« With water you can make politics. With land you can make war! », Benyamin Netanyahou (prime Minister of Israel)

JERUSALEM from  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Today I would like to highlight a very famous conflict about freshwater. The conflict between Israel and  Palestine  has received some attention from the press.

In their public statements, Israeli and Palestinian rulers only mention the issue partially of water compared to the issue of security for refugees or the status of Jerusalem. However, we do not have to be naive about the strategic intentions of Israeli Prime Minister when he utters this sentence. Such a position is characteristic of the symbolic value placed on the land and the instrumental value given to water.

Water doesn't rarefy! (Pierre-Alain Clément, 2010)

From a purely physical point of view, the amount of water on Earth is constant, unlike the amount of oil: water is a  renewable resource. According to Pierre Alian Clément, for these States, the issue doesn't arise in terms of the gap between demand and supply but between demand and resource renewal rates. Competition among states involved in this framework and was strengthened with increasing population pressure. This in practice means an accessibility issue with drinking water.

This is also the Ricardo Petrell (2011) reasoning, economist and founder of the International Committee for the World Water Contract. For him, the discourse of water scarcity in the image of a scarcity of oil serves to legitimize the privatization of the production and distribution of water, supposed to regulate consumption.

As we see, the issue of water is not an issue, at least not in the near future, in terms of overall quantity but in terms of local accessibility to quality water. In addition, human use tends to gradually deteriorate the quality of the water and to disrupt the cycle. Dramatic illustration of this impact can be illustrated by the environmental and health disaster of the drying up of the Aral Sea due to the diversion of two rivers tributaries

The "Peace Canal", a solution for tomorrow?

In 2007, the World Bank launched a tender for a feasibility study of a canal linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

The Peace Canal project aimed to solve the water shortage in the region and seeks to respond to the reduction in the size of the Dead Sea and to avoid its virtual disappearance by 2050. The channel would be able to capture the water of the Red Sea and it would refill this water in the Dead Sea. Designed to prevent the disappearance of the Dead Sea, the current project has however received criticism from environmentalists, about the fact that the Dead Sea has always been fed with fresh water, and not sea water. Filling the Dead Sea with the waters of the Red Sea cannot bring it back to its original conditions. (Trottier, 2008) If it is finally realized, this project will result in a total transformation of the ecology and water management  in the region.

Can we really talk about water wars?

I wanted to show you the gravity of the situation and the tensions it creates. However, in my opinion, it is clear that the water appears as an indicator of these tensions more than a factor of war. In the Middle East, each of the parties to the conflict bound is well known that water issues are quite central to the settlement of the  Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel may propose to move from tension to cooperation in promoting the canal project, for instance.

                                          [ Want to Know More? ] 

What is your watershed?

Today I am just going to post a quick article. I already told you that I going to talk about the link between freshwater resources and the people. I will try to see how this link can involve conflicts or wars, in the next following years.


Today, I am going to talk about you. 

Yes, about you behind your brand new screen. I bet that you know your State ( at least, I hope so). You know the name of your country, your city and your street. BUT! Do you know the name of the biggest river of your country? Do you know the name of the waterhole which you depend on for survival? In the case studies, I will touch on in my following posts. We will see that watersheds can be source of tension between countries.

Time to explore:

---> If you live in the USA, click here to find your watershed based    on your zip code.

---> If you live in an other countries, click here to find your watershed

« The second link, is also an amazing website about a lot of climat issues. I highly recommend you to have a look at it. »

Measuring, mapping and understanding water risks around the globe.  Yellow is a low risk (0-1) , red is extremely high risk (4-5), grey: no data. (WRI, 2014)

Map: Shale resources and water risks 

'Interactive maps showing the overlap of shale oil and gas resources and water stress. ' (WRI, 2014)

                                                                          Map: Country and River Basin Rankings

'Interactive map showing water risks by country and river basin.' (WRI, 2014)

To read. 

                                                                               

                                                                             

Sweet Water!

A blog for everyone to read!

My blog is about the worldwide effort to control water resources in a period of rising demand and climatic vulnerability. I will be using this blog to debate and examine about freshwater and humans. I will try to link the climate vulnerability with the geopolitical aspect and outline the potential global dilemma. Different geographical regions will be examined. My discourse will be informed by secondary data including several scientific articles and primary data including interviews. I will tell you a story to help you understand why I chose this topic and why it is of critical contempory importance.

You never miss water until you run out of it. 

That is what I learned when I went last year to Chad, in Africa, for a humanitarian trip.

Where is Chad?

 On my arrival, the Chadian capital was facing for two weeks a serious shortage of drinking water. In some neighborhoods of N'Djamena, it happened that the taps were dry for a day. Households were forced to sit up all night and wait the water. Women, bedpans on the head, roamed neighborhoods in search of the precious liquid. Around a hand-pump wells, they formed long queues. Water vendors porting, themselves, took advantage of the shortage to sell a bottle of twenty liters of water at 100 or 125 CFA francs instead of the usual 50 francs. 

The main source of fresh water in Chad is Lake Chad. The country is sharing the lake with 3 other countries. Tensions around this vital resources were and are still very vivid. After having lived this experience, I want to address this issue of fresh water (Ghanem, 2014).

'Access to "Blue Gold" is the cause of many international conflicts.'

According to Franck Galland,  (Galland,2008), the geopolitical dimension of water is often approached in a fantasy. Access to "Blue Gold" is the cause of many international conflicts. Or conversely, it is widely underestimated. The fresh water supply is seen as essentially belonging to "good governance" economic and technical nationally. Through seven short case studies well documented (Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Singapore, China), Franck Galland, shows how ecological, economic and geopolitical issues are linked to each other and what are their respective weights?

In accordance with The United Nation in (Environmental scarcity and conflicts), we have an increasing pressures on freshwater resources due to population and economic growth, industrial pollution and the depletion of  catchments. In some areas, water scarcity may be aggravated further by the effects of climate change. As a result of increased demand, some countries are now about to reach the limits of their water resources. This results in increased competition for freshwater. This is a competition between different countries, between urban and rural areas, between economic sectors or groups. Because of this, we may wonder when will the water world war burst?