Middle East and Northern Africa

Middle East and Northern Africa, the MENA region, is the region with the highest level of groundwater development stress in the world. In 2014, IGRAC published the 'Groundwater Development Stress map', which shows groundwater abstraction as a percentage of annual recharge.

This map showed that several countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as some Central Asian countries, even have a groundwater stress rate of more than 100%, which means these countries are depleting their groundwater resources. 

This is the reason why the groundwater community is very interested in this MENA region and many initiatives have been launched to improve sustainable management of groundwater resources.