For the past few years, water stress has been accelerated world widely but with more severity in the Middle East North African region (MENA). Simultaneously, the economic boom of countries like Morocco has triggered a faster water demand that more likely will not be coped with the resources that the country has within their boundaries and for this reason to import water is an imperative necessity.
Two technologies are being approached on this research to mitigate the water scarcity and therefore enhance a better economic performance of the country. These are the polyethylene bags filled with water to be towed from Turkey and the intercontinental water pipeline that will transport water from the Amazon river in Brazil.
A cost-bBenefit analysis was implemented to evaluate how feasible from an economic perspective were both technologies on a study case in Morocco, considering factors as the GDP growth due to water availability and the advantages that both approaches imply. The service provision and its characteristics of affordability, environmental protection and predictability were considered from a public perspective in the analysis.
The main findings after comparing the two technologies show that is cheaper to import water with the polyethylene bags but the source of the intercontinental water pipeline tends to be more reliable in terms of volume, but the risk for such infrastructure is higher when comes to target for terrorist attacks issues.
