maintains a register of conflicts related to water sources.
Before 2016, one had to go back to 1991 and the Gulf War to find such attacks.
What are the consequences of an attack?
They can range from temporary disruptions to much more serious consequences if the strikes continue.
“We will potentially see large cities where the population leaves en masse. And then rationing will be introduced“, predicts Esther Crozer-Delburg, with a domino effect on a number of sectors of the economy - tourism, industry and data centers, all of which are large users of cooling water.
According to Philippe Bourdeau of “Veolia“ Desalination plants are often interconnected, which can limit the impact of a single plant outage.
He adds that facilities typically have a few days of consumption reserve, two to seven, which is enough to handle shortages as long as the outages don't last too long.