The State of Water in the Gaza Strip

In light of a recent decision by the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank to invest $6.4 million and $11.1 million, respectively, to improve the drinking water quality and sewage systems in the Gaza Strip, I thought it would be useful to examine the current state of drinking water resources in this deeply impoverished and war-torn territory.

First, the Palestinians in Gaza don’t have the water they need. According to Btselem, in 2010, Gaza's per-capita demand sat around 91 liters per day, which is 9 liters shy of the World Health Organization's minimum recommended consumption of 100 liters.

And where do Gazans get those 91 liters? The 500,000 people who live within the eight official refugee camps are most likely to fill up at OXFAM , UNWRA, or other internationally run facilities.

Otherwise, the only water Gaza residents can expect is that which comes out of the coastal aquifer, located directly beneath the Occupied Territory. In 2001, researchers from CDM Smith, in coordination with the Palestine Water Authority, estimated that the Territory and Israel removed approximately 25 million cubic meters per year. And based on that report, the estimated rate of removal would exhaust the aquifer in 20-25 years.

Concerns about the sustainability of Gaza’s aquifer are not new. Many began worrying about its overexploitation as early as 1933, a full 15 years before war refugees settled en masse above the subterranean resource.

Water in the Gaza aquifer is not only short in supply but also poor in quality. In 2005, salinity levels (measured by chloride concentration) were considerably brackish, especially in the densely populated areas of Gaza City and Rafah. Some predict these levels will soon transition from brackish (600-1000 mg Cl/L) to outright saline ( > 1000 mg Cl/L), which designates it non-potable. In addition, nitrates were measured a few years ago at over 500 mg/L. For comparison, the EPA's set Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) is 10 mg/L, which puts Gaza's water at 50 times the concentration allowed here in the U.S.

Courtesy of GROUND WATER

In light of high population growth projections -- some predict the Gaza Strip’s population will grow by 500,000 by 2020 – it’s clear why World Bank and the Israeli National Water Authority believe the area’s drinking water must be addressed soon. The World Bank-funded project will ideally help rehabilitate an ailing sewage system that mostly just lets waste-water sit out in large pools, contaminating the groundwater below. And the Israeli National Water Authority also has a recent developed program that aims to reduce the Gazan aquifer’s salinity levels, ensuring the precious local resource continues to provide drinkable water.

It’s reassuring to know help is on its way, but for an Occupied Territory in which 80 percent of the population is dependent on international humanitarian aid, it will likely take more than a cash infusion from two foreign banks to save the area from all future water-resource issues.

*Though some of my sources are dated, recent articles prove the water-scarcity trend is visible and the crisis is still apparent.

Abu Dhabi Hosts the first ever International Water Summit

In a few weeks’ time, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, will host the very first International Water Summit (IWS), as decreed by the Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan last January. His intention is to bring global leaders in water science, policy, and business to work toward progress in sustainable water use, particularly in arid regions such as the Arabian Peninsula.

Narrowly wedged between the Persian Gulf and the vast Arabian Desert, Abu Dhabi in the last half century has become a global hub for international business and a dominating presence in the petroleum industry. The capital was once a small Bedouin village, but everything changed when BP and the Iraq Petroleum Company discovered a wealth of oil fields within the emirate.

However, Abu Dhabi gets only 100 mm of precipitation per year and has access to very little groundwater, so it’s easy to understand how precious water is here–and it’s also easy to see why the city is backing global efforts to better manage and provide water in hyper-arid climates. (For an in-depth look at the city's water resource supply and demand, see this statistical report from 2006.)

Many have high hopes that this conference will introduce a new and innovative platform for discussion of the region's scarcest resource: fresh, clean water. And it’s no surprise that people have high expectations, given the list of speakers lined up for the three-day event. The Crown Prince has successfully pulled in water academics, foreign ministers, CEOs, presidents, UN diplomats and executives from companies such as CH2M HILL, Dow Chemicals and Veolia. Academic, industry, and government experts are gathering, providing a huge opportunity to lay out the future of water resource management in Abu Dhabi and the Middle East at large.

The summit is one of a handful of prominent events being held next month for the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. This broader event has been described as a "green conference on steroids", "an excellent string of TED Talks", and a Middle Eastern Davos or Aspen Institute. It has such lofty goals as "empowering young generations and entrepeneurs", "accelerating global adoption of renewable energy", and "elevating global water-energy nexus topics."

Masdar is hosting the event, with help from two primary sponsors, Borealis (a plastics manufacturer), and the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority. Though I initially questioned the presence of petroleum-affiliated sponsorship of both the IWS and the World Future Energy Summit (Shell, Exxon-Mobil, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company are running that show), Masdar has shown it is working hard on sustainable energy innovation, particularly at home in the UAE.

The three-day event will offer a variety of presentations, interactive panel discussions, quick fire interviews, ministerial panels and more. If I were to choose one talk (not that I’ll be there), I would attend the workshop on international good governance and cooperation. The panel will include representatives from the Pacific Institute, Masdar, the UN, and the World Bank and they’ll be discussing trends in water privatization in arid regions.

Even with all the players at the table, in a year that has seen a number of catastrophic global weather events, and with the UN Doha Climate Change Conference just next door in Qatar, this ambitious summit could fall flat, as did Copenhagen’s bold climate change summit in 2009. As I have done with previous Middle Eastern water issues discussed in this blog, I remain cautiously hopeful.

The Constitutional Content You're Not Hearing About

Courtesy of www.dailynewsegypt.com

Last week, nearly two years after Mubarak's toppling, the first democratically elected congress in Egyptian history has drafted a constitution, hoping to usher in a new civil and democratic era for Egypt. President Mohammed Morsi has signed the constitutional draft and it now must go before the people in a popular referendum.

What has heretofore gone unmentioned in Western media coverage is the environmental language that has been incorporated into the draft. Three articles within the constitution attempt to define, albeit vaguely, the state's role in the protection, assurance, and governance of water resources.

It's been less than a week since the constitutional assembly tasked with writing Egypt's new constitution finished its draft and submitted it for Morsi's signature and a public referendum. The process has manifested intense, emotional responses from both sides: secular parties have protested the draft itself, while Islamist supporters have protested Egypt's highest court's ongoing investigation into the legitimacy of the legislative assembly.

All conflict aside, Islamist parties retain power of the legislative and executive branches of government, and they have broad and vocal support from the electorate, despite the anti-government focus of Western news coverage. Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to take the content of this constitutional draft seriously

Should this legislation stand up to its many critics and become the absolute law of the land, there will be protections afforded to the sacred Nile River that have, to date, never been considered so important to previous Egyptian governments and that may have a considerable impact on the river's future.

So here they are. I've listed three constitutional articles below, one that directly refers to the country's most important resource and two others that address the state's role in its protection.

Article 19

The Nile River and water resources are a national wealth. The State is committed to maintaining and developing them, and preventing abuse. The use of such resources shall be regulated by law.

Article 20

The State shall protect its coasts, seas, waterways and lakes, maintain monuments and nature reserves, and remove any encroachments.

Article 69

All individuals have the right to a healthy environment. The State shall safeguard the environment against pollution, and promote the use of natural resources in a manner that prevents damage to the environment and preserves the rights of future generations.

If you take a look through the previous constitution, adopted under Sadat's rule, you'll find no such language. There is no explicit addressing of the need to "protect" natural resources and it does not afford any public right to a "healthy environment". The mandate handed to the state to "safeguard the environment against pollution" is inspiring and unique to a country of Egypt's impoverished stature and dedication to polluting industries such as petroleum extraction and production.

There are obviously many questions that only time will sort out. The two that are at the forefront of my mind are: will there be substantial domestic regulatory agency reshuffling following the adoption of this new constitution? And, with 25% of Egyptian nationals living below the poverty level and an unemployment rate hovering around 12.5%, will interpretation of Articles 19 and 69 and popular pressure favor substantial or sustainable development?

While Egypt is still in the early stages of the democratic process and the constitutional draft isn't yet final, it's encouraging to see the new Egypt addressing and even attempting to protect what is and will continue to be one of the country's most vital assets.

* A translation of the entire constitutional draft can be found here 

A Crisis of Good Will

If you were to ask a Jordanian about the biggest issues in the ongoing civil war in Syria, a likely response would involve the considerable influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and the many difficulties in housing them.

Over the last two years of Syrian fighting, the war-torn country’s relatively stable neighbor has received a substantial number of refugees–a challenging situation considering the minimal water resources available to the state, an amount barely sufficient for Jordanians alone.

Jordan’s water supply stems from both surface water and groundwater, but primarily the latter. Consumption clocks in at about 680 million cubic meters (MCM), is split primarily between agricultural (67%) and domestic (28%) uses, and exceeds the available renewable supply. Additionally, the annual per capita share of the national water supply in 1995 (see graph below) was less than 200 cubic meters, placing the country below the water poverty line.

-Courtesy of www.kinghussein.gov.jo

As of September 2012, the U.S. State Department estimates that there are approximately 54,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan; three times as many unregistered refugees have likely crossed the border. Most live in border camps such as Al Za’atari (mapped below); many others live with host families spread across the country.

The United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recommends 20 liters per person per day as the minimum volume of water required to prevent deterioration of health. Multiply that by 200,000 Syrians and that’s more than 4 million liters per day, or 4,000 cubic meters per day. If you expand this to the approximately 15 million required over the course of the year, that is already 2 percent of the total freshwater reserves. It doesn’t sound like much, but for an arid country already overdrawing, a 2% increase in less than a year will certainly make an impact.

And so the challenge is great for Jordan, even with the help of international aid agencies. The UNHCR’s Andrew Harper recently spoke with VOA News about the challenges of the Syrian refugee situation, noting Jordan’s debt-ridden government and the lack of substantial foreign aid.

-Courtesy of http://publicintelligence.net

This is of course not the first time foreign refugees have placed stress on Jordan’s precious natural resources. The small kingdom shares a border with Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian West Bank and Iraq, all of which have seen significant warfare in the last 25 years. The Iraq war alone brought hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to Jordan over the last decade. The UNHCR estimates that some 450,000 remain.

With no end in sight to the Syrian crisis and dangerous trends in water use and availability of domestic supplies (the shrinking Dead Sea is one example), it’s hard to say how this will play out. Jordan’s ongoing leniency in accepting such a task is admirable, but I fear for the future of this costly aid.

The Great Man-Made River

Libya, like its neighbor Egypt, is entering a substantially different era in the wake of the Arab Spring and the death of Muammar Gaddafi. One of the most ambitious projects of the former dictator was the Great Man-Made River Project (GMMR), which has supplied the country with potable water for decades. In order to understand the future of clean accessible water in Libya, I'll briefly examine what many Libyans refer to as the "Eighth wonder of the world," and I'll explore how it fits into a budding Libyan democracy. 

-Courtesy of BBC News

The GMMR broke ground in 1984 and since its opening in 1991 has been the primary source of potable water to more than 100,000 hectares of agricultural land and more than 5 million Libyans. This modern wonder taps into the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in southeast Libya via thousands of kilometers of pipeline, transporting clean water across a country roughly the size of Alaska. 

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the GMMR's water source, is a monster of an aquifer. It is the largest fossil aquifer in the world and is estimated to contain 375 000 cu km of freshwater. 

It is important to stress that the NSA is a "fossil" aquifer. In other words, it consists of water that was sealed underground tens of thousands of years ago. Unlike the Denver Basin Aquifer, which lies beneath us here on the front range, the NSA will not recharge though percolating precipitation and surface water. It is by definition a finite resource and will not come back once it has been exhausted. 

-Courtesy of Abdou Abouelmagd

The eventual depletion of the NSA is only one of the ways in which complete dependence on the GMMR might harm future Libyans. The other danger to putting all your water eggs in one basket is that the GMMR is a sizeable and predictable target in an unstable political context. Only months into last year's civil war, multiple parties claimed it would be a catastrophe if this precious infrastructure were harmed.

And sadly, these concerns are not unjustified. On July 22, 2011, NATO jets bombed a pipe supplier of the GMMR. NATO officials later claimed that they struck the site because it was being used for military purposes. In addition, a Peter Gleick and the Pacific Institute have clearly demonstrated that it is not beyond imagination that water infrastructure and terrorism go hand in hand.  

The Libyan government has a few options. One idea that has been thrown around is the construction of desalinization plants on the Mediterannean coast. While this may not be immune to terrorism, it diversifies the country's water supply and aside from its oil-dependent funding, is renewable in theory. The problem however is just that. To be a viable solution, desalinization will have to be paid for and run on non-renewable petroleum. 

So for the time being, it's fossil water or fossil fuel, and neither are sustainable. The continued use of the GMMR as the primary source of water will likely prove difficult, given Libya's currently fragile state. Considering the potential for solar energy production and it's coupling with desalinization, my hope is that such alternative energy policies will help dig Libya out of difficult situation.

The Time is Right, President Morsi

From an increasingly lawless Sinai to anti-American protests occurring just miles from the presidential palace, Egypt's very first democratically elected head of state has his work cut out for him. But an equally important issue he must tackle is how exactly to renegotiate the water rights of the Nile river. In light of ongoing dam construction in Ethiopia, international agreements that Egypt has previously refused to sign, and recent changes to Ethiopia’s leadership, the time is right for President Morsi to lead new negotiations and revisit antiquated allocation agreements of this critical natural resource.

Much of the frustration in Nile Basin water rights stems from two agreements drafted in 1929 and 1959 by Egyptian and Sudanese representatives, under a weighty British presence. Since these two documents allotted Egypt a vast majority of the Nile’s water and Sudan what little was left, all the basin states formally under colonial governments have achieved independence, populations have changed significantly, and climate change is a growing threat to the entire region.

As recent as 2010, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, and Rwanda have drafted and signed the Cooperative Framework Agreement, which aims to more equitably distribute the water rights across the entire basin, not leaving behind quickly developing countries from which the Nile headwaters flow. Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak strongly denounced the effort before his ouster, claiming that Egypt is the “gift of the Nile” and that his country’s claim lay in its traditional use and dependence on the river.

Fortunately, Mubarak is no longer in power and there is hope for a collaborative solution, led by Morsi as well as Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister Hailemariam. Because it is still early on in his presidency, the Egyptian president has a chance to seriously revisit this issue, and the clout to make something happen as well. As recently as last month, Mr. Morsi's approval rating was 79% and growing, as polled by the independent Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research, or Baseera. A renewed focus on basic amenities such as water and the public's access to it could bolster these ratings even more.

Instead of simply denying rumors that the Egyptian military is planning contingent strikes from Sudan into Ethopia, Morsi ought to reach out to his wary counterparts, accept that the world is distinctly different than it was in 1959, and sign the CFA. Sitting at the table and pushing your agenda seems a significantly more fruitful approach than to wait around while your counterparts carry on without you.