Challenges to wastewater reuse in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Faced with increasing water scarcity, policy makers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are increasingly interested in tapping non-conventional water resources, such as recycled wastewater, to meet demands for water. Yet despite its perceived advantages, few countries have succeeded in developing extensive, successful, and safe reuse, despite considerable innovation in the water sector. This paper argues that much of the relative failure to expand reuse in MENA can be linked to incentive problems in wastewater management. A simple conceptual model is applied to explore how demand among different users interacts with water supply to produce different reuse cases. The economics of these cases are discussed with reference to data on water pricing and wastewater management. The analysis shows that a variety of constraints inhibit formal reuse of wastewater in MENA, including problems related to the cost of reuse, problems associated with low demand for reclaimed wastewater, the widespread lack of effective price signals and cost recovery in the water sector, and challenges in structuring the financing of reuse.