Water rises to top of Syrian Agenda

As the Syrian capital Damascus braces itself for another exceptionally cold winter week, severe water shortages as a result of climate change is leaping to the top of the government’s priorities. UN and Syrian government officials warn that that the water crisis coupled with environmental degradation is likely to worsen over the coming years. Torrential rains in Damascus that have overwhelmed drainage systems and turned the desultory trickle of the Barada river into a torrent are just one indicator of the mounting crisis.

Increased rainfall is doing nothing, however, to alleviate the country’s water shortage. “A study of rainfall over the past 25 years in Syria shows that the intensity is increasing, but the actual levels are either constant or, in some cases, decreasing,” The National quotes Faris Asfari, an agricultural engineer involved in compiling a detailed report on climate change in Syria, who consults for the UN as saying. “Increasingly the rain is torrential and that actually causes severe damage, especially to soil. It has a severe impact on the sustainability and productivity of the land it adds to desertification problems.”

Similarly, Jordan recently reported to the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC that its water resources will be depleted by climate change even if the kingdom witnesses an increase in precipitation. The report warned that climate change will severely impact the quantity of monthly surface water runoff. It that if current rainfall levels increased by 20 per cent, it would not compensate for the water lost due to the expected rise in temperatures.

A Syrian government report compiled for last month’s environment summit in Copenhagen concluded that most Syrian cities were suffering from shortage of water as a result of reduced rainfall, severe drought and more frequent dust storms. As a result, some 300,000 people in the eastern region, once a thriving farming area have been forced off their land to mostly become internal refugees in Damascus. The government report warns that such dislocations are prompting a decline in standards of health and education. Residents in the central governorate of Hama say drought has dried up the Al Assi River whose water serviced the Al Qantara Hydrostation. They now depend on local wells available only at depths of 600 meters where it contains contaminants that make it unsafe for drinking.

Syrian officials say the situation is further aggravated by the absence of agreements, primarily with Israel, on how to equitably share inadequate water resources. Israel draws some 15 percent of its water supply from the Golan Heights conquered from Syria in 1967. The Heights run up to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s only freshwater lake, and include significant parts of the Jordan River’s catchment area. Control of water resources, and Israel’s insistence that it retain sovereignty over the Sea of Galilee, have been one of the main stumbling blocks in failed peace talks.

Nonetheless, environmental scientists say the Syrian government bears significant responsibility for water shortages and land degradation, with decades of mismanagement, corruption and inefficiency exacerbating existing problems. Land not fit for cultivation was widely farmed in the 1980s as part of a food security policy and although it was stopped in the 1990s, severe damage was done.
Syria uses 90 percent of its water for mostly inefficient irrigation. “Irrigation systems here are only 38 per cent efficient, which means we throw away 62 per cent of all of our national water supplies before it even reaches the crops,” Yousef Meslmani, the national environmental affairs project director with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Damascus told . The National. “We have irrigation channels built on soluble rock – which is the worst thing you can do – and the engineers told them it was bad idea, but they did it.”

Mideast Water Crisis Produces Region's First Water Refugees

A two-part series by NPR focuses on the Middle East's worst water crisis in decades as a result of climate change, drought and mismanagement. The series focuses on the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which affects Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and the fact that this already troubled region is confronting a new phenomenon: water refugees.

Contrary to popular perception, water seldom is the single cause for violent conflict, but it certainly can accelerate and exacerbate tensions. Perhaps, the latest example in the region is Yemen, whose multiple conflicts are enhanced by a falling water table and acute water shortage. Water plays a key role in Turkey's relations with Iraq and Syria, who believe that Turkey uses its control of the Tigris and Euphrates head waters as a tool to realize its regional ambitions. NPR reports:

"Syria and Iraq blame Turkey's huge network of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for reducing water supplies by 50 percent.Turkey is the site of the headwaters of a river system that Syria and Iraq depend on. An informal agreement determines the flow downstream.

'When we had bad relations with Turkey, they reduced the flow of water despite the agreement, and now, thank God, we have excellent relations with Turkey, and hopefully, we will not see any cutoff of water,' Syrian economist Nabil)Sukkar says.

Turkey says there is enough water for everyone, but Syria and Iraq waste their share. (Hussein) Amery, (a Middle East water management expert and professor at the Colorado School of Mines. says the Turks are partly right. 'The issue is water but it goes far beyond water, he says. Amery says the key to head off a water crisis is more efficient management of a scarce resource. But he adds politics, not climate, is the problem. A lot of Arabs believe that Turkey is trying to assert itself as a regional superpower,' he says, "and water is being used as a tool to advance that interest"....

In Turkey, Gun Kut, a water expert at Istanbul's Bogazici University, expresses an often-heard criticism in response to Arab complaints: 'Quit wasting the water and there will be enough for everybody.' Kut says outdated farming techniques and bad water management decisions waste a dwindling resource. 'Simply insisting on others to release more and more water while the population is going up, the need for food is going up, won't work,' he says."

Indeed, for much of Turkey's modern history, Turkey viewed its control of the head waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates as a Turkish resource much like oil is an Arab resource. With other words, it was Turkey's right to control access to the rivers' waters. Former Turkish President Suleiman Demirel did not mince words, when he in 1992 inaugurated the Ataturk Dam, part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, one of the world's biggest irrigation and electric power schemes. "We have a right to do anything we like," Demirel said at the dam's opening ceremony.

That attitude, however, may be changing as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan seeks to position his country as a regional superpower. In a sign that Turkey is seeking cooperation rather than confrontation, Turkey and Syria agreed in the first week of January to joint management of some water resources.