Gulf Nations Race to Secure Water Amid Regional Threats and Climate Stress

WATER AS WEAPON: HOW GULF STATES ARE BUILDING RESILIENCE AGAINST THREATS TO THEIR LIFELINE

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani put it plainly: his country would have run out of water within three days had it not built its strategic reservoirs. That warning, grounded in a real incident after Iran targeted Ras Laffan Industrial City and a reservoir belonging to the Mesaieed power plant, captures the stakes facing hundreds of millions of people across the Arabian Peninsula. Water is not an environmental concern here. It is a matter of daily survival.

The numbers reveal how exposed ordinary residents are. Daily water consumption in the Gulf reaches approximately 550 litres per person, nearly five times the level in countries like Germany. Yet the region’s renewable freshwater resources amount to less than 100 cubic metres annually per person, less than a fifth of actual usage. According to a World Bank assessment, this gap can only be closed through seawater desalination. Gulf states have responded by becoming the world’s dominant force in this technology, operating more than 400 plants that together account for more than half of global desalination capacity and produce almost 40 percent of the world’s desalinated water.

The reliance is staggering. Saudi Arabia generates about 20 percent of the world’s desalinated water, with roughly half of all water supplied to its residents coming from desalination. The United Arab Emirates depends on desalination for around 80 percent of its drinking water. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar have pushed even further into this dependency, with figures reaching 86, 90, more than 90, and 99 percent respectively. For the people living in these countries, that single technology is the difference between water flowing from a tap and none at all.

Recognizing this fragility, Gulf governments have begun treating water infrastructure as sovereign assets requiring strategic protection. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s 20-year Unified Water Strategy, adopted to guide planning through 2035, aims to ensure that at least 10 percent of total desalination capacity uses locally owned and manufactured technology, reducing the exposure that comes with external dependence.

Saudi Arabia has moved furthest in this direction. The country’s Vision 2030 document places water security at the center of long-term planning, and the United Nations has recognized Saudi Arabia as a case study in addressing clean water and sanitation challenges. The kingdom’s integrated water resources management indicator rose from 57 percent to 83 percent, a pace of progress that caught international attention. The flagship Ras Al-Khair plant produces more than one million cubic metres of desalinated water daily through a combination of reverse osmosis and multi-stage flash distillation. Saudi Arabia has invested $58.7 billion in its water sector, with approximately $16 billion coming from foreign sources. Residents are served by a network of 14,200 kilometres of pipelines carrying more than 19.4 million cubic metres daily. The country operates the world’s largest covered drinking-water storage tank, the Briman Strategic Reservoir in Jeddah, alongside the Riyadh Strategic Reservoir holding 4.79 million cubic metres. In July 2026, the national water company expanded its strategic reservoir network by inaugurating five new reservoirs in western Riyadh, adding 180,000 cubic metres of storage capacity and a pumping station capable of handling 125,000 cubic metres daily.

Meanwhile, the UAE is pursuing its own buffer against disruption. The country operates approximately 70 desalination plants providing 42 percent of total water requirements. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is undertaking the world’s largest project to store and recover desalinated water in underground aquifers, with plans to store surplus water that could supply the emirates for around 90 days in emergencies. The UAE’s Water Security Strategy 2036 aims to increase treated water reuse to 95 percent and expand storage capacity, while establishing six interconnection points between water and electricity networks across the country. Emirati desalination plants carry a combined production capacity of around 8.4 million cubic metres daily, with annual output reaching 1.85 billion cubic metres in 2025. New reverse-osmosis projects will add more than 2.5 million cubic metres daily, with total production capacity expected to reach 30 million cubic metres by the end of 2027.

Oman has increased its operational water-production capacity to 1.41 million cubic metres daily, with desalination plants now providing up to 90 percent of the water supply. The sultanate’s Five-Year Plan for 2026-30 aims to expand water infrastructure to meet anticipated annual demand growth of 3 percent. Major projects include water and wastewater services development in Dhofar worth $260 million and the Wadi Dayqah Dam water-treatment plant in the Wilayat of Qurayyat, valued at $143 million and scheduled for completion in March 2027. The third phase of the Al-Ghubrah desalination plant, a $325 million project covering more than 70,000 square metres, will produce 300,000 cubic metres daily from early 2027.

Kuwait, among the world’s highest per capita water consumers, depends almost entirely on seawater desalination from nine plants producing 3.1 million cubic metres daily. The country aims to increase this to 4.1 million cubic metres daily by 2030. Water sector projects accounted for more than 45 percent of the total value of projects awarded in Kuwait during the first quarter of 2026, worth approximately $3.7 billion, reflecting the priority assigned to water in Kuwait’s Vision 2035.

Qatar is strengthening water security through a $4 billion strategic reservoirs project inaugurated in 2018, the largest drinking-water storage project of its kind globally. The system stores water across 24 immense reservoirs connected by 650 kilometres of pipelines, allowing water from any desalination plant to reach any reservoir in the country. The state is expanding desalination infrastructure following the enlargement of the Umm Al Houl facility and the construction of the new Ras Abu Fontas plant, known as Facility E, scheduled to begin operations in 2028. Qatar is also developing a project to store desalinated water in underground aquifers, creating a 90-day emergency reserve. Last year the country amended legislation through Water Law No. 23 to strengthen the sector’s legal framework, regulating water resource management under both normal and emergency conditions, governing desalinated water production and distribution, protecting groundwater reserves, and promoting treated wastewater reuse.

Bahrain, a low-lying island state with no permanent rivers or major valleys, has relied almost entirely on desalinated water since 2016 to meet drinking-water needs. Its geography offers little scope for dams or surface reservoirs, making residents dependent on seawater desalination, treated wastewater reuse, and careful groundwater stewardship. Average daily water consumption increased by 27 percent from 2009 to 2024. New facilities including the Al Hidd plant and the Sitra Independent Power and Water Project, expected to become operational in 2029, form part of the National Water Strategy 2030.

Yet this infrastructure, however sophisticated, carries an inherent vulnerability that policymakers now openly acknowledge. A report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies warns that heavy dependence on desalination leaves Gulf water systems vulnerable to attack, including cyber attacks. Damage to power stations, transmission lines, or seawater intakes could interrupt water production entirely. International law prohibits attacks on civilian water infrastructure, but the region’s history offers little comfort. The so-called Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, followed by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, already prompted extra investment in water security.

Some of the Gulf’s desalination plants serve more than one million people, meaning any attack could have far-reaching consequences for both physical infrastructure and public confidence. Some states have expanded strategic storage to provide buffer capacity. Others remain exposed. Much of the Gulf still lacks sufficient water reserves to withstand a prolonged disruption of the kind the Middle East has experienced repeatedly in recent decades, leaving the question of whether storage targets will be met before the next crisis arrives as the most consequential one facing the region’s citizens.