Dutch expertise strengthening water security in the Gulf: storage, desalination and diversification
The Gulf region is among the most water-scarce areas in the world. With limited rainfall and no perennial rivers, countries across the Arabian Peninsula rely heavily on seawater desalination to secure drinking water. While desalination has supported rapid economic development, it also creates a structural vulnerability. Recent events in the region have brought this dependence into sharp focus. Ensuring water security therefore increasingly depends not only on producing water, but also on storing it. Dutch organisations have been contributing to this challenge for years as knowledge partners, investors and technology developers, working on water storage, infrastructure and renewable-powered desalination.
The role of desalination in the Gulf
Desalination forms the backbone of water supply in the region. The Gulf states host nearly half of the world’s desalination plants and depend heavily on them to meet their water needs. In Kuwait, roughly 90 per cent of drinking water comes from desalination, compared with 86 per cent in Oman, 70 per cent in Saudi Arabia, and 42 per cent in the UAE. More than 400 desalination plants line the shores of the Arabian Gulf, sustaining cities, industries, and populations in the region’s arid climate. Without this infrastructure, the Gulf’s development over the past half century would not have been possible.
Ensuring water security increasingly requires not only producing water but also storing it. Dutch organisations have contributed to this challenge for years, acting as knowledge partners, investors, and technology developers, focusing on water storage, infrastructure, and renewably powered desalination solutions.
Recent events in the wider Middle East have underlined that water security in even the most prepared regions requires a combination of approaches. Strategic water storage – maintaining reserves that can sustain a population for weeks or months in the event of supply disruption – is one critical element. Diversifying water sources, including through wastewater reuse and groundwater management, reduces over-reliance on any single technology or infrastructure. Investing in smaller, more distributed water production systems, including renewable-energy-powered desalination, can reduce the vulnerability associated with a few large centralised facilities.
Strategic underground water storage in Abu Dhabi
The Netherlands has built considerable expertise in water challenges that require both technical depth and institutional collaboration. Across the wider Middle East, Dutch organisations have contributed to collaborative initiatives that strengthen the resilience of drinking water systems, from underground storage and large-scale supply infrastructure to distributed renewable-powered desalination.
The most notable example is the Liwa Strategic Water Storage and Recovery project in Abu Dhabi. Commissioned by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, the project created one of the world’s largest underground drinking-water reserves, with a total capacity of approximately 26 million cubic metres, around 16 million of which can be safely recovered as potable water. This reserve is sufficient to supply the emirate for up to 90 days in the event of an emergency. The underlying principle is straightforward: desalinated water produced during normal operations is injected into a sandstone aquifer in the Liwa region for long-term storage and can be recovered when needed.
Dutch knowledge institute KWR Water Research Institute, together with cooperative WaterFocus and researchers from TU Delft, provided the hydrogeochemical expertise to assess the water quality of stored and recovered water. Their research established under which conditions water quality could be guaranteed during long-term storage and recovery, and directly informed the operational parameters of the full-scale installation., which was completed in 2017. The findings showed that with the right infiltration conditions, desalinated water can be stored underground and recovered safely within drinking water standards.
This type of underground buffer storage represents a form of water resilience that complements desalination. It ensures that even if surface infrastructure is disrupted, reserves remain available underground.
Dutch expertise supporting water resilience in the region
Dutch engagement in the region's water sector extends beyond Abu Dhabi. In the UAE, Dutch scale-up Desolenator developed and installed a solar thermal desalination plant at the Jebel Ali complex in Dubai, in partnership with Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA). The installation produces 25 cubic metres of drinking water per day from seawater using 100 percent solar energy, with no chemical inputs and no liquid waste discharge. The project, which won the ‘’Hybrid Project of the Year’’ award at the MESIA Solar Awards 2023, illustrates the potential of smaller, renewable-powered water production systems as a complement to large, centralised infrastructure.
While Gulf states have built large desalination capacity, water scarcity remains a broader challenge across the Middle East. In nations such as Jordan, ranked among the world's most water-scarce countries, renewable freshwater resources amount to less than 100 cubic metres per person per year, well below the internationally recognised threshold of 500 cubic metres. Here, the Dutch impact investor and public-private partnership, Invest International, supported the Aqaba–Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project with a €31 million grant. The project, currently under development, aims to desalinate water from the Red Sea and transport it 450 kilometres north to Amman, eventually supplying 300 million cubic metres annually to approximately four million people.
A long-term perspective on water security
Water security in the wider Middle East is a long-term challenge that predates current geopolitical tensions and will persist beyond them. The structural investments being made today, in storage capacity, supply diversification and institutional coordination, are the foundations on which durable water security can be built. Dutch organisations continue to contribute to that process as knowledge partners, working alongside regional governments, utilities and research institutions on solutions designed to last.
Read more about another desalination project in the Gulf-region.
