Water resilience key to long-term growth in MENA: WB

Water resilience key to long-term growth in MENA: WB

As climate change accelerates a global water crisis, rainfall variability is expected to be one of the contributing forces in migration, according to the World Bank report titled “Ebb and Flow”. The report anticipates that the world’s cities, which receive migrants and are now home to 55% of the global population, will face a rising number of “day-zero” events – when taps run dry. The report, Ebb and Flow, provides the first-ever global assessment of the impact of water on migration. In Mena, where 60 percent of the population lives in water-stressed areas, the report notes that water is already one of the main vulnerabilities faced by people living in the region, particularly those displaced by conflicts and their host communities. The report finds that water deficits are linked to 10 percent of the increase in total migration within countries between 1970 and 2000. By the end of this century, worsening droughts are projected to affect about 700 million people. These climate shocks will have a disproportionate impact on the developing world, with more than 85 percent of people affected living in low- or middle-income countries. Yet it is often the poor who cannot afford to leave. The report finds