1 Water Demand Management as Governance: Lessons from the Middle East and South Africa David B. Brooks* and Sarah Wolfe** * Director of Research, Friends of the Earth Canada, 206-260 St. Patrick Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 5K5 E-mail: dbrooks@foecanada.org ** Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography, Hutt Building, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1 E-mail: sawolfe@uoguelph.ca ABSTRACT Reviews of water demand management in the Middle East and in South Africa, two of the most water-challenged areas of the world, show that water demand management is occur- ring in almost all nations, but without the breadth or strength that is required by their increasingly difficult water situation. It is not absent as a policy goal, but it remains sec- ondary to supply management and very much secondary to reducing government expendi- tures. There is therefore great scope for further analytical work on water demand manage- ment and even greater scope for work on ways to promote its adoption. What is needed above all is to treat water demand management not just as a technology to apply or a pro- gram to deliver but as a form of governance – indeed, a form that is as critical to improving social, economic and environmental conditions as it is to saving water. Application of this governance concept to Israel and Palestine shows the need for new institutions for water demand management, and that both existing and new policies need to be formulated in order for water demand management to play the role that it should. Keywords: Governance; Israel; Palestine; South Africa; water conservation; water demand management 1.1 Introduction Natural resources such as water do not determine socio- economic development; on the contrary, socio-eco- nomic development determines water management options (Allan 2002). It is not very radical to urge that water demand man- agement (WDM) become a major option for resolv- ing Israeli-Palestinian water conflicts. It is rather more radical to claim, as we do, that WDM should be the major option, and that as well as moving both nations toward sustainable water policies, it can also help re- solve conflicts between them. The main purpose of this article is to provide evidence in support of that position. Further, we maintain that, if WDM can play so large a role in Israel and Palestine, it can do so an- ywhere in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In their natural endowments, Israel and Palestine fall near the middle of the regional spectrum – greater re- newable supplies of fresh water than many MENA na- tions but less than others. As elsewhere in the region, Israel and Palestine also exhibit sharp intra-national variations – from north to south in Israel, and be- tween the West Bank and Gaza in Palestine. Again as elsewhere in the region, they are both using fresh wa- ter unsustainably – mining aquifers, degrading water courses, and, in the case of Israel, using water that is not likely to be under Israeli control after a peace set-