Water Demand Management in the Middle East and North Africa Dr. Philipp Magiera, German Technical Cooperation, c/o GTZ office Amman, P.O. Box 926238, 11190 Amman, Jordan, email: philipp.magiera Suzan Taha, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, P.O. Box 2412, 5012 Amman, Jordan, email: suzan_taha Lothar Nolte, Ministry of Environment, Archivstraße 2, 30169 Hannover, Germany, email: Lothar.Nolte Abstract Water Demand Management (WDM) has been a topic of research and practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the last decade. The German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) adopted WDM in many of its projects in the region. In order to generate a recent status quo report on WDM that would help to customize GTZ’s measures in its partner countries, a questionnaire was devised and circulated. The results from nine MENA and Mediterranean countries were compiled and analysed. Focussing on the areas of consumption, pricing, awareness and efficiency, current developments and positive and negative trends become visible. With the available water resources in the MENA countries still largely allocated to irrigation use, focus needs to be put on how to balance the increasing drinking water demands in most countries with irrigation demands. Although politically sensitive, steps towards a shift from irrigation to domestic uses have to be undertaken especially in countries overusing their renewable water resources. All facets of WDM can be used to achieve that goal.