If carefully managed, rising rates of desalination may not harm the region’s marine ecosystems.

More than 2 billion people live in “water stressed” countries. These are territories where more than 25% of the available freshwater resources are withdrawn for human use each year.

Desalination – the process of removing salt from seawater – is increasingly being used to tackle water scarcity worldwide. Roughly 16,000 desalination plants now produce 35 trillion litres of freshwater annually. And Jordan, a country located north of the Red Sea, is planning a major desalination plant on the Gulf of Aqaba that will increase its desalination capacity from 4 billion to 350 billion litres each year.