An innovative greywater treatment system for urban areas ... - SuSanA

In the Near East and North Africa most countries suffer from acute water scarcity, as do
countries such as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India. The
bulk of the demand for water in these countries is allocated to irrigated agriculture, and this is
also usually the first sector affected by water shortage and increased scarcity. The result is
often a decrease of capacity to maintain per capita food production while meeting water
needs for domestic, industrial and environmental purposes (UN-Water, 2006).
Physical water scarcity is concentrated in the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa),
especially in the countries of Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Western
Sahara Territory and Yemen. In many areas of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia
the problem also occurs.
The main regions with economic water scarcity are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa,
they are not listed here. In the evaluation, regions with economic water scarcity are not in the
main focus, because economic water supply problems usually indicate immense poverty in
the country. A high-tech solution of greywater treatment by MBR technology is in such a case
only an opportunity in very limited areas, with good infrastructure in such countries. For
example, uninterrupted power supply for the treatment plant is mandatory and this can often
not be provided in extremely poor regions. In this work, it was not possible to investigate
areas with economic water scarcity in relation to their potential for the introduction of
greywater recycling via MBR, but with further evaluation useful applications in these regions
could certainly be identified.
In total 32 countries which are suffering from lack of water or approaching water scarcity
were picked out as hotspots (see Table 25). These countries need to focus on the efficient
use of all water sources (groundwater, surface water and rainfall) and on water allocation
strategies that maximize the economic and social returns of the limited water resources (UN-
Water, 2006). Therefore, water scarcity (N1) was defined as the indicator criterion to identify
the most meaningful countries to conduct the evaluation on, based on that pre-selection the
identification of hotspots for international transferability of the membrane bioreactor
technology was made. All further estimations and appraisals were conducted for these 32
countries.
Table 25: International countries facing water scarcity; (according IWMI, (2006) selected by K. Löw)
Country Water
scarcity
1 Afghanistan exist./appr.
2 Algeria existing
3 Australia (south) existing
4 China (north) existing
5 Egypt existing
6 India exist./appr.
7 Iran approaching
8 Israel approaching
9 Jordan existing
10 Kazakhstan exist./appr.
11 Kyrgyzstan exist./appr.
12 Lebanon approaching
13 Libya existing
14 Madagascar approaching
15 Mexico exist./appr.
16 Morocco existing
17 Mozambique exist./appr.
18 Oman existing
19 Pakistan exist./appr.
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