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Water
Issues
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While
the world has been focussed on the war in Iraq recently intensified by the PUK
around the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul, the Turkish authorities have expressed
their alarm at the potential for a sub Kurdish state in Iraq and the knock on
effects of the 12 million Kurds in Turkey.
PPG
| Policy Solutions | Kurdish Questions, Kurdish Answers
PPG | Policy Issues
| Turkey
Charges of anarchy and looting inside Iraq's major cities of Basra and Baghdad
has attracted much of the media attention in recent days. Limited attention
has been granted to the more serious problem of the freshwater deficit for the
22 million inhabitants. U.S.
shamed by looting of antiquities
Like much of the Middle East and Asia, Iraq suffers from a deficit of freshwater.
Water diplomacy in the Middle
East. It is an affliction across the entire Southern hemisphere, and getting
worse according to the The 3rd
World Water Forum in Tokyo recently. Apparently the water demand rate is
growing three times faster than the world population growth rate, with 1.2 billion
people lacking safe water. Ironically we are paying forty times the price of
water for a Middle East abundant commodity - oil.
World experts at the Tokyo Forum have concluded that the cause is due to inefficient
use, pollution and illness/death caused by water bearing miscreants such as
the malarial Tsetse fly, etc.
Inefficient use in the West could be defined ranging from the person who uses
drinking water to washing their cars on a Sunday to industrial inefficiencies
such as a commercial car wash using drinking water to clean vehicles. It should
be pointed out here the Governmental approach to "crimes" against
water in the West would most likely end with a fine for the first offence under
the U.K. Water
Act 1989 or the Environmental
Protection Agency (U.S.) - Clean Water Act for example, whereas a water-crime
in some countries in the East could lose you your head.
Pollution of freshwater can take a number of forms: natural disasters, such
as the Earthquake
Effects in Kobe, Japan 1995, or industrial accidents and industrial use,
notably gold mining which effects cyanide into the local water table following
the minerals filtration's. Agreement
reached on civil liability for damage caused by industrial accidents on transboundary
waters - 03env_p03e.htm Lastly the misuse/overuse of pesticides getting
into the water table. Society Targeting
Overuse of Pesticides or the raging debate on the use of Mycoherbicides
in controlling coca production in Colombia Fact
Sheet on Mycoherbicide Co-operation, U.S. State Department, July 18, 2000
Management is highly relevant in this context, revealed most notably in the
Israeli Palestine peace process, since much of the land disputes disguises water
gains / losses. Indeed Lebanon has been drawn into the dispute between Israel
and Palestinians Lebanon
water A/57/404-S/2002/1029 of 13 September 2002 , over Israel's
wish to obtain more water, and Lebanese rights to retain their own water. United
Nations resolutions have been determined in favour of the Lebanese to retain
their own mineral / water rights. UNISPAL
GA/EF/3025 of 14 November 2002
Other mismanagement issues could be the use of sheep dip and the potential for
entering into the water table or further "green" uses of water, which
are also best described as dubious, these include the recycling of paper, which
when mulched down and cleansed, does indeed save trees, but as a consequence
destroys the water it is cleansed with.
Summary
The fall of Iraq has highlighted one of the fundamental flaws in the Southern
hemisphere, and thus potential conflict within the Middle East and Asia - water.
Natural disasters, industrial accidents, misuse and mismanagement is blamed,
but the singular biggest attributable cause is undoubtedly man. Human
Actions Worsen Natural Disasters: Worldwatch Institute New Release
Environmentalists can be split into two major camps: ecocentric, who view the
eco system of man, animal and plant as equal, and anthropocentric, viewing everything
of the environment through a whats in it for man view. The Tokyo Summit has
taken an anthropocentric view in which technology can somehow "repair"
the water. This view is almost plausible in that natural products do have the
pliability to repair themselves under the right terms and conditions, however
since demand is growing at three times faster than the growth rate, this can
be considered implausible simply because we dont have time to take the risk
of not getting a technological solution in time.
Conflict over the supply of water are currently contested in Israel and Lebanon,
in one of the most volatile regions of the Middle East, if not the World. Further
conflict appears unavoidable while such progressive demand grows for water.
Terrorism aspects cannot be ruled out BBC
NEWS | Science/Nature | Water shortages 'foster terrorism'
Question marks are raised against some of the biological weapons used in Colombia
- Mycoherbicides - and there effects on the local water table. Colombia
Peace Association - Continuing US Fumigations in Colombia, United States Terrorism
by Proxy
Recommendations
Repairs to the Iraqi water supply from Basra to Baghdad will be typical of the
challenge facing Middle Eastern policy makers in the future.
The
3rd World Water Forum declared it wished to see water provision as a basic
universal human right and to halve the poor water supply by 2015. Presumably
the other 0.6 billion with this UN right to the provision of freshwater will
have to wait for another conference in order to exercise their rights to drink
to it. This clear anomaly should be resolved immediately
A Chinese model of waste management has demonstrated good initial results, by
separating waste into usable waste, and refining the rest. International policy
makers should take notes of the Chinese results, although preservation of existing
water supplies seems to be the most obvious solution to protecting existing
clean freshwater supplies.
Finally the development of multi pipelined trans national oil facilities from
the Middle East to Asia has caused great consternation. The twin development
of water and oil pipelines to be laid at the same time would make a far greater
impact on the life of the average citizen for centuries to come in Asia and
the Middle East. Water
solutions
Copyright S
Coleman 2003 10 May 2003 Last updated 8 December
2003
| Additional
Useful Resources [21 May 1997] GA/9248 : GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS CONVENTION ON LAW OF NON-NAVIGA http://waternet.rug.ac.be/ International Year of Freshwater: International Year of Freshwater 2003 (3.01b) The UN World Water Development Report | Facts and Figures | Sharing water resou Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)| The UN World Water Development Report World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) | Facts and Figures |
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