The World Bank recently issued a technical report titled “Water Balance: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change and Water Scarcity in the Middle East”, in order to quantify the impact of water scarcity and reductions in crop yields (due to climate change) on Middle Eastern economies. The report commented that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the most water scarce regions in the world, and that the region will be facing significant water shortages in the future, on the back of increases in water demand or a drop in precipitation due to climate change. The World Bank commented that while the contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP is relatively small (2%-5%) in Middle Eastern countries, except for Iran (9.6% in 2016) and Turkey (6.2% in 2016), the agricultural sector remains a major contributor to employment in said countries, and especially in rural areas. In figures, the agricultural sector accounted for 12.4% of employment in Lebanon in 2016, in comparison with 18.0% in Iran, 19.2% in Iraq, 3.6% in Jordan 14.6% in Syria and 19.5% in Turkey. The World Bank report also attempted to assess the impact of a change in temperature on different types of crop yields and deduced that wheat, coarse grains and rice will be negatively affected by a hike in temperature, while the yields of oil crops, sugar crops, vegetables & fruits and other crops are expected to fare better with the increase in temperature. Always in the same vein, the report revealed that Iran and Iraq will be suffering a slightly higher impact on their crop yields in comparison with their regional peers in the event of higher temperatures. As far as Lebanon is concerned, oil crops would improve by 12.0% in the event of a 3 Celcius increase in temperatures, while the yield of coarse grains would decrease by 10.6%, and that of wheat would drop by 11.8%.

On the economic front, the report conducted 6 different scenarios to calculate the impact of the drop of water supply on GDP (whether in absolute or relative terms), with said scenarios being grouped under 2 major categories, namely no changes in crop yields and changes in crop yields. When examining the different scenarios depicted by the below table, Lebanon seems to be one of the least affected countries in relative terms when compared to its regional peers. In details, Lebanon would suffer a 1.9% ($1.0 billion) negative impact on its real GDP under scenario 3 (which assumes a 20% reduction in water supply and no changes in crop yields), in comparison with negative impacts of 9.1% ($2.5 billion) for Syria, 6.8% ($2.6 billion) for Jordan, 5.7% ($48.9 billion) for Turkey, and 5.3% ($22.1 billion) for Iran only to name a few. In addition, and when assuming a 20% contraction in water supply, changes in crop yields and a 20% improvement in Water Use Efficiency (WUE), the negative impact on Lebanon’s GDP would stand at 0.6% ($0.3 billion) in comparison with negative impacts of 6.0% ($1.7 billion) for Syria, 4.1% ($1.6 billion) for Jordan, 1.6% ($13.8 billion) for Turkey, and 4.8% ($20.3 billion) for Iran among others.