generalspeaking

Competing for Primary Resources

Israel demonstrated through its early years of collective agricultural enterprise that the desert could be made to bloom. The country engaged in pioneering scientific research in desalinization, and unique irrigation methods in a landscape where fresh water is historically in short supply. As the population of the Middle East in its entirety increases, climate change appears to be having its effect concomitantly, diminishing ground water supplies and established lakes used as reservoirs.

And in the oil-rich Gulf States, luxurious new cities-of-the-future have been built in the desert. Water is subsidized along with utility services and citizens pay very little to nothing for their water supply. That situation encourages wasteful water practices, leading them to rank among the highest per capita usage in the world, in a severely arid region of the world.

And although the Gulf States have invested heavily in desalinization plants, the process is costly. Supplies of freshwater resources are shrinking rapidly, while populations increase.  In Saudi Arabia the bulk of water use is for agricultural purposes. The competing demands among the countries in the Middle East for fresh water sees no easy solutions as water scarcity and higher demand meet the future.


Parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates River basins have seen 144 cubic kilometres of total stored freshwater vanish. After India, this represents the second fastest loss of groundwater storage. Turkey controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, dictating the water flow downstream into Syria and Iraq. Water conservation is a problem.

Tensions between these countries have arisen as a result of the 2007 drought as Turkey continues to divert water for the irrigation of farmland. The Middle East and North Africa have the lowest amount of freshwater in the world. Droughts are anticipated to turn more extreme with water run-off declining as demand increases.

A large proportion of the loss of groundwater is caused by pumping underground reservoirs for groundwater. One thousand wells in Iraq hasten the situation. Drought situations lead to declining snow packs and drying of soil. Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs represent another decline of water resource availability.

War, the effects of climate change and growing populations all raise fears that some countries may face severe water shortages in decades to come. Impoverished Yemen blames their lack of water leading to even more poverty, on the diversion from the Gulf economic boom claiming a large share of available water to support their new cities.

Data was examined over a seven year period from 2003 through gravity-measuring satellites, part of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, leading to conclusions and a study to be published in a journal of the American Geophysical Union, Water Resources Research.

Labels: Crisis Politics, Culture, Economy, Environment, Nature

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 13, 2013