An early 20th century photo of Egyptian farmers working the saqiya (water wheel); the fellahin have always managed their water at the mesqa level (photo: courtesy of the Cotton Museum, Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt) Water-scarce countries (shaded) are those with less than 1,000 cubic metres of renewable fresh water per person per year. Map sources: Peter Gleick, The World's Water 2000-2001, The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources: (published in the Population Reference Bureau's Finding the Balance: Population and Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa