Securing Tomorrow’s Water: How Desalination Is Reshaping the MENA Region

The report explains how the Middle East and North Africa is turning rapidly to desalination, driven by severe water scarcity, technological breakthroughs, and expanding renewable energy integration to secure future water supplies. It highlights that while desalination is becoming more efficient and widespread, its success ultimately depends on strong governance, environmental safeguards, and financially sustainable water-sector reforms.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, home to research leaders such as Khalifa University, KAUST, the International Desalination and Reuse Association (IDRA), and the World Bank’s Global Water Security and Sanitation Partnership, the accelerating hunt for answers to water scarcity reflects a crisis decades in the making. Many countries fall far below the absolute scarcity threshold of 500 cubic meters per capita, a reality vividly captured in the report’s GDP-versus-water-availability chart. Demand is rising fast, aquifers are collapsing, and climate change is intensifying droughts, heat, and erratic rainfall. By mid-century, the region faces a dramatic supply gap that no new dams or groundwater extraction can realistically close. In this tightening vise, desalination has moved from a Gulf luxury to a regional imperative.

The New Geography of Desalination

The report maps a dramatic expansion: by 2025, nearly half of global desalination capacity sits in MENA. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar operate some of the world’s largest plants. Still, middle-income nations such as Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria are now rapidly scaling up, while Jordan and Tunisia pursue ambitious public–private desalination initiatives. A sprawling map of regional plants illustrates how once-remote coastlines have become industrial anchors of water security. Technological transformation underpins this shift. Reverse osmosis (RO) has eclipsed energy-hungry thermal processes, driving production costs down from several dollars per cubic meter in the 1980s to as low as $0.40–$0.50 in recently awarded projects. Laboratories from Abu Dhabi to Riyadh and Copenhagen are advancing next-generation membranes, graphene-enhanced, aquaporin-based, or nanostructured, while hybrid systems integrating forward osmosis, membrane distillation, or electrochemical separation offer glimpses of deeper cost and efficiency gains.

Small Solutions in Fragile Lands

Desalination’s evolution is not limited to megaprojects. In conflict-affected Gaza and Yemen, small solar-powered units produce only a few cubic meters a day but determine whether families drink safe water or rely on costly, often unsafe truck deliveries. The report describes how community-operated plants have emerged as lifelines, especially where aquifers are polluted or brackish. These systems, simple, decentralized, and relatively affordable, reflect desalination’s expanding social role: a technology equally capable of sustaining gleaming new cities and humanitarian survival. Yet they also illustrate the governance and maintenance challenges that lie ahead if decentralized systems are to be safely scaled.

Energy, Environment, and the High Stakes of Expansion

Desalination’s future hinges on solving its energy dilemma. A striking comparison of global power costs shows how solar photovoltaics have become dramatically cheaper than fossil fuels, explaining why MENA states are racing to integrate renewables into water production. Saudi Arabia’s Al Khafji solar-powered plant, Morocco’s wheeling of off-site wind generation to a giant RO facility, and Jordan’s emissions cap for its Aqaba–Amman project demonstrate that renewable-powered desalination is shifting from concept to policy norm. Yet intermittent energy threatens plant reliability, forcing reliance on storage, grid backup, or hybrid configurations. Meanwhile, the environmental stakes are growing. Brine discharge, warmer outflows, and chemical additives threaten coral ecosystems in the Red Sea, seagrasses in the Mediterranean, and fisheries across the Gulf. Fishermen in Bahrain report collapsing catches, while Kuwait has seen jellyfish swarms clog intakes and disrupt plant operations. The report calls for cumulative impact assessments, improved intake designs, and stricter chemical controls, warning that environmental neglect could undermine both ecosystems and the communities whose livelihoods depend on them.

Governance Will Decide the Future

Ultimately, the report argues, desalination’s success depends less on engineering breakthroughs than on governance and financial discipline. Many utilities across the region suffer from high losses, low tariffs, and poor cost recovery; without reforms, large desalination programs risk overwhelming public budgets. The authors urge gradual tariff adjustments, targeted subsidies to protect vulnerable households, improved regulatory oversight, and integrated planning so desalination complements wastewater reuse, conservation, and network efficiency, not replaces them. A promising frontier lies in synergies with green hydrogen: Colocating electrolysis and desalination facilities could improve plant utilization while supplying a growing export industry. High-income Gulf states are expected to lead technological innovation, middle-income countries must reinforce institutions and financing, and low-income and fragile states will rely on decentralized systems while building the foundations for larger-scale investments. Across all contexts, the report concludes, desalination is not a silver bullet. Still, when governed well and paired with renewable energy and environmental safeguards, it becomes one of the region’s most powerful tools for long-term water resilience.