![\"Greenish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260313-desalination.jpg\")
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A desalination plant in eastern Saudi Arabia. Fayez Nureldine\/AFP via Getty\/Inside Climate News<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Inside Climate News<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n Recent attacks in the Middle East on desalination plants, facilities that remove salt from seawater, raise the potential for a humanitarian crisis if the region\u2019s freshwater production facilities are subjected to more widespread destruction. The attacks also underscore the region\u2019s heavy reliance on an energy-intensive method of producing drinking water that is powered almost entirely by fossil fuels.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0the United States of striking a desalination plant in southern Iran. The US has since\u00a0denied any role in the attack<\/a>. The next day, Bahrain\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0Iran of damaging a desalination plant in a drone attack. The targeting of freshwater production facilities follows attacks on schools, airports, hotels and refineries since Operation Epic Fury began in February. Attacking desalination plants is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which established humanitarian laws for the treatment of non-combatants in war.<\/p>\n The CIA has previously warned\u00a0that widespread disruption of desalination plants through sabotage or military action could lead to a \u201cnational crisis\u201d for certain Gulf nations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has erased previous red lines about attacking energy infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, and then the final red line of attacking desalination infrastructure,\u201d Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, said of the Iran War. \u201cIt\u2019s the most grievous kind of war crime that you can dream up.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the world\u2019s nearly 18,000 desalination plants, nearly one-third are located in the Middle East, with 2,382 facilities in Saudi Arabia alone, according to a recent study published in the journal\u00a0npj Clean Water<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the Middle East and North Africa, 83 percent of the population already faces severe water scarcity, a figure projected to rise to 100 percent by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute\u2019s\u00a0Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas<\/a>. The Middle East is home to 6 percent of the world\u2019s population and holds less than 2 percent of the world\u2019s renewable freshwater. The rapid growth of the region\u2019s cities has increased reliance on desalination.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of these great Gulf cities, Riyadh, Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they\u2019re not possible without man-made, fossil fuel water,\u201d Low said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n However, desalination, which typically uses a process called reverse osmosis to push seawater through ultra-fine membranes to remove salt and other contaminants, is a costly and energy-intensive process powered, and indirectly funded, by the region\u2019s oil and gas wealth.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t step away from fossil fuels and fossil fuel production, because your water production is so closely linked,\u201d said Low, who is currently writing a book titled \u201cSaltwater Kingdoms: Fossil-Fueled Water and Climate Change in Arabia.\u201d<\/p>\n The connection between desalination and fossil fuels has long-term implications beyond the immediate attacks. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the vulnerability of desalination to military campaigns or sabotage, but it\u2019s also the embedded risk that is climate change,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n Such heavy reliance on desalination facilities makes cities in the Middle East particularly vulnerable. As early as 1983,\u00a0the CIA warned<\/a>\u00a0that widespread disruption of desalination plants through sabotage or military action could lead to a \u201cnational crisis\u201d in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq intentionally destroyed much of Kuwait\u2019s desalination capacity.\u00a0In 2016 and 2017 a Saudi-led coalition bombed desalination plants in Yemen<\/a>.\u00a0In 2019, Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for attacking a desalination plant in Saudi Arabia.<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u00a0destroyed<\/a>\u00a0or otherwise shut down much of Gaza\u2019s desalination capacity following Hamas\u2019 attack on Israel in October 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless you go to solar or a nuclear solution, you\u2019re most likely contributing to more fossil-fuel use.\u201d<\/p>\n Erika Weinthal, chair of the Environmental Social Systems Division at Duke University\u2019s School of the Environment, monitors attacks on desalination plants and other infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa. The\u00a0Targeting of Infrastructure in the Middle East<\/a>\u00a0project, a database maintained by Weinthal and colleagues, focuses on water, sanitation, energy, health and transportation infrastructure in conflict zones throughout the region since 2011.<\/p>\n Weinthal said the initiative is an attempt to provide a more complete understanding of warfare\u2019s impacts by moving beyond immediate casualties.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are also harming civilians and the environment over the long term in ways that can\u2019t be counted immediately,\u201d Weinthal said. \u201cIf people don\u2019t have access to clean drinking water, you will see more waterborne illnesses and infectious disease among the population.\u201d<\/p>\n Weinthal said the frequent coupling of large desalination facilities and the power plants that feed them makes such facilities particularly vulnerable. \u201cYou don\u2019t even have to destroy a desalination plant or a water treatment plant if you take out a power plant,\u201d Weinthal said.<\/p>\n As the planet warms, the region will likely become increasingly dependent on desalination. Precipitation across the Middle East and North Africa is anticipated to decrease by\u00a010 to 30 percent<\/a>\u00a0over the next century. By 2050, the region is projected to incur economic losses equal to 6 to 14 percent of its gross domestic product due to climate-induced water scarcity,\u00a0according to the World Bank.<\/a><\/p>\n Climate change will also increase coastal water temperatures and salinity, reducing the efficiency of desalination plants,\u00a0concluded a 2022 report by the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment<\/a>, an intergovernmental organization of eight Persian Gulf states.<\/p>\n Currently, almost all the Middle East\u2019s desalination plants are\u00a0powered by fossil fuels<\/a>, with 93 percent of the required electricity coming from burning natural gas and 6 percent from burning oil. Some countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have begun to develop renewable energy or nuclear power to drive desalination. However, only about\u00a0one-third of Middle Eastern countries<\/a>\u00a0employ renewable energy for that purpose or have immediate plans to integrate it with freshwater production.<\/p>\n Globally, reverse osmosis desalination uses an estimated 100 terrawatt hours of energy per year, equivalent to approximately 0.4 percent of global electricity consumption. Emissions associated with that energy use were approximately 76 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, a figure projected to increase to 400 million tons of CO2 by 2050, according to a\u00a0recent report<\/a>\u00a0by TRENDS Research & Advisory, an independent think tank based in Abu Dhabi. That 2050 figure is equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 93 million automobiles, according to the\u00a0US Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless you go to solar or a nuclear solution, you\u2019re most likely contributing to more fossil-fuel use [and] more carbon forcing,\u201d Low said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a vicious cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A desalination plant in eastern Saudi Arabia. Fayez Nureldine\/AFP via Getty\/Inside Climate News Get your news from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-540821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}