Title: Water security for Kuwait: assessing the feasibility of water imports from Iran

Authors: Hussein A. Amery

Addresses: Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois St., Golden, Co 80401, USA

Abstract: According to a recent paper by Schwartz and Ibaraki (2011), overuse and depletion of groundwater resources have caused the extinction of whole civilisations. Water-scarce countries seek additional supplies through a variety of methods such as conservation, drilling additional wells, building desalination plants and importing water. Kuwait, where surface water is totally absent, has aquifers that essentially ran dry in the 1970s. After seriously exploring the idea of importing water from neighbouring Iran, Kuwait stopped short of doing that. Using a human security framework, this paper outlines the political, economic and security issues that coalesced to undermine this potential source of water for Kuwait.

Keywords: water security; regional security; human security; water imports; trust; water scarcity; Kuwait; Iran.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHST.2012.049165

International Journal of Hydrology Science and Technology, 2012 Vol.2 No.3, pp.292 - 305

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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