tagged w/ Fertile Crescent
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The expected emergence of a new state in southern Sudan following a January independence referendum is causing alarm in Cairo because the signs are the infant state will join other African countries battling Egypt for a greater share of the Nile River's waters.
The southern Sudan leader, Salva Kiir, recently visited President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, one of the upstream states opposed to Egypt's control of the Nile waters, to discuss building hydroelectric power stations to enhance development of the infant state.
That is guaranteed to incense Cairo, which vehemently opposes any upstream projects that would diminish the flow of the Nile, which runs into the Mediterranean at Alexandria.
Sudan lies astride the middle reaches of the Nile, the source of 90 percent of Egypt's water. The White Nile, which joins the Blue Nile in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, runs through southern Sudan. The Blue, which rises in the Ethiopian highlands, supplies more than two-thirds of the Nile's water flow.
The upstream states -- Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia -- demand that Egypt and Sudan relinquish long-held rights to 74 percent of the Nile's waters.
These are enshrined in a 1929 agreement from the British colonial era. Egypt and Sudan refuse to give an inch. In May, most of the upstream states grouped together in a new alliance and gave the downstream states a year to agree to a more equitable share of the Nile waters.
They need this because of burgeoning populations, a growing demand for electricity and irrigation for food production and an imperative to stimulate development.
Under the 1929 agreement, Egypt had veto power over all upstream projects that involve the Nile's flow, particularly dam construction.
AllAfrica.com reported that Museveni told Kiir Uganda wants more dams to boost its generating power from 300 megawatts to 3,800 MW over the next five years.
"We also have plans to generate 17,000 MW by 2025," the Ugandan leader disclosed.
According to U.S. diplomatic cables unveiled by WikiLeaks, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sought to convince Washington to postpone the scheduled Jan. 8 independence referendum in southern Sudan because of the potential loss of Nile water.
Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile, has strong links with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which has ruled southern Sudan since a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between the region, mainly Christian and animist, and the Arab Muslim north.
So do Kenya and Uganda, which supported the southerners' struggle against the Khartoum regime of President Omar al-Bashir.
Indeed, Ethiopia's leader, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, one of the most militant of Egypt's critics, claimed in November that Cairo sought to destabilize his country by supporting rebel groups opposed to his regime.
That accusation, devoid of any diplomatic discourse, apparently caught the Egyptians unawares and marked a sharp escalation in the diplomatic war of words over the Nile.
airo denied that. But Egypt and other Arab states provided support for Eritrean separatists who fought for independence from Ethiopia in 1961-91.
Zenawi went on to warn Egypt it would be defeated if it invaded Ethiopia, presumably through Sudan or Eritrea, which border Ethiopia.
However, undertaking such a complex operation is difficult to imagine, even though Egypt considers the Nile a vital national security issue.
"Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story," Zenawi cautioned.
Egypt did try to invade Ethiopia in the 19th century after it had conquered Sudan. But that campaign ended in failure in 1875.
Why Zenawi would want to raise the temperature on the Nile issue right now is not entirely clear.
But he has domestic problems and the Nile provides a diversion. He has infuriated Egypt by building five huge dams on the Nile over the last decade and has started construction of a new $1.4 billion hydroelectric facility.
Osman Mirghani, senior editor-at-large of the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, was concerned enough to observe that the Nile question "is something that in the near future may come to overshadow all other regional issues."
"Anybody listening to the statements, observing the frantic maneuvers, or watching the growing tension, might already feel that the Nile Water War has begun in earnest."The expected emergence of a new state in southern Sudan following a January... more
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Hotter summers, intense irrigation and threats of losing their Nile, Egyptians are under quota for water compared to other Arab nations. They take to the streets.
Looking at Google Earth (above) truly shows how Egypt is a fertile crescent of the region. But in the face of losing water from the Nile, tens of thousands of people in Egypt – Africa’s second most populous country – have taken to the streets in recent months to protest against water shortages. This goes some way to explaining the government’s reluctance to relinquish its current share of River Nile water.
On 26 July, 600 people from the southern governorate of Minya staged a sit-down protest outside the Irrigation Ministry in Cairo to protest about the lack of water for their land. While there have been water shortage protests in previous years, the size and frequency of protests in 2010 has been unprecedented, local observers say. “Water scarcity will be even worse in the future,” Riad Aldamk, head of a water studies project at Cairo College of Engineering, told IRIN, the United Nation’s environment news source.
He said Egypt’s total water consumption had increased by 17 percent in the last five years, according to studies conducted by the college. Hotter summers were partly to blame.
A recent report by the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said annual water resources would decline by 15.2 billion cubic metres by 2017 – from a required 86.2 billion cubic metres to a projected 71.4 billion cubic metres. The report said Egypt, where average per capita consumption was 700 cubic metres of water a year – was one of 15 Arab countries under the global water scarcity mark of 1,000 cubic metres per capita. The global average is 6,750 cubic metres per person annually.
Experts say agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of consumption and blame traditional irrigation methods for the loss of 8-17 billion cubic metres of water a year. Rice farms use much of our water, said Khalid Alqady, a professor of agriculture at Helwan University. “To grow rice, you need huge amounts of water.”
In response, the Agriculture Ministry is reducing the amount of land used to grow rice from 486,000 hectares in 2009 to 456,720 hectares this year. Alqady also blamed a proliferation of fish farms for water scarcity.
Egypt’s top 10 water-scarce areas:
This summer is a particularly hot one, aggravating the shortages. Based on interviews with several local water experts, IRIN highlights 10 areas particularly badly affected by water shortages.
Ismailia city – Water scarcity in this coastal northeastern city of some 750,000 has led to large-scale protests in recent weeks by farmers who say they can no longer irrigate their farms. The farmers urged the governor to help and invited TV cameras to record their predicament. They said drought had caused a shortage of irrigation water and that this had already made 57,803 hectares of farmland uncultivatable.
Dakahlia Governorate – Protests by farmers about scarce irrigation have become common in this agricultural area northeast of Cairo. Farmers, who regularly stage protests outside the office of the governor, say 10,789 hectares of farmland was no longer viable because it had received no irrigation for more than 24 days.
Kafr al-Sheikh Governorate – Farmers in al-Tarzy village, about 180km north of Cairo, said three weeks ago that irrigation water had stopped reaching their farms for 10 days. They have been holding protests, saying the lack of water was causing their crops to die but the government was doing nothing.
Sharqia Governorate – Insufficient irrigation has ruined hundreds of hectares of farmland, particularly in the northern part of this city 80km northeast of Cairo. Over the past month, water scarcity has forced rice farmers to use sewage water to irrigate their dying crops.
Fayoum city – Water scarcity has caused widespread anger in this city, 130km southwest of Cairo. This has led to protests in areas around the city by farmers, who say influential landowners with political connections receive whatever water is available, while the poor are left with nothing.
Damietta city – Scarce water has taken its toll on farmland in this northeastern coastal city and on the health of residents, who have been affected by water contaminated with sewage.
Marsa Matrouh city – A canal bringing water from the Nile to this northwestern coastal town recently dried up, causing drought and hardship for residents.
Minya Governorate – Rising temperatures have increased demand for water in this southern governorate. They have no piped water because of shortages.
Beni Suef city - Farmers in this city about 115km south of Cairo took to the streets two weeks ago because of a lack of irrigation water. They said 1,660 hectares of farmland had been rendered unusable.
Alexandria Governorate – Thousands of hectares of farmland in Nubaria village, south of Alexandria city, are set to dry up because the local authorities have been forced to heavily restrict irrigation.
Read more on the Nile:
12 Million Egyptians to be Affected By Climate Change
How Ancient Civilizations in the Middle East Depended on Water
Pick Organic Cotton From Under the NileHotter summers, intense irrigation and threats of losing their Nile, Egyptians are... more
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Iraq's water crisis is getting worse by the day, adding to the political uncertainty sweeping the country ahead of potentially incendiary parliamentary elections in January.
On top of the cutbacks in the water flow of the life-giving Tigris and Euphrates rivers by Turkey, Iraq's parched south is now threatened by encroaching tidal waters from the Gulf that are poisoning vital farmland, the result of climate change.
On Sept. 19, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Ankara had agreed to increase the Euphrates flow to between 450 and 500 cubic meters per second until Oct. 20, after which Baghdad would have to negotiate a new deal.
But it will take much more than that to help the Iraqis, who are suffering one of the country's worst droughts in living memory.
Apart from the land around the two great rivers that rise in Turkey's Anatolia region, Iraq is largely desert. These days, its arable land is steadily drying up. Poor rains have damaged farmland even further.
Crop yields are so bad that a country once so fertile and known in antiquity as Mesopotamia - "the land between the rivers" - is now one of the largest importers of wheat in the world.
There is deepening distrust of Ankara in Iraq. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says that Turkey has twice reneged on promises to increase the flow rate of the Euphrates, which also runs through Syria, Iraq's northwestern neighbor.
Baghdad believes that the Syrians too are reducing the Euphrates flow. Damascus denies that, but since Maliki accused Syria of harboring the masterminds of devastating suicide bombings in the capital in August, Baghdad is not likely to get much support from Syria on the water issue.
Turkey has drastically reduced the flow of the two rivers since 2002 because of its ambitious plan to build 22 dams and hydroelectric power plants to develop its impoverished southeast.
Ankara declared in August that it had no water to spare in its reservoirs
So it was something of a surprise when Ankara made a bid to mediate between Baghdad and Damascus in late August as part of Turkey's assertive new foreign policy aimed at establishing itself as a regional leader.
So far, the Turks have made no discernible progress on resolving the political dispute between Syria and Iraq, and the worsening water crisis is raising hackles even further.
The crisis has been worsened by Iranian dam-building to the east, cutting the flow of rivers such as the Karoun, which flows into the Shattt al-Arab, the waterway formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris at Qurna in southern Iraq.
Water has historically been a cause of friction in the largely arid Middle East and there have been concerns that conflict could erupt between Turkey and its riparian neighbors to the south.
This has not happened, even though Turkey and Syria went to the brink of war in 1998 over Syria's harboring of Kurdish separatist leaders.
But Mustafa Kibargolu, of the Department of International Relations at Ankara's Bilkent University, cautioned in a recent analysis: "The fact that any confrontation or high tension stemming from the unsatisfied demands of parties over the use of water has not been seen yet in the region should not mislead observers into thinking that this is unlikely.
"Unless some old policies are purged and new ones introduced, it remains a real possibility."Iraq's water crisis is getting worse by the day, adding to the political... more
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More than 800,000 people have lost their livelihoods in a four-year dry spell exacerbated by climate change and rising food prices. Almost half of them live in urban makeshift camps.
Deraa, Syria - The acute drought that has driven an estimated 300,000 Syrian farmers, herders, and their families to abandon home for makeshift urban camps may not be the worst in the region's history; the Fertile Crescent has often experienced cycles of drought.
But now climate change, an exploitation of water resources, and higher food prices brought about by the global financial crisis have all severely sharpened the impact of this dry spell, now in its fourth year. The numbers of Syrians affected – an estimated 1.3 million, 803,000 of whom have entirely lost their livelihoods – point to a serious humanitarian crisis.
With Syria's population expected to triple by 2025, the severity of the drought presents yet another challenge for a leadership isolated internationally and struggling at home to maintain a broken state system while slowly introducing capitalism.
"It's going to underline for the everyday person the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of the Syrian state," says Joshua Landis, codirector of the University of Oklahoma's Center for Middle East Studies.
Mass emigration compounds Iraqi refugee crowding
Shams Asa Mousa is already too familiar with those.
For more generations than she can remember, her family has grown wheat in Syria's Euphrates river valley. But as a result of the drought, they left their home in the eastern part of the country. Now, she and most of her 10 children sit idle in a tent made of wheat sacks outside of the southern city of Deraa near the Jordanian border, swatting flies, hundreds of miles away from their family home.
The mass migration toward Syria's cities, already overwhelmed with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, is only the most urgent of the drought's consequences, which also include wide-spread malnutrition, increased illness, and school dropout rates, according to a recent United Nations report.
Asa Mousa's family has been living at the camp for three months without running water and only spurts of stolen electricity, subsisting on bread, rice, yoghurt and sugared tea.
She says no tangible help has come except for a government official who offered the family 20 percent of their Deraa income to return home. The family declined the offer.
"We are totally forgotten," says Asa Mousa. "Sometimes we feel like no one knows we are here."More than 800,000 people have lost their livelihoods in a four-year dry spell... more
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Iraq’s devastating water shortages have three main causes: upstream dams in Turkey and Syria have drastically reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates; rainfall levels have hit record lows; and inefficient management techniques mean Iraq wastes what limited water it does have.
“The drought has been a real issue; without rain there has been no replenishment of rivers and groundwater aquifers,” says Mohammed Amin Faris, a leading Iraqi water official. “We used to have droughts once a decade. Now we are worried they are coming every two or three years because of global climate change.
“In addition to that, we have other problems. Neighbouring countries are putting up dams that have stopped us getting the water we had in the past.”
According to Iraqi government figures, water flow in the Euphrates is currently some 200 cubic metres per second as it crosses into Iraq, less than half of the minimum amount required to help the country meet its basic needs. Much of the water is stopped in Turkey, while Syria, battling its own water crisis, is also drawing on supplies. Iraq, downstream of both, pays the price for their consumption.
Similar problems face the Tigris and will be greatly exacerbated if Turkey pushes ahead with its controversial US$2 billion (Dh7.35bn) Ilisu dam project.
“The Euphrates River is already cut as far as Iraq is concerned and the Tigris will be cut as well if Turkey goes ahead,” says Mr Faris. “If these dams are completed the flow from the Tigris will be halved from 20.9 billion cubic metres a year to 9.7 billion cubic metres.”
Most of the cities in Iraq, he says, are dependent on that water: “Vast areas of land will be dry. This dam could destroy Iraq.”
As a member of Iraq’s international water negotiating committee, Mr Faris has been involved in talks with Turkey and Syria designed to come up with an equitable solution for water sharing. Discussions so far have been inconclusive.
“We are trying to get a third party involved in the talks as a mediator, the United States or the United Nations,” he says. “But they have refused. Water is a political issue, it’s part of a political game and of course it’s far more important than oil. There are alternatives to oil but there is no alternative to water.”
The next round of talks was due to take place yesterday in Ankara, and follows claims by the Iraqi water minister, Latif Rashid, that Turkey had broken a promise to increase water flows in the Euphrates.
Iraq also faces reduced water flow from Iran but, according to Mr Faris, government attempts to open dialogue with Tehran on the issue have failed.
“We want negotiations but Iran is just ignoring us,” he says. “They are upstream and we are downstream and there’s not much you can do about it, especially if you are weak.”
Water shortages, acute in the cooler and traditionally wetter northern part of the country, are even worse in central and southern zones. Agriculture has been hit hard.
“We simply don’t have enough water,” says Salam Iskander Zait, the head official for the Ministry of Agriculture in Wasit province, south of Baghdad. His offices are in Kut, on the Tigris. “Water levels have been falling consistently, this is the thing that worries me. It’s not a problem I can solve, it’s something the government will have to do at a national level, working with our neighbours. It’s an international matter.”
Iraqi farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet and impoverished rural areas are slipping further into destitution. Iraqi politicians, government officials and local leaders warn that such developments will serve only to undermine fragile security gains and could provide a breeding ground for insurgents.
There are even suggestions that water shortages could trigger a new international conflict between Iraq and its neighbours. Allegations are increasingly being made, in particular against Turkey and Iran...Iraq’s devastating water shortages have three main causes: upstream dams in... more
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Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.
Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture.
Tensions have been growing since May, when the Iraqi parliament refused to approve a new much-needed trade deal with Turkey unless it contained binding clauses on river flows. But Turkey appears in no mood to compromise. In July, it announced the final go-ahead for yet another dam, the Ilisu on the Tigris.Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce... more
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