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Rising Temperatures, Rising Risks: The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Persian Gulf Ghena Alhanaee,*,† Kelly Sanders,†,‡ and Najmedin Meshkati† †
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007, United States ‡ Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, United States The Gulf is also an important economic hub for oil and gas production. In 2016, over 800 offshore platforms were located in the Gulf and more than 50 000 tankers traveled through.1 It is unclear how much oil spills into the Gulf as many spills go undocumented, including incidents of illegal discharge of oil by moving vessels, spills from production facilities, and natural seepage.1 The largest oil spill in history is believed to have occurred during the 1991 Gulf War when oil from several tankers was dumped into the sea deliberately, releasing an estimated 3−11 million barrels of oil; the counterclockwise current resulted in the deposition of a forty-mile long oil slick along the coasts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.2 The region is currently expanding its nuclear power industry significantly. To date, there is only one operational nuclear power plant on the Gulf (in Iran) but five more are under construction, and this number is likely to increase to over 20 plants by 2030.1 Unlike other thermal power plants, nuclear facilities continue to produce heat when turned off, making access to large volumes of sufficiently cool water critical to power plant safety. Even under today’s climatic conditions where the Gulf commonly reaches temperatures of 35 °C, nuclear reactors located on the Gulf require special condensers he shared Arabian/Persian Gulf (“the Gulf”) is a lifeline to operate safely with water temperatures up to 38.5 °C.3 for the eight countries (Iran, Oman, United Arab Warming in the Gulf “is likely to severely impact human Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq) that habitability in the future” without significant global greenhouse surround it, supporting a significant fraction of their critical gas mitigation.4 Expected increase in water and air temperature resource needs. This region, one of the driest in the world, heightens concerns regarding power plant safety, as insufficient receives only 20 cm per year of average rainfall. Prolonged cooling water temperatures have caused reactors to be drought and population growth (30% between 2000 and 2020) temporarily pulled offline. During the 2003 European heat has increased the surrounding countries’ dependency on the wave, for example, 30 nuclear power plants had to curtail production.5 Gulf for water, energy and food security.1 Here, we discuss the The Gulf topography also provides challenges. Roughly 615 tensions presented by these trends, as the success or collapse of miles long with depths of 164 feet, it has only one narrow 35this region is an important case study in the global management mile-wide opening (Hormuz Strait), connecting it to the Gulf of the water-energy-food nexus. of Oman.1 Consequently, pollution and salinity tend to become Desalination along the Gulf has exploded in recent decades concentrated within the Gulf, given mitigated access to larger in efforts to secure reliable water supplies, representing 45% of bodies of water, similar to the Mediterranean. Brine discharge the world’s desalination capacity.1 In 2010, the fraction of from desalination and evaporation have therefore contributed drinking water sourced from desalination of Gulf water were to the salinification of the Gulf, which now has a total dissolved Qatar, 99%; United Arab Emirates, 95%; Kuwait, 95%; Bahrain, solids content of 45 g/L, significantly higher than average over 80%; Oman, 80%.1 Although surrounding countries are seawater (35 g/L).3 trying to address this issue by building underground water The activities described above (Figure 1) are inherently storage reservoirs, most countries only have enough storage interdependent on each other, posing potential risks to water, supply to last 2−3 days in an emergency.1 The Gulf also energy, and food security including: supports irrigation water and the seafood industry, with some of the highest seafood consumption per capita rates in the world (i.e., 28.6 kg/year in UAE and Oman, compared to 6.8 Received: February 6, 2017 Published: March 29, 2017 kg/yr in the U.S.1).
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© 2017 American Chemical Society
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b00688 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, 51, 4117−4118
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Environmental Science & Technology
(2) Joyner, C. The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill: Reassessing the Law of Environmental Protection and the Law of Armed Conflict. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 1992, 24 (1), 29−62. (3) Kim, B.; Jeong, Y. High Cooling Water Temperature Effects on Design and Operational Safety of Npps in the Gulf Region. Nucl. Eng. Technol. 2013, 45 (7), 961−968. (4) Pal, J.; Eltahir, E. Future Temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability. Nat. Clim. Change, 26th October 2015, 10.1038/nclimate2833 (5) Linnerud, K.; et al. The Impact of Climate Change on Nuclear Power Supply. Energy Journal, 2011Vol. 32 (1), 10.5547/ISSN01956574-EJ-Vol32-No1-6
Figure 1. An interdependency schematic of nuclear, oil, and desalination industries in the Gulf, and the number of people residing in the littoral countries (Adapted from Wikimedia).
• Oil spills or radiation leaks contaminating the water required for desalinated drinking water, power plant cooling, and/or the seafood industry. • Expected increase in salinity of the Gulf over time reducing desalination efficiency and threatening the safety of the water source. • Increasing water temperatures, reducing the efficiency and safety of cooling nuclear power plants, and the ecosystem supporting aquatic life. In summary, the confluence of population growth, resource constraints, and shifting energy, water and food resource portfolios raises many challenges and uncertainties in ensuring the future safety and security of the 168 million people in the countries bordering the Gulf. We suggest a rigorous, systemscale research effort to build reputable data sets and models of how human systems, natural systems, and climatic variability in this region will interact in the future, such that potential risk and disaster pathways can be assessed and strategies implemented before a disastrous event takes place. Collaboration between the research community, policy makers, and government entities is necessary to develop solutions to ensure critical resource security. Without collaborative and coordinated development, the Gulf, which performs the role of life support for these surrounding countries, could be on the road to collapse.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Ghena Alhanaee: 0000-0001-5357-7004 Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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REFERENCES
(1) Meshkati, N. People-Technology-Ecosystem Integration: A Framework to Ensure Regional Interoperability for Safety, Sustainability and Resilience of Interdependent Energy, Water and Seafood in the Gulf. Human Factors 2015, 58, 43. 4118
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b00688 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, 51, 4117−4118
