Shared Water Resources in Western Asia: an Inventory Approach
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The sharing of water resources has been an influential feature affecting life, society and development in the Arabian Peninsula, the Mashrek and Mesopotamia for millennia. Historically, communities living in these arid and semi-arid regions always shared the water of rivers, springs and wadis, although this was more out of necessity than idealism. Water resources were traditionally managed at the local level, with tensions emerging between Bedouins, shepherds, pastoralists and
growing urban centres. Water management and irrigation schemes – such as the underground aqueducts or falaj networks found in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – sustained different communal needs for dozens of centuries, while the marshes of Mesopotamia, the Tigris floodplain and the Jordan River Valley were cultivated and sustained successive civilizations since earliest of times. Hillside terraces from Lebanon to Yemen meanwhile demonstrated the early integration between water and land resources management schemes and local efforts to safeguard water for productive purposes. With the expansion of empires and the changing patterns of commerce between east and west, tradesmen tried to tame the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers for navigation purposes prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, albeit with limited success. Following the creation of modern nation states in Western Asia starting in the first half of the 20th century, most of the region’s major rivers and many aquifer systems were found to cross political borders.
However, their management did not emerge as a major problem until increasing freshwater scarcity exposed dependencies on internationally shared water resources. During the second half of the 20th century, technological transformations, demographic changes, natural resource extraction, ethnosectarian
conflicts and development needs fundamentally altered the way that water resources were managed internally and addressed in international relations. Largescale irrigation projects boosted investments in and socio-economic dependencies on the water and agricultural sectors. The damming of major rivers for hydropower generation and the expansion of irrigation networks created new economic opportunities upstream, while causingnegative impacts on downstream water users and ecosystems in neighbouring countries, especially during the filling of reservoirs. Smallscale dams on tributaries and in catchment areas also impacted downstream flows, and affected the availability and seasonality of water in intermittent streams. Political conflicts and the occupation of Arab lands also prevented access to surface and groundwater resources, which had traditionally sustained the livelihoods of rural communities. Meanwhile, changing development paradigms and political uncertainties prompted the adoption of national policies to pursue food security through food self-sufficiency in many Western Asian countries, which led to the further extraction of surface and groundwater resources through the subsidization and centralization of largeand small-scale agricultural production.
Considerable quantities of surface water were thus abstracted and increasingly diverted out-of-basin, while return flows from waterintensive agricultural projects polluted rivers and groundwater reserves. Water quality deteriorated, most notably through increased salinity, further affecting domestic and agricultural users downstream. In addition, exponential population growth rates throughout the region caused a sharp rise in demand. Concurrently, agricultural production flourished with the introduction of groundwater pumps in the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted in the intensive development of groundwater resources. However, the arid climate and low rainfall levels meant that groundwater abstraction quickly exceeded recharge, which in turn led to the drying up of springs, streams and shallow groundwater bodies, some of which had flowed across national borders. Further advances in drilling and pumping technology allowed for the exploitation of deep groundwater reserves in the Arabian Peninsula, which were created thousands of years ago and are nonrenewable under current climatic conditions. These deep fossil aquifers are often highly productive and constitute a unique kind of shared water resource in the region. Today, water scarcity levels regionally are well below the water poverty level of 1,000 m3 per capita. However, population growth rates and rural-to-urban migration patterns continue to fuel the expansion of the industrial and service sectors and to increase demand for freshwater resources, as well as water supply and sanitation services. Political unrest and the Arab-Israeli conflict also impede opportunities for constructive dialogue on shared water resources. Meanwhile, the agricultural sector remains the largest consumer of freshwater resources and shared water resources in the region. Climate variability and climate change evidenced by droughts and flash floods, in addition to the unsustainable abstraction of groundwater resources have affected agricultural productivity and further fuelledsocial unrest.
Some states in the Western Asia region have been able to adapt to this condition by increasing investments in desalination, dams, diversions and non-conventional water resources to enhance supply in the face of increasing demand. However, these supply side interventions have often been pursued unilaterally with limited consultation or coordination with downstream users within a shared basin. Water use efficiency improvements have also been pursued, but only to a moderate extent, despite the shared benefits that could be generated by reducing freshwater consumption. As such, dependency on shared surface and groundwater resources persists in the face of growing water scarcity and will continue to be a dominant influence on development policy and inter-state relations in Western Asia. Read on...
The sharing of water resources has been an influential feature affecting life, society and development in the Arabian Peninsula, the Mashrek and Mesopotamia for millennia. Historically, communities living in these arid and semi-arid regions always shared the water of rivers, springs and wadis, although this was more out of necessity than idealism. Water resources were traditionally managed at the local level, with tensions emerging between Bedouins, shepherds, pastoralists andgrowing urban centres. Water management and irrigation schemes – such as the underground aqueducts or falaj networks found in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – sustained different communal needs for dozens of centuries, while the marshes of Mesopotamia, the Tigris floodplain and the Jordan River Valley were cultivated and sustained successive civilizations since earliest of times. Hillside terraces from Lebanon to Yemen meanwhile demonstrated the early integration between water and land resources management schemes and local efforts to safeguard water for productive purposes. With the expansion of empires and the changing patterns of commerce between east and west, tradesmen tried to tame the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers for navigation purposes prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, albeit with limited success. Following the creation of modern nation states in Western Asia starting in the first half of the 20th century, most of the region’s major rivers and many aquifer systems were found to cross political borders.
However, their management did not emerge as a major problem until increasing freshwater scarcity exposed dependencies on internationally shared water resources. During the second half of the 20th century, technological transformations, demographic changes, natural resource extraction, ethnosectarian
conflicts and development needs fundamentally altered the way that water resources were managed internally and addressed in international relations. Largescale irrigation projects boosted investments in and socio-economic dependencies on the water and agricultural sectors. The damming of major rivers for hydropower generation and the expansion of irrigation networks created new economic opportunities upstream, while causingnegative impacts on downstream water users and ecosystems in neighbouring countries, especially during the filling of reservoirs. Smallscale dams on tributaries and in catchment areas also impacted downstream flows, and affected the availability and seasonality of water in intermittent streams. Political conflicts and the occupation of Arab lands also prevented access to surface and groundwater resources, which had traditionally sustained the livelihoods of rural communities. Meanwhile, changing development paradigms and political uncertainties prompted the adoption of national policies to pursue food security through food self-sufficiency in many Western Asian countries, which led to the further extraction of surface and groundwater resources through the subsidization and centralization of largeand small-scale agricultural production.
Considerable quantities of surface water were thus abstracted and increasingly diverted out-of-basin, while return flows from waterintensive agricultural projects polluted rivers and groundwater reserves. Water quality deteriorated, most notably through increased salinity, further affecting domestic and agricultural users downstream. In addition, exponential population growth rates throughout the region caused a sharp rise in demand. Concurrently, agricultural production flourished with the introduction of groundwater pumps in the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted in the intensive development of groundwater resources. However, the arid climate and low rainfall levels meant that groundwater abstraction quickly exceeded recharge, which in turn led to the drying up of springs, streams and shallow groundwater bodies, some of which had flowed across national borders. Further advances in drilling and pumping technology allowed for the exploitation of deep groundwater reserves in the Arabian Peninsula, which were created thousands of years ago and are nonrenewable under current climatic conditions. These deep fossil aquifers are often highly productive and constitute a unique kind of shared water resource in the region. Today, water scarcity levels regionally are well below the water poverty level of 1,000 m3 per capita. However, population growth rates and rural-to-urban migration patterns continue to fuel the expansion of the industrial and service sectors and to increase demand for freshwater resources, as well as water supply and sanitation services. Political unrest and the Arab-Israeli conflict also impede opportunities for constructive dialogue on shared water resources. Meanwhile, the agricultural sector remains the largest consumer of freshwater resources and shared water resources in the region. Climate variability and climate change evidenced by droughts and flash floods, in addition to the unsustainable abstraction of groundwater resources have affected agricultural productivity and further fuelledsocial unrest.
Some states in the Western Asia region have been able to adapt to this condition by increasing investments in desalination, dams, diversions and non-conventional water resources to enhance supply in the face of increasing demand. However, these supply side interventions have often been pursued unilaterally with limited consultation or coordination with downstream users within a shared basin. Water use efficiency improvements have also been pursued, but only to a moderate extent, despite the shared benefits that could be generated by reducing freshwater consumption. As such, dependency on shared surface and groundwater resources persists in the face of growing water scarcity and will continue to be a dominant influence on development policy and inter-state relations in Western Asia. Read on...
