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dam-l Middle east water tensions/LS
This isn't about southern Africa, but it could be... Sorry for cross postings.
> WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1999
>
>WORLD, MIDDLE EAST
>REPORT: WATER
>
>What could float - or
>sink - peacemaking
>
>Scott Peterson
>Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
>
> AMMAN, JORDAN
>
> With Israel's
> new Prime
> Minister Ehud
> Barak
> promising to
> restart peace
> with the
> Palestinians and
> Syria, the issue
> of water - often
> forgotten by
>outsiders, but all-important in the
>parched Holy Land - will take center
>stage.
>
>After all, destroying an enemy's water
>and its sources has been a strategic aim in
>every war fought in the Mideast during
>the past two generations. And severe
>water shortages here - the Middle East is
>experiencing its driest spell in 50 years -
>could complicate any talks.
>
>"If we solve every other problem in the
>Middle East but do not satisfactorily
>resolve the water problem, our region
>will explode," once warned the late
>Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, one
>of the architects of the Mideast peace
>process.
>
>As crops shrivel, river and reservoir
>levels drop, and new dams and
>competing claims loom, experts are
>striving to cope with dwindling water
>resources.
>
>"The Malthusian specter is real in the
>Middle East," says Thomas Stauffer, a
>Washington-based Mideast water and
>energy analyst. Water resources are
>"fully utilized," while the population
>continues to grow - ingredients the
>economist Malthus predicted would lead
>to conflict. "The consequences are
>profound. Scarcity means conflict, so oil
>wars are less likely than water wars."
>
>His concerns are echoed by the results of
>a two-year study carried out by the US
>National Academy of Sciences alongside
>Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian water
>experts.
>
> "Fresh-water
> supplies in
> the Middle
> East now
> are barely
> sufficient
> to maintain
> a quality
> standard of
> living,"
> said Gilbert
> White, a
> University
> of
> Colorado
> geographer
> who led the
> team.
> Increasing
> water use
>across the largely arid region, the team
>found, guarantees that "the area's
>inhabitants will almost assuredly live
>under conditions of significant water
>stress in the near future."
>
>Already, at least 400 million people live
>in regions with severe water shortages.
>Within 50 years, that figure is expected
>to soar to 4 billion. There is no more
>water on the planet than there was 2,000
>years ago, when the population was just
>3 percent what it is today. "Our concerns
>about global warming are trivial
>compared to the issues that we face over
>water," a senior official of NASA's Earth
>Sciences Directorate has said.
>
>Headwaters of strife
>
>Among the first to recognize that water
>and its sources were strategic assets to
>fight for - or to target - were the Zionist
>Jews who created Israel in 1948. As
>early as 1919, they claimed that the
>"minimum requirements" for a viable
>Jewish state were "dependent" on
>controlling the headwaters of the Jordan
>River, Mt. Hermon on the Golan
>Heights, and Lebanon's Litani River. In
>the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israeli troops
>captured most of those sources, and in
>1978 and 1982 made bids to control the
>Litani.
>
>Israel for decades has been pumping 80
>percent of the water from the aquifer that
>was mostly under the occupied West
>Bank, and Palestinians have been
>prohibited from drilling any new wells
>themselves. Today fully half of Israel's
>water supply comes from territory
>captured in 1967.
>
>"That represents $1 billion a year in
>opportunity costs for Israel," says Mr.
>Stauffer. "That is 1 billion reasons why it
>is a casus belli [pretext for war]."
>
>The imbalance has been acute, with
>Israelis using many times more water
>than Palestinians in the territories. In one
>reported example, Hebron water officials
>say that the 5,000 Israeli settlers in the
>Hebron region receive 17,000 cubic
>meters of water a day, while the 400,000
>Palestinians in the city get a total of just
>7,000 cubic meters.
>
>"The problem of dealing with water is
>that everyone is in crisis now," says
>Gershon Baskin, the head of the
>Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
>Information in Bethlehem, which
>presented a policy paper to Mr. Barak
>spelling out how being "generous" on the
>water issue will "pay off for Israel
>10-fold."
>
>"I'm concerned that pressure of the
>drought could affect negotiators, so that
>they might miss the forest for the trees
>and not be forthcoming on water," he
>says.
>
>Handing back the Golan is a tougher
>case: "That's the drinking water for
>Israel," Mr. Baskin says. "It's
>impossible to give up the Golan without
>a water rights deal with Syria."
>
>The case of Jordan
>
>Already at peace with Israel is Jordan,
>which - lacking both water and cash to
>fund alternatives - is among the 10 most
>water-poor nations on earth. Water
>shortages here are chronic, with running
>water in the capital sometimes limited to
>one day per week. Other desert nations
>like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,
>which have even less water, can turn
>their "oil into water" by paying the high
>costs of desalination plants.
>
>A series of joint water measures are part
>of Jordan's peace deal with Israel, and
>Syria is also providing water to Jordan.
>Part of the problem is that half Jordan's
>water is "unaccounted for," 60 percent of
>that through system leaks.
>
>The government is now moving to curb
>overuse of aquifers, and a big fossil
>water deposit has not yet been tapped.
>Donors - especially the United States
>Agency for International Development -
>are making vigorous efforts to
>rehabilitate the water infrastructure. The
>$60 million USAID program also
>rehabilitates springs and wells that will
>provide for 400,000 people.
>
>For thirsty Jordan, this is good news.
>But regionwide, high birthrates mean that
>renewable water resources have dropped
>precipitously. Jordan is the hardest hit.
>In 1960, each Jordanian had available
>529 cubic meters of water. By 1990, that
>figure had halved to 224 cm. The
>estimate for the year 2025 is just 91 cm
>per person.
>
>"Now we are shouting that we have little
>water, at 170 cubic meters this year,"
>says a Jordanian water engineer.
>"Imagine: what will we do when we have
>only half of that amount?"
>
>The Euphrates and Tigris
>
>The same question is being asked in
>Syria and Iraq, downstream from the
>source in Turkey of the Euphrates and
>Tigris Rivers. The source of tension has
>been Turkey's massive Southeast
>Anatolian Development Project (GAP), a
>$32 billion network of 22-dams and 19
>hydroelectric projects that, at a cost of
>$32 billion, is designed to bring
>electricity and irrigation water to the poor
>southeast and cover one-fourth of
>Turkey's future electricity needs.
>
>But Syria and Iraq are watching their
>water levels drop. By one account, the
>flow from the Euphrates has been cut in
>half since the 1970s. This dip has made
>Iraq's portion of water, year by year,
>increasingly salty.
>
>When the largest piece of the puzzle, the
>Ataturk Dam was being built in 1984,
>Syria responded by supporting Kurdish
>rebels of the Kurdistan Worker's Party to
>show its distaste. Turkey has asserted the
>right to use its waters as it pleased. And
>in 1990 there was reportedly high-level
>talk about cutting off Iraq's flow of water
>to punish Baghdad for invading Kuwait.
>
>"Water is a weapon," the Ataturk Dam
>site supervisor has declared. "We can
>stop the flow of water into Syria and Iraq
>for up to eight months without
>overflowing our dams, in order to
>regulate the Arab's political behavior."
>
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>
> The URL for this page is:
>http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/07/14/fp1s3-csm.shtml
>
> For further information:
>
> Water Wars in the Middle East
> Water, Land, People, Conflict
> Water (Problems in the Middle
> East)
> The Water Conflicts in the
> Middle East from a Palestinian
> Perspective
>
>
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>
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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