evidence: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA)* is the most water-scarce region of the world. Home to 6.3 percent of the world’s population, the region contains only 1.4 percent of the world’s renewable fresh water. As population pressures in the region increase, the demand for water resources rises. This brief examines the challenges of meeting this demand given scarce water resources. Country strategies to deal with water shortages depend on local conditions, including topography, the extent of water scarcity, available financial resources, and technical and institutional capacity. Overall, developing a mix of strategies that increase supply, manage demand, and reduce long-term pressures on water is urgent more than ever before, as population pressures in the region continue to increase. [...] Water-Scarce Countries in the Middle East and North Africa [...] MENA’s population more than doubled between 1970 and 2001, rising from 173 million people to 386 million people and reducing the average amount of fresh water available per capita by more than half, to 1,640 cubic meters per person per year (see Table 1). But the regional average masks the severity of freshwater scarcity in some countries: Three-quarters of MENA’s available fresh water is located in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The average amount of renewable fresh water available in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen is already below 250 cubic meters per person per year.