An Expert Group Meeting was organized in Brussels on 23-24 June 2014 with the aim to discuss and formulate voluntary policy options and measures for sustainable seawater desalination in the Mediterranean Region. 30 experts from 9 South Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia) and from International relevant organizations participated actively in the meeting and reviewed a draft policy brief to be finalized and published soon.

To set the appropriate context for elaborating on the vision the national and international experts were invited first to analyze and validate the findings of a recent SWIM-SM assessment of cumulative environmental impacts of desalination in the Region.

In particular, the EGM discussed the current seawater desalination production capacities of South Mediterranean countries and other major European producers, the technology in use, cumulative production capacity, and uses of desalinated water in the Mediterranean region. This was followed by deliberation on prospects of desalination to project the cumulative production capacity of seawater desalination in the Region until the year 2030.

The experts also addressed all environmental aspects associated with production of desalinated water including masses of pollutants discharged on a daily and yearly basis in the brine reject to the near-shores of the Mediterranean and volume of CO₂ currently discharged and the projected emissions by the year 2030.The participants finally addressed the potential impacts, fate, transport, transformation, bioaccumulation and biomagnification of various pollutants in the nears-shore marine environment of the Mediterranean.

In a second phase the discussion focused on the modalities for assessing country needs, with particular attention to recommended measures and policy options for communities to undertake before opting on seawater desalination after exhausting all water saving and demand management options. In this context countries were also invited to present a review of national desalination policies and strategies to bridge the demand-supply gap in the South Mediterranean countries, with a focus on associated environmental aspects.

Based on the deliberations made, the experts then discussed the policy options that might be considered by Mediterranean countries when opting to desalination to fill the water demand supply gaps of their coastal communities without harming the marine environment of the Mediterranean.

The policy options document will be amended according to comments made by national experts and circulated for final review before being disseminated.

Further activities related to desalination that have been already implemented in the framework of SWIM-SM and whose results have contributed to the discussions of the EGM meeting include:

1. A review of the Best Available Technologies (BAT) suitable for countries of the region with a special focus on desalination for rural areas (May 2012).

2. An Expert Group Meeting (June 2012)to review, discuss and validate the findings of SWIM-SM assessment on the subject, to advise SWIM-SM on state-of-the art development in the field of desalination using renewable energy systems and to discuss with SWIM-SM team and National desalination experts regional orientation towards desalination in addition to future activities in support of promoting sustainable desalination in the region.

3. A report on the"Economic considerations for planning desalination in South Mediterranean Countries” (August 2012).

4. A capacity development workshop on modeling the cost of desalination, in collaboration with MEDRC, to predict the cost of desalination based on scale and technologies used (June 2013).