DOHA: As part of efforts to achieve sustainable development, Qatar treated about 86 percent of its urban wastewater in 2012, latest official figures show.
According to the Qatar-Social Statistics 2003-2012 report, most water used in urban settlements (in 2012) was treated in wastewater treatment plants before discharge or re-use as treated sewage effluent (TSE).
A significant amount of TSE is being used for irrigation, and recently the government has made it mandatory for district cooling plants to use it to replace fresh water, which can be used only as backup source.
Qatar’s main source of water is sea which comes through desalination plants. Owing to rapid growth in population (largely due to influx of foreign workers), demand for water has increase manifold. As a result, there was significant increase in water production from 80m cubic metres (mcm) per year in 1990 to 437m mcm in 2012 — an average growth of 8 percent per year. Since 2004, wastewater treatment infrastructure has shown an increasing trend in terms of wastewater treatment capacity. In 2004, about 54,000 mcm of urban wastewater could be treated daily. In 2012, infrastructure for treatment of 337,000 mcm urban wastewater per day was available.
The total protected area has increased from 58.15sqkm in 2005 to 3,463.17sqkm in 2011. Since 2009, there are also 721sqkm of protected marine area (AI Thakhira and Khor AI Odaid).
Indicators show that in 2011 23.5 percent of land area was designated protected areas.
Among other initiatives to help protect the environment is consumption of substances that deplete the ozone layer in terms of ozone depleting potential (ODP tons). In compliance with the Montreal Protocol, Qatar is committed to phasing out consumption of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and substituting it with substances with lower ODP tons.
Consumption of ozone depleting substances (in terms of ODP tons) shows a significant downwards trend since 2003 (115.9 ODP tons) until 2007 (36.6). Since 2007, Qatar has witnessed increasing consumption, mainly due to the substitute HCFC-22.
Consumption of halons was phased out in 2003 and CFCs in 2008. Since 2009, hydro chlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs-22) and HFC-134a are the only ozone depleting substances still consumed in Qatar (which have a low ODP but a very high global warming potential).The Peninsula
