WATER WARS
Article by Barry Robson
�Egypt recently threatened Ethiopia with war for withdrawing
too much water from the Upper Nile�
An almost unbelievable scenario will unfold in the early years of the new millennium.
On a planet that has three quarters of its surface covered by water,
by the year 2050, 70% of its inhabitants will not have enough of it.
WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE�
The Earth has 1400 million trillion litres of water; about 100 billion litres per head of population, more than enough one would imagine. Unfortunately 97% of it is saline and therefore undrinkable and much of the rest is either trapped in the polar caps or in deep underground aquifers, which are inaccessible. Less than 1 % of Earth's water therefore is available at the surface to the people who live on it. However, even this relatively tiny amount is unevenly distributed around the place, with some countries being very wet and others very dry. Worryingly, it is going to be the latter who�ll be responsible for most of the world's population increase in the next 50 years. In addition to this demographic burgeoning, more and more of this precious commodity today is either becoming polluted to the stage of undrinkability or sucked up at an alarming rate to satisfy the insatiable thirsts of agriculture and industry.
At the International Conference on Water and Sustainable Development hosted by France at UNESCO Headquarters in March 1998, the French President Jacques Chirac, warned of impending conflict. Speaking to government ministers and officials from over 80 countries he urged immediate action, saying that water consumption is increasing twice as fast as the world's population doubling every 20 years. 'At the beginning of the 21st century,' Chirac said 'the amount of fresh water available to each of the world's inhabitants will be one quarter of what is was in 1950 in Africa and one third of what it was in Asia and Latin America.' He went on to state that as the resource became more scarce it would be coveted more than land or oil and it will be over water that the most bitter conflicts of the near future would be fought.
Nine months later in an interview sponsored by the American Chemical Society, Klaus Toepfer, Director General of the UN Environmental Agency echoed President Chirac. He 'was completely convinced' there will be regional wars over the next fifty years. 'Everybody knows we are experiencing an unprecedented increase in population but not a corresponding increase in drinking water, so the result will be conflict.' Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the USSR and now president of the environmental watchdog group Green Cross International who was at the UNESCO conference stated, 'based on population projections alone some 33 countries are expected to develop chronic water shortages by 2025. Moreover, such projections do not take into account the possibility that global warming could eventually exacerbate even those serious water shortages.'
The problems of an expanding, thirsty population and other increasing demands for water are compounded in regions where the political situation is fraught and where this century there has been animosity between neighbouring ripararians (owners of river and lake banks).
Three notable examples are in areas along the rivers Nile, Jordan and TigrisEuphrates, a geographical location within a 1000 miles radius where at least nine wars have taken place in the postwar period, making it one of the most unstable places on the planet.
THE MIGHTY NILE
The Nile has been the basis of irrigation agriculture for 4000 years and was a source of wealth and power for dynasties of pharaohs and their priests. Not for nothing has ancient Egypt been called a hydraulic society. Contemporary Egypt is no different. This almost lifeordeath dependency of the modern state on the river was dramatically underscored in 1988 when the Nile dropped to its lowest point in a century, forcing the Egyptian government to use the reserves from Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan Dam.
The implications for the country were enormous: tourism earnings would come under threat because hotels would run short of drinking and sanitary water; oil export revenues would drop because supplies would have to be switched to producing energy to compensate for power normally generated by the Aswan dynamos. Most of all though, food production would be crippled because Egyptian agriculture is almost entirely dependent on the great river. The country imports nearly 50% of its food and an increase in these would further strain its economy. Reducing state subsidies on basics like bread and cooking oil is politically dangerous though, given the nationwide food riots that occurred when President Sadat complied with IMF austerity measures in February 1977.
The great paradox is that while regional water flow is falling, Egypt's needs are increasing because of the huge birth rate, making a population of 60 million at the turn of the millennium, doubling to 120 million by 2040. Egypt is the last in the queue of nations drawing from the river and has little or no real control over the actions of the seven countries upstream. Egypt and its immediate southern neighbour Sudan are reckoned by the year 2010 to require five billion cubic metres annually. Egypt has no real rainfall, about three inches a year and there has been drought in Sudan for the last five years, increasing its dependence on irrigation.
The countries to the south along the White Nile in the Great Rift Valley, bordering on Lake Victoria: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda will need similar amounts each to Sudan and Egypt. To the southeast, Ethiopia and Eritrea also struggle for the Nile's dwindling levels. Ethiopia controls 80% of the Nile's upstream flow making relations between Egypt and Ethiopia vital for future peace.
Egypt has a plan to solve its problems. Digging is about to commence on the building of canals that are going to siphon millions of gallons from the Nile and channel them into the Western Desert, transforming four million hectares of sand into highly fertile farmland. This will allow the country to expand from the narrow Nile strip where 60 million people are crowded into three percent of the land area. At Lake Nasser German engineers are constructing the world's largest pumping station which will drive 25 million cubic metres of water every day down a 50mile canal to selected sectors of desert.
Not everyone is convinced that this is a good idea. A recent New Scientist Magazine article states that a team from the US Congress has reported on the lack of feasibility and environmental impact studies and recommended that American companies do not invest. The World Bank is not happy either and has criticised the scheme, advising alternative proposals, but all to no avail the Egyptian government is determined to go ahead in spite of the political dangers. Friction with its southern neighbours who were not consulted is inevitable. Ironically, Egypt recently threatened Ethiopia with war for withdrawing too much water from the Upper Nile and now it is going to unilaterally increase its annual extraction. The future is fraught.
THE JORDAN
As rivers go, the Jordan is not amongst the world's giants. Its total length is only 200 miles and with the exception of small pockets of rapids during the rainy season, it is generally slow flowing and shallow. Its political and strategic significance is enormous though; its fame far outweighs its size. In an arid and volatile area like the Middle East the relatively small amount of water carried by the Jordan is allimportant. Thus for Israel it is the major source of the state's surface supply because it flows into Lake Tiberias, which provides over half of Israel's fresh water. Pipelines carry water from the lake into the national grid, which feeds Israeli cities and its vitally important agricultural sector. The pipes also flow towards the projects to make parts of the Negev Desert productive. Religious rites also form part of the backdrop. Baptismal facilities for Christian pilgrims have been provided where the Jordan flows out of Lake Tiberias.
What also contributes to the area's water supply is the River Yarmuk, which rises in Syria and forms part of the Israeli-Syrian border and then part of the Israeli-Jordanian border before it flows info the River Jordan, south of Lake Tiberias. The Jordanians rely on the Yarmuk for their irrigation canals and until the peace treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan in 1995 the area was literally a minefield. In 1990 King Hussein warned that water disputes could well lead to another ArabIsraeli war if things did not improve. Things did slightly for a while but the situation is now deteriorating. The Israelis and Syrians are about to embark on the final stage of peace negotiations that will involve handing back the pre 1967 land won by Israel in the Six Day War. The Syrians are demanding that the Israelis give back territories up to the shore of the Sea of Jordan, something which the Israelis will be loathe to do.
As Palestine slowly emerges as a nation and begins to develop on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip, its demands for water will increase, especially in the semiarid Gaza region, which can only draw on a single aquifer. The situation is now critical because heavy pumping has drawn seawater into the aquifer, which has also been polluted by overuse of pesticides and the lack of services to treat raw sewage. In the early 1990s the Israelis laid pipes to Gaza from their own reserves but this has only exacerbated the situation in the lands to the east of the Strip.
What is also of the uppermost importance is the position of the Yarkon/Taninim mountain aquifer that lies mostly beneath the West Bank, and the autonomous Palestinian Authority territory. Israel pumps most of this water, which supplies up to 40% of its requirements, to sustain its industrial, agricultural and population expansion and although it does supply the Palestinian areas adequately it refuses to release extra water for them to increase agricultural production. Matters are now reaching a head with the ongoing Palestinian drive to statehood and control of its land and resources.
There are two possible solutions to the growing tension over water in the Middle East. The first involves water rich Lebanon, now emerging from 30 years of bloody civil war. Its many rivers and underground systems are constantly refilled from the heavy rainfall and snow in the mountains. A national grid system, which would supply its neighbours, could make the Lebanon a lucrative living in the near future. However the enmities engendered by decades of internecine strife will take years to heal and get the various ethnic groups round the negotiating table.
TURKEY
The other one is Turkey with its plentiful resources. One idea put forward was to transport huge amounts of water in large, flexible barges or reinforced, floating plastic bags. The cost of the infrastructure and support facilities would be a prohibitive $300 million but in the longterm could solve Israel's (and also the Palestinians') problems.
This would, though, break a strategic tenet that Israel should never be dependent on anyone else for water, especially the government of a Muslim country with large Islamic political parties. Autarky in vital resources is a fundamental principle in a nation surrounded by countries that at one time wanted to destroy it
In the 1980s the Turkish Government under its premier Tugut Ozal championed the concept of a 'Peace Pipeline'. The proposal was to divert the flow from the rivers Seyhan and Ceyhan, which normally emptied into the Mediterranean, to serve both the Middle East and Gulf.
Two massive pipelines would bring water: one to Jordan and Syria and the other to Gulf states Although the political and strategic problems were immense (not to mention the cost in today's prices of $30 billion) the idea is still not dead but certainly was dealt a blow when its potential vulnerability to attack was shown by the blowing up of Kuwaiti oilfields by Iraqi troops during the Gulf War.
EMBROILMENT
Turkey itself is embroiled with its immediate neighbours, Syria and Iraq, about the
control of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Although it is well endowed with water in the north, the southeast region of Anatolia suffers from frequent water shortages. To alleviate this problem, Turkey in 1983 started the southeast Anatolia Development Project, known generally by its Turkish acronym GAP It was to be a series of 13 subprojects comprising of dams and irrigation systems, including the giant Ataturk Dam.
The project is longterm and according to some analysts, could take up to 50 years to complete. In the short term, it has raised the hackles of Syria and Iraq and exacerbated the Kurdish problem in Anatolia. The Euphrates originates in Turkey and flows through Syria and then Iraq. The Tigris starts from Lake Hazar and for 25 miles is actually the TurkishSyrian border. Both the Tigris and Euphrates join together in Iraq to become the ShattalArab Waterway, which flows into the Persian Gulf.
GAP has raised Syrian and Iraqi worries that the availability of water for their own industrial and agricultural needs will be stifled, but what is worse is that the system of dams will make them totally dependent on the Turks upstream, a future which is anathema to both of them. Since the 1970s relations between all three of them have been dangerously bad. In 1975 Iraq and Syria were on the brink of war over Syria's reduction of the Euphrates' flow in order to fill the AthThawra Dam lake. In the 1980s Turkey 'uncovered an alleged Syrian plot to blow up the Euphrates Dam'. And in 1987 Turkey threatened to cut Syria's water supply if it didn't stop supporting the Kurdish rebels.
In 1989, Syrian MIG's on a 'training mission' shot down an unarmed Turkish survey plane killing five. Apparently the plane was mapping border areas where the Turks might extract water. To make matters worse, Turkey and Syria aided the Western Coalition in the Gulf War against Iraq and Syria still tacitly supports the Kurdish separatists in their campaign for autonomy against Turkey. A month after the shooting down incident, Turkey announced that in November 1989 it would halt the flow of the Euphrates for one month in order to fill the lake behind the Ataturk dam. This infuriated the Syrians who protested vehemently. In the last ten years the ongoing GAP project has been a constant thorn in the side of SyrianTurkish rapprochement.
The latest uproar is being caused by the construction of the Ilisu Dam which will almost certainly wipe out one of the most important archaeological sites in that part of the world. The fortress of Hasankeyf above the Tigris will be engulfed as the lake fills up. This has outraged the local Kurdish population who already chafe over the fact that their language and culture are not recognised by Ankara. Although it is claimed that the multibillion pound project, incidentally financially supported by the Blair government, will bring an economic boost to a parched area with high unemployment, the loss of Hasankeyf has been likened to the wanton destruction of Pompeii or the Taj Mahal,
In the mid 1980s the CIA estimated that there were at least ten places in the world where war could break out over water disputes and most of them were in the regions discussed above. In her new book Pillar of Sand, Sandra Postel, Director of Amherst University's Global Water Policy Project warns that 'Time is of the essence.' The world needs either to double water output in the next 50 years or make the present production level be twice as efficient. In the next quarter century we may be identifying countries as either 'waterrich' or 'waterpoor', 'upstream' or 'downstream' rather than developed or underdeveloped. Water will become as important as, if not more, than oil.
SOLUTIONS
In recent years a lot of interest has been shown in discovering ways to either claim fresh water from the sea or utilise present stocks more efficiently. Desalinisation, the conversion of seawater to fresh and drinking water has many proponents, especially in arid countries. Several different processes including distillation, electrodialysis, reverse osmosis and even directfreeze evaporation have been developed. Although all of these techniques have proved successful the cost of treating seawater is much higher than that for treating slightly brackish or polluted fresh water. The problem is that in order to make it costeffective nuclear power is the most often cited energy source for types of desalination processes, but putting nuclear power stations in places where war has been the norm for the last 50 years, is tempting fate.
According to Sandra Postel, moving from large public irrigation projects to more flexible medium or smallscale efforts is an important step in making water supply and use more efficient. Other steps include giving access to more intermediate technology, information and credit facilities are vital factors in helping small farmers cope with the crisis. Education on how to utilise current stocks further, such as designing evaporation proof irrigation channels, will go a long way to preventing future shortages; capturing more fresh water before it sinks, reducing water loss through evaporation and seepage, growing crops that are salt resistant or thrive in brackish water, People as consumers can also play their part by learning how not to eat so much water intensive food such as pork or grain.
The technical solutions to solve future water crises are there according to scientists; but is the political will amongst old enemies or the discipline not to be so profligate amongst populations becoming used to a steady and uninterrupted flow of water? The next 25 years will tell us.
REFERENCES
Peter Gleik 'Water in Crisis.' OUP 1999
Robert McKie 'Water, wafer everywhere.' Observer Newspaper, 19th December 1999
Laura Orlando 'Wringing out the World' Dollars and Sense Magazine, August 1999
Sandra Postel 'Pillar of Sand' W. W. Norton 1999
Joyce R. Stan 'Wafer Wars.' Foreign Policy 82, 1991
Extracted from �The Unopened Files� #15, April/May 2000,
a UK published magazine available from
Quest Publications,
Lloyds Bank Chambers, West Street, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, LS29 9DW, England.
Editor: Mark Ian Birdsall.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
Communist Tyrant Josef Stalin
(Listen anytime to Votefraud vs Honest Elections "crash course" radio show over the internet at www.sightings.com in the archives, April 3rd, 2000 show, Jeff Rense host, Jim Condit Jr. guest)
