Imagine a country with abundant power — oil and gas, sunshine, wind (and money) — but missing one key essential for life: water. Infrastructure engineer Fahad Al-Attiya talks about the unexpected ways that the small Middle Eastern nation of Qatar creates its water supply.
Fahad Al-Attiya’s job is to maintain food security in Qatar, a country that has no water and imports 90 percent of its food. His home, Qatar, has found itself a newly oil-rich country with an economy growing at an average rate of 15 percent a year, with a rapidly expanding population. That burst in population has been accompanied by a huge surge in water consumption. So what’s so strange about that? — Qatar has virtually no water. In comparison to Brazil’s annual 1782 mm of rain, Qatar’s annual rainfall is 74 mm.
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Produced by: TED
Year: 2013
Language: English
Region: Qatar
