Water management is becoming IMPERATIVE with the increasing concern about the effects and impacts of global warming. Many ancient civilizations, if not all, evolved and sustained around water resources by using intensive water-demanding irrigation techniques.

The MENA region which helped birth of earliest agricultural civilizations is now signaling one of the strongest warnings of its mortality. It lost huge amount of its water resources mostly because the groundwater pumped up and out of the region’s fragile aquifers for irrigation. Groundwater is/was being over-pumped, some massively so, at rates much higher than ability to recharge. Ongoing global warming poses further threats for additiknal severe decline in groundwater resources unless counter measures and mitigation actions can be done.

http://ensia.com/features/groundwater-wake-up/