Political Conflicts in the Middle East Make the Regional Water Management Problems More Acute - Essay Example

Abstract Water has been the necessity of human right from the beginning of the world. It is not only used to drink but affects human life in a number of ways. In deserts, tribes used to live near water sources and their strength extensively depends upon the quantity they possess. For that purpose wars were fought among the tribes to get hold of maximum water resources. Today, issues are same but ways to communicate have differed a lot. Middle East is still deficient in water and Syria and Palestine are most affected nations. Although water crisis exists in this region from the beginning due to extensive dessert but today’s political conflicts in Middle East have made regional water management problems more acute. Therefore, this research is conducted to get insight into the water resources and conflicts of Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel and also to provide with the possible solutions provided by the concerned authorities. Introduction Middle East is known for world’s largest oil reserves which serve as one of the most important sources of revenue generation to these countries. In the meanwhile, these countries are facing extensive shortage of underground water1 which has resulted in extensive water crisis as a result of political conflicts in Middle East and has produced more acute water management problems. If we look onto the entire world’s water distribution, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are the scarcest regions in this regard. Figure 1: World's Water Distribution According to NASA’s newly generated report, twin gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite has released new images regarding water shortages in the areas of Middle East. It has been reported that two of the most important rivers, named Tigris and Euphrates, which are extensively responsible to cultivate Middle East region, are undergoing frightening water shortages. GRACE works on the calculation of gravitational pull based on water density present in the given region. The data received shows that Tigris and Euphrates have the second fastest rate of decrease in water storage level in the world. Reasons of extensive water loss in this region are given below2: Majority of water loss is as a result of reduction in ground water as a result of irrigation. During drought of 2007, ground water was extensively used for irrigation rather than river or lakes; which was not available. Extensive drilling of wells for water. Therefore, countries like Syria extensively depend upon desalinization of sea water to meet the water crisis but it has a number of negative impacts on the environment with an increase in boron and bromine compounds in the region, which are hazardous3. Before going into the depth of water crisis in Middle East, there is a need to first look at the political and social history of the region as well as water crisis in different eras. History of Water Crisis in Middle East Syria From years, Syria has been facing civil war which has resulted in the murder of thousands of people till date. Because of such depressing and unstable condition of the country, development tasks are unable to be processed timely. Water crisis is not a new addition to the current crisis list of Syria but it dates back to decades. This crisis is majorly due to the reduction in water levels in Tigris and Euphrates. Another reason behind this crisis is drought of 2007 which resulted in extensive destruction including loss of about 85% livestock and crop failure. Yet another important factor of Syrian water crisis lies in the unavailability of Golan Heights4. It firstly used to serve Syria, but afterwards, Israel occupied and took control over it. Now Golan Heights is serving one-third of the total Israel’s population. Syrian government is not having a proper water management system as a result of this considerable amount of water is wasted on agricultural lands. Firstly, there is no proper planning for planting crop that require least water rather than extensive cultivation of cotton and wheat. The excess wheat is not then saved for upcoming drought season but is exported and in tough times wheat is imported at very high prices. Also, inefficient irrigation system results in loss of water due to flooding and water leakages while being distributed5. Jordan Jordan stands at the tenth number in water scarcity in the world. This region is having much less ground water to be consumed. The most important rivers which serve this country are Jordan River and Yarmouk River which unfortunately pass through Syria and Israel before entering Jordan; therefore, only a small amount of water is left behind for Jordan. Also the climate change and repeated droughts have reduced the water level in ground to alarming depths. In order to overcoming this condition, Jordan has planned to install desalination plants in order to get red sea water desalinated and provided for the public6. Palestine Palestine is scarcest country in Middle East in terms of water availability due to Israel’s conflict. All of the water resources are occupied by the Israel and ground water is also not available due to the destruction in Gaza sector7. This destruction has ruined the water and sanitation infrastructure and has resulted in low quality water available. Israel Israel is provided with a number of natural water resources among them most important are Lake Kinneret, coastal aquifer and mountain aquifers. There are other small resources as well which are spread all around the country. Even then Israel was facing critical water crisis from last few decades. Reason behind this crisis was man-made as well as natural. Consecutive four years of drought ruined Israel’s water management system. Meanwhile, no new policy was introduced to overcome water deficit which resulted in increased crisis and Israel’s economy was at the verge of destruction, then country’s management planned to overcome this situation. For that purpose a number of renewable water resources were protected. Also, water distribution from north of the country was made possible to feed south which was deficient in water, through National Water Carrier. Israel has followed low volume irrigation system and also the slogan “Don’t waste a drop” was followed by each and every Israeli8. In short, the region of Middle East is a dessert and has always been limited in terms of availability of water. Along this fact, Middle East has also been under the influence of unsustainability due to wars which resulted in more critical condition of this region. This fact really disturbed the social and economic life in this region. Economic Effects of Water Crisis Water is a basic necessity of a nation to live and survive and helps in keeping the development cycle running. If a nation is facing water crisis then its economy drops rapidly. Although Middle east is rich in oil and countries in this region must have strong economy but terrible water crisis has led the economy of this region down. Here is the detailed overview of economic position and strategies of Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Syria Water crisis in Syria is majorly observed due to inefficient water distribution system in agriculture as well as domestic sector. Also intensive production of cotton and wheat in this sector has resulted in rapid straining of water resources. Also because of internal displacement of people, partially due to civil war and partially due to drought, water crisis has increased beyond limits. Some economists are also having the opinion that this water crisis also roots in the increased economic demands of the country. Before the civil war, the country was developing and generating revenue from a number of resources9. But civil war destroyed macro-economics of the country badly. Therefore, the only thing with which economy of Syria could be managed to some extent was agriculture. But in Syria flooding system is used to water the lands rather than drip irrigation system which is 30 to 40 % more efficient and consumes less water.10 Jordan Jordan is having one of the strong economies in the region of Middle East. It is termed as an emerging market economy in terms of GDP as well as revenue generation. From 1999 to 2009, Jordan has gone through a boom in the history and it was only because of the liberal economic market proposed by the King Abdulla II. Therefore, Jordan was successfully able to manage a strong banking system which resulted in attracting a number of potential investors around the world to come there and invest in projects. From that time Jordan was not only an oil producing country but it does have its own developing economy as well11. But because of the drought its economy was affected too much. Before that Jordan was enjoying free trade with a number of countries including USA, Canada and Singapore. But as soon as water crisis was observed, economy was destroyed because of extensive destruction of agricultural resources and a number of refugees migrating from Syria. These refugees put burden on country’s government in terms of food and water and as a result economic strategy of the country was no more stable. Palestine Palestine is under Israel’s control from many decades. It has been a disputed territory and most of the land is now taken by the Israeli’s. Most important, rather only prominent area of Palestine is Gaza which is also under severe water crisis. Due to Israel’s occupation, Palestine has been destroyed and Palestinians are deprived of quality water. Therefore, economy of the country has badly affected. Although because of Israel-Palestine conflict, Palestine lacks good economy and development and lack of water has increased this issue. People are not able to meet their daily water needs then how can they run their businesses and agriculture with such scarcity of water? Good economies are run by healthy citizens. Palestinians are forced to use and drink low quality water high in nitrate and chloride content. This results in fatal diseases in children as well as adults. Children are badly affected by the parasitic infections, diarrhea, kidney failures due to high chloride contents, neurological disorders and heart diseases and much more12. Israel Israel is one of the strongest countries in Middle East in terms of economic expansion. Israeli people are much hard-working and know to unite as a nation on even minor issues. Similarly when the Israel was facing water crisis due to drought and climate change, the economy of country was shattered but soon the government planned to reserve water resources by introducing drip irrigation and desalinization plants13. Hence Israel managed to overcome economy loss. Water crisis of this region has put the economy of the region in unstable situation. Due to continuous wars and unstable conditions, business market has been ruined. This is not only because of water crisis but also because of the political situation of the region. Political Effects of water Crisis Water and land have been two major sources of conflict among nations around the world. Whenever a nation faces water crisis its political situation does not remains stable but it is always having critical relations with the countries sharing water resources. Also economics of a country strongly depends upon the political stability of a country and strong relation among neighbors, sharing border with each other. Syria is termed as the second hottest hotspot on the earth because of water depletion and can easily be observed in the below image produced by NASA14. As far as political relations of Syria with neighboring countries are concerned, one should know that Syria lies in a politically unstable region in which wars on water were much common in the history. Now armored wars have been replaced by the cold wars but relations have not been improved. Turkey and Israel majorly share Tigris and Euphrates with Syria and collect most of the water in their reservoirs. Hence, Syria remains deficient in water besides having two largest rivers of the region. Therefore, Syria is not having good relation with these two countries15. Jordan and Tigris-Euphrates rivers have remained the sources of conflict from centuries among Arabs and Jewish communities for draining water. The Jordan River basin constitutes four Arab and one Jewish country. The Arab countries that are present in Jordan basin are Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon. In the times of Ottoman Empire, empire was responsible to cover up the disputes and empire engineers were sent to the Jordan basin to calculate and distribute water allocations along with energy production strategies. But with the collapse of Ottoman Empire, water dispute raised again. After that League of Nations took hold of the water distribution under the mandate of British and French. Strict boundaries were drawn to separate the territories those were united in Ottoman Empire. Palestine and Jordan were bordered according to British mandate and Lebanon and Syria were bordered according to French Mandate. A number of water distribution plans were developed to resolve water crisis in this area and to overcome water deficiency. A Jewish engineer proposed a plan for the utilization of the water of Jordan River among contributing countries and suggested that the Yarmouk River, a tributary of Jordan, must be used for power generation purposes. This plan was successfully sanctioned and the engineer was awarded for it. After that one soil scientist and two engineers supported the fact that Jordan River must majorly serve the Palestinian areas. Soon after that with the intrusion of America, Jewish community in Palestine proposed a map of a separate Jew state independent from Palestine16. This resulted in a war among Arab and Jewish states because Arabs were not of the opinion to have a Jewish state among them and refused to accept it as a nation. In 1947 Israel was announced as a separate nation. After that Israel was having frequent wars with Syria and Jordan till 1950. This resulted in the implication of cease fire among these countries. Above is the representation of cease fire line among these countries. From then there have been cold war among these nations on water dispute and different treaties have been signed to overcome water crisis. Conclusion Water crisis in Middle East has been found to be related to a series of factors. The initiatives taken by the region’s governments, as explained above, can be characterized as effective but they should be periodically updated so that they can secure the adequacy of the water available for local populations. A key finding of this study is the following: governments across Middle East have used different approaches for managing problems related to water resources. Certain countries, like Syria and Palestine, rely on negotiations while others, such as Israel and Jordan, focus on projects that can increase the independency of country in terms of water. In other words, for certain countries self-adequacy is critical when referring to water while for others the sharing of existing water resources is preferred, mostly because they prefer to avoid a conflict that could harm their relationship with neighboring states. In any case, the water crisis in Middle East seems to be difficult to be terminated, since there is no agreement on the criteria on which the management of water region in the particular region should be based. The involvement of international organizations in the specific crisis is critical for avoiding the expansion of the conflict, a fact that could threaten the global security. Read More