Nicosia (Cyprus): Middle East It is warming twice the global average and this summer many countries like Kuwait, Oman, Iran, United Arab Emirates And Saudi Arabia recorded temperatures exceeding 50 °C (122 Fahrenheit), as forests burn, and severe droughts become more and more frequent. There is strong evidence that it will be the Middle East region that climate change will hit hardest.
Many rivers in the Middle East have lost almost half of their annual flow in the past fifty years.
During the same period, the surface area of many lakes has decreased significantly. One case is Lake Urmia in Iran, which has halved in size—from 5,400 square kilometers to 2,500 square kilometers in the 1990s—partly due to the construction of dams in its basin, which reduced the flow of water into the lake and Partly due to climate change.
The amount of water per capita across the Middle East is decreasing every year, and many people fear that the old adage that “the wars of the future will be fought for water rather than oil” will soon turn into a frightening reality. can become. Area.
Amro Selim, Director of the Elmoustakbal Organization for Strategic Studies also points out “Most countries in the Middle East region share at least one groundwater reservoir with their neighbors, which highlights the importance of cooperative management of shared water resources. This also indicates that controlling the availability of water resources and access to water will be a major cause of conflicts and disputes that are likely to occur in the region in the near future.”
Water disputes are frequent in the Middle East, as many of the region’s rivers and lakes are shared by two or more countries. Building dams in one country significantly reduces the amount of water available to neighboring countries, reducing the area available for irrigated agriculture, threatening the livelihoods of their citizens.
An example of this is the construction of the grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia on the Nile, which reduced the flow in Egypt by more than 25 percent. President of Egypt Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has threatened military action unless ground rules for filling the dam are agreed. Sisi openly declared that the dam was “a matter of life and death” for Egypt.
In addition, the Damascus regime took advantage of its support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), considered an unstoppable enemy by Turkey, to force Ankara—which has built several dams on the Euphrates River—with Syria. To share the water of.
It should be noted that some experts predict that, due to global warming, the Tigris and Euphrates will “disappear this century,” making a clash over what remains even more fascinating.
Sagatom Saha, an independent energy policy analyst, drew attention in an article to the fact that “almost every country in the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, shares water resources with a neighbor, and some have their own freshwater. What is played out between Egypt and Sudan and between Turkey and Syria may become a frequent feature of Middle Eastern politics as water becomes even more scarce…. more economical desalination and less water-intensive agriculture Methods can help divorce food and health consequences from warming. Climate change will happen in decades, but policies adopted today will determine what role it will play in the Middle East. Policymakers don’t need to leave it to fate. ”
The FAO reported that water scarcity would cause an estimated economic loss of 6 to 14 percent of the GDP of Middle East countries by 2050—the most significant projected loss to GDP due to water scarcity in the world.
Hundreds of citizens in southern Iran, especially in the province of Khuzestan, where temperatures near 50 degrees Celsius, took to the streets to protest the severe water shortage that the government in Tehran has failed to deal with. Eight protesters were killed in violent clashes with security forces. Protests were also held in southern Iraq over water shortages, but no casualties were reported.
Water crises have been ranked in the top five of the World Economic Forum’s global risk list almost every year since 2012. The phenomenon of “water refugees” has made its appearance, as the population has been displaced due to lack of water. In 2017, severe drought contributed to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, when 20 million people in Africa and the Middle East were forced to leave their homes due to food shortages and conflict.
As the climate crisis intensifies, the question that needs to be asked is whether there are ways in which conflicts over water shortages between neighboring countries can be avoided. Here are some suggestions:
Daniel Rosenfeld, Professor in the Program for Atmospheric Sciences at The Hebrew University, says: “As the climate continues to warm and water becomes scarce, part of the solution in the Middle East will include reducing water use in agriculture It could also mean what kind of foods farmers grow and export. For example, in Israel, we used to grow a lot of oranges, but at some point, we realized that we were exporting water. doing what we don’t have.” He also suggested that crops could be engineered to be more resilient to heat and dryness.
Journalist Sandy Milnein pointed out in a recent article: “Much can be done by freeing up more water for use through techniques such as seawater desalination. Saudi Arabia currently produces 50 percent of its water through this process.” meets the needs.”grayRecycling, or wastewater, may also provide a low-cost, easy-to-implement alternative that could help farming communities affected by drought. An assessment of global desalination and wastewater treatment predicted that These could reduce the proportion of the increase in capacity. From 40 percent to 14 percent of the global population under severe water scarcity.”
Many rivers in the Middle East have lost almost half of their annual flow in the past fifty years.
During the same period, the surface area of many lakes has decreased significantly. One case is Lake Urmia in Iran, which has halved in size—from 5,400 square kilometers to 2,500 square kilometers in the 1990s—partly due to the construction of dams in its basin, which reduced the flow of water into the lake and Partly due to climate change.
The amount of water per capita across the Middle East is decreasing every year, and many people fear that the old adage that “the wars of the future will be fought for water rather than oil” will soon turn into a frightening reality. can become. Area.
Amro Selim, Director of the Elmoustakbal Organization for Strategic Studies also points out “Most countries in the Middle East region share at least one groundwater reservoir with their neighbors, which highlights the importance of cooperative management of shared water resources. This also indicates that controlling the availability of water resources and access to water will be a major cause of conflicts and disputes that are likely to occur in the region in the near future.”
Water disputes are frequent in the Middle East, as many of the region’s rivers and lakes are shared by two or more countries. Building dams in one country significantly reduces the amount of water available to neighboring countries, reducing the area available for irrigated agriculture, threatening the livelihoods of their citizens.
An example of this is the construction of the grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia on the Nile, which reduced the flow in Egypt by more than 25 percent. President of Egypt Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has threatened military action unless ground rules for filling the dam are agreed. Sisi openly declared that the dam was “a matter of life and death” for Egypt.
In addition, the Damascus regime took advantage of its support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), considered an unstoppable enemy by Turkey, to force Ankara—which has built several dams on the Euphrates River—with Syria. To share the water of.
It should be noted that some experts predict that, due to global warming, the Tigris and Euphrates will “disappear this century,” making a clash over what remains even more fascinating.
Sagatom Saha, an independent energy policy analyst, drew attention in an article to the fact that “almost every country in the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, shares water resources with a neighbor, and some have their own freshwater. What is played out between Egypt and Sudan and between Turkey and Syria may become a frequent feature of Middle Eastern politics as water becomes even more scarce…. more economical desalination and less water-intensive agriculture Methods can help divorce food and health consequences from warming. Climate change will happen in decades, but policies adopted today will determine what role it will play in the Middle East. Policymakers don’t need to leave it to fate. ”
The FAO reported that water scarcity would cause an estimated economic loss of 6 to 14 percent of the GDP of Middle East countries by 2050—the most significant projected loss to GDP due to water scarcity in the world.
Hundreds of citizens in southern Iran, especially in the province of Khuzestan, where temperatures near 50 degrees Celsius, took to the streets to protest the severe water shortage that the government in Tehran has failed to deal with. Eight protesters were killed in violent clashes with security forces. Protests were also held in southern Iraq over water shortages, but no casualties were reported.
Water crises have been ranked in the top five of the World Economic Forum’s global risk list almost every year since 2012. The phenomenon of “water refugees” has made its appearance, as the population has been displaced due to lack of water. In 2017, severe drought contributed to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, when 20 million people in Africa and the Middle East were forced to leave their homes due to food shortages and conflict.
As the climate crisis intensifies, the question that needs to be asked is whether there are ways in which conflicts over water shortages between neighboring countries can be avoided. Here are some suggestions:
Daniel Rosenfeld, Professor in the Program for Atmospheric Sciences at The Hebrew University, says: “As the climate continues to warm and water becomes scarce, part of the solution in the Middle East will include reducing water use in agriculture It could also mean what kind of foods farmers grow and export. For example, in Israel, we used to grow a lot of oranges, but at some point, we realized that we were exporting water. doing what we don’t have.” He also suggested that crops could be engineered to be more resilient to heat and dryness.
Journalist Sandy Milnein pointed out in a recent article: “Much can be done by freeing up more water for use through techniques such as seawater desalination. Saudi Arabia currently produces 50 percent of its water through this process.” meets the needs.”grayRecycling, or wastewater, may also provide a low-cost, easy-to-implement alternative that could help farming communities affected by drought. An assessment of global desalination and wastewater treatment predicted that These could reduce the proportion of the increase in capacity. From 40 percent to 14 percent of the global population under severe water scarcity.”
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