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WATER CONFLICT. Why have resources become so important?. Escalating worldwide demand concentrated in North Africa, Middle East, South Asia Supply is inadequate Global climate change.
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Why have resources become so important? • Escalating worldwide demand • concentrated in North Africa, Middle East, South Asia • Supply is inadequate • Global climate change
Yitzhak Rabin: “if we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode”
World Bank: “minimum amount of water one human needs to remain healthy: 36-72 cubic meters per year” • minimum human water requirement: 1,000 cubic meters per person a year
Can the world supply all of this fresh water? • Less than 3%: fresh water • 2/3 of it: glaciers and ice caps • Rest: is deep underground aquifers • 0.01% is accessible to human population. • available through precipitation on land (110,000 km3). • 2/3s of it –evaporates
40,000 km3 per year as runoff • Half of it: lost to flooding • 1/5 is carried off by rivers in remote locations • Remaining fresh water: 12,500km3 per year
Betw: 1950-1990: world population doubled • water use increased 300% • We are 100% usage level
Water is not distributed evenly • The world’s arid and semi-arid regions, 40% of earth’s land mass, 1/5 of population • Receive only 2% of the global water runoff
Conflict within Countries • In the 1920s, farmers in eastern California kept sabotaging the aqueduct build by state to transport water supply to Los Angeles
Syria: 85% of its total renewable water supply from the Euphrates • Iraq: nearly 100% from the two • Turkey: 30% • All three countries have built dams • Tension
Problematic history • Syria and Turkey: over Hatay, Kurdish separatism • Iraq and Syria: Baath leadership • Iraq and Turkey: adversaries during Persian Gulf war
Crisis in 1975: Syrian Dam at Tabqa Euphrates • 1990: Syria pledged to deliver no less than 58% of all Euphrates waters it received from Turkey
1990: Ataturk Dam on Euphrates • Reservoir fill: occurred in winter • Demonstrating Turkey’s ability to control the flow • GAP: Turkey hopes to create new jobs, eliminate Kurdish separatism.
1987: Turkey-Syrian protocol • Syria promised to tighten the border security
Turkey intends to expand the area under irrigation along Euphrates tenfold during the first decade of the 21st C. • This would reduce the flow of water into Syria and contaminate what is left
AVAILABILITY IN 1990 AND 2025 1990 2025 • Kuwait 75 57 • Saudi Arabia 306 113 • United Arab E 308 176 • Jordan 327 121 • Yemen 445 152 • Israel 461 264 • Qatar 1,171 684 • Oman 1,266 410 • Lebanon 1,818 1,113 • Iran 2,025 816 • Syria 2,914 1,021 • Iraq 5,531 2,162