240 likes | 532 Vues
Explore the escalating demand for water resources in North Africa, Middle East, and South Asia, and the potential conflicts arising due to inadequate supply and geopolitical tensions. Learn about historical and current disputes over water sources and the implications of rapid population growth on water scarcity.
E N D
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