Remarks by Dr. Fadi Comair -
Energy & Water Crisis -
Friday, September 1, 2017
The Geopolitics of “water, energy and food ” is one of the most important strategic issues for the security and social stability of the Arab region.
They have national, regional and international dimensions due to the interdependence of water and energy and their economic and political importance for all the states in order to ensure their needs and the development of their economies.
The Arab region witnessed many conflicts over natural resources such as water and fossil energy that are influenced by the increasing global changes (global warming...) .
The region is already under pressure because of the political and military conflicts generating mass population transfer, the displaced communities (one and a half million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and two millions Syrian refugees in Jordan), and the growing demand on water and the unsustainable management of this sector.
Those pressures might cause the depletion of renewable and non-renewable natural resources (groundwater, fossil water) and the deterioration of water quality in this region; thus it is necessary to emphasize the Water-Energy- Food Nexus.
Water has become an urgent need for sustainable development in the Arab World; the total volume of available surface water resources in the Arab countries is estimated at 277 billion m3 per year, of which only 43% originates from Arab countries, the rest coming from outside the region.
This is the first challenge for policy makers in different countries because of the difficulty of satisfying the growing demand on water, while the second challenge is the availability and the access to fresh water (the share of fresh water per person in the Arab region being the lowest in the world with a value of 800m3 per year while the world average value is 7500m3 per year).
The Arab region suffers from water depletion and exhaustion, which highlights the need to resort to non-traditional means (industrial) in this area in order to produce fresh water suitable for consumption and irrigation, in particular:
- The desalination of seawater requiring a high energy consumption( Arab states of the Gulf devote about 30% of their energy production to the desalination of water).
- Drilling deep wells in non-renewable underground reservoirs (fossil aquifers) and pumping water to feed the Arab cities with drinking water (Jordan pumped water from DIZI to Amman with a depth of 1000 m and a transfer equivalent to 350 km) as well as the construction of the Great river (1200 m ) and a transfer equivalent to 3000 km. This is what exposes underground reservoirs (linked to food safety) to exhaustion and to future conflicts over shared aquifers.
As for the third challenge, it can be identified as “ensuring food security”; the irrigation sector in the Arab region uses around 80 % of the renewable fresh water. This large percentage is due to the use of old irrigation methods instead of modern ones such as the drip irrigation which consumes 6000 m3 of water per hectare instead of 10000 m3 / hectare, as well as the absence of consumption of unconventional waters (refined waste water) of the North Mediterranean area.
The fourth challenge that I place among the perils is time factor and climate change that have a huge influence on the amount of available water in the rivers.
A study has been undertaken to see the effect of a 2 degrees increase in temperature ( by Professor Jean Jouzel, Vice President of the Giec Committee and Nobel Prize winner of 2007), on a country rich in water resources(Lebanon); the impact on precipitation was 30% less than the annual average rate and the annual transmission of the snow line increased by 300m (from 800 to 1100 m).
Unfortunately the eternal glaciers in Lebanon have lost 23% of their volume in the last 15 years and I urge from this forum to undertake a research workshop, similar to the one in the Himalayas in India.
How will the situation in the Arab region be, with a semi-arid climate that is turning into a completely dry climate because of the unsustainable Water management and energy sources; a management that is not based on integrated resource management (IWRM).
This reality turns the attention of states to the water of their neighbors ignoring international laws.
The United Nations has addressed this to avoid conflicts, wars and damages and to achieve an optimal, and equitable utilization of shared water sources based on the 1997 United Nations Convention in order to establish the concept of hydro-diplomacy and cooperation rather than the military hegemonic management of shared river basins, which represents the fifth challenge.
The Arab states ratified this convention; Lebanon was the first initiator in 1999 and applied it to the Orontes basins.
Lebanon established a new concept: Hydro-diplomacy.
The concept of hydro-diplomacy was adopted by UNESCO through which we published in 2015 a book entitled “Science diplomacy and transboundary water management : The Orontes river Case.
Lebanon proposed the principle of international cooperation on water as a way of converging people and to promote peace around water and to produce major economic benefits in order to create regional and international organizations for Management of shared basins so all riparian states would be presented and could be under the supervision of the United Nations as the following basins: The Jordan, the Nile river, the Tigris-Euphrates and the common groundwater basins, which also applies to the Gulf and Maghreb countries.
Water is the symbol of life for future generations.
The French National Assembly encouraged the adaptation of the concept Hydro-diplomacy in the report of the Committee of Foreign Affairs: -Lucas and Glavani No: 4070 Geopolitics of Water and the Challenge of Governance- and reminded that the Arab-Israeli conflict is based on two objectives: territory and water, namely the dominant position in military control; the conflict with Lebanon to occupy the farms of Shebaa.
The French report also evoked the water crisis on the Wazzani in 2002 and Israel threatened to destroy Lebanon following the implementation of three pumps of 7 million m3 out of 135 million m3 to decrease the thirst of the south population after Israel's withdrawal from that region.
Israel bombed in 2006 during the July attack the site of the project of the Orontes dam. This attack was a message to Lebanon not to build a dam on the Hasbani River, in addition to the destruction of the Arab project facilities in 1967.
In Palestine, according to the World Bank report, 90% of water is used by Israel, while the Palestinians only benefit from 10% and this difference appears in water consumption between Palestinians and Israelis.
Based on the report of the French National Assembly, the political domination of Syria is defined by the occupation of the Golan Heights, which cover 22% of Israel's water needs; this case is also similar to the Tigris-Euphrates where Turkey exerts hydrous pressure on Iraq and Syria after the construction of the GAP project in Turkey.
We note that some countries in the Middle East have refused to sign the United Nations Convention of 1997 (Turkey, Israel) and the strategy for the Union for the Mediterranean which we had the honor to set up with France, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Morocco was rejected due to the following :
- A strategy based on the UN Convention (rejection by Turkey).
- The use of the term "occupied territories" in this strategy and the request to replace it with "territories under occupation"(rejection by Israel).
Hydro-hegemony burden :
The Oslo accords is a kind of bilateral cooperation between these countries and Israel. Jordan, located at the bottom of the basin, is working with Israel to develop the Red Sea - Dead Sea Canal Project, which provides for more than one billion cubic meters of non-conventional water to meet their needs. Recently, Palestine seeks to participate in this project, which should include all the opponent countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and occupied Palestine. However, due to the pressure on all Arab countries, this project was limited to two involved parties: Israel and Jordan.
Lebanon presented to the United Nations the project to integrate traditional and non-traditional water in order to set up a management committee for a common basin under the auspices of the United Nations.
As for the Nile River, Egypt headed by the President Abdel Fattah Sissi has been working hard since 2015 with the states of Sudan and Ethiopia to transform the Nile River into a center of cooperation and prosperity for the three countries mentioned above and all the concerned states.
Energy Challenges versus Water and Food:
The geopolitics of energy in the Arab region has witnessed new actors on the scene after the previous existence of a single player : the United States of America (Quincy pact: the 14th of February 1945, President Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia met aboard the Quincy and concluded an agreement in which the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia military security – military assistance, training and a military base at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia – in exchange for secure access to supplies of oil, the agreement was renewed in 2005 by President George W. Bush. ); at the end of the Cold war, Russia and China became regional productive forces in the field of fossil and nuclear energy.
Similarly, non-Arab regional powers have emerged: Iran and Turkey on one side and Israel on another; Contradictory forces bringing different complexities to the Arab scene and influencing on the Gulf States and other countries of the Middle East.
These forces seek to control and change the course of gas transfer and crude oil pipelines to supply to the European continent, as well as maritime straits for the transportation of fossil energy; Some of them have entered the nuclear technology orbit for energy and food security purposes in the Gulf and Middle East, and not for military purposes. This has pushed international powers such as Russia to change the path of gas transmission to Europe (Gazprom South Stream) and replace it (Blue Stream). (This is what has also prompted IRAN to pass gas pipelines through Iraq and Syria facing Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey).
The conflict and the attraction between international forces and non-Arab regional forces in the geopolitical energies of the Arab region lead to the absence of political and security stability in the region, which leads to mobile Arab revolutions.
In addition, Israel is working to establish its hold on the Leviathan gas fields in the Mediterranean region in order to extract this resource and free itself from Arab gas. Recently some eligibility emerged for Lebanon (the right to 850 km2 of the discovered oil fields that Israel is trying to extract).
This complicated situation forces us to provide future projects that will enable people to reach self-sufficiency, especially in terms of food, water and energy; The reason why we highlight the theme of electrical connection and the correlation between water, oil and gas production and regional cooperation.
Electrical Connections at Interstate Level:
Electrical connections in the Arab region lead to many advantages, including the lack of the need to build new power plants due to the exchange of loads between countries at a time when consumption reaches its peak and which varies from one country to another, as well as reduced operating costs. Networking also enables electricity generation to be launched at sites where projects are economically feasible, leading to a reduction in pollution levels in the region.
The liberalization of the electricity sector and the promotion of private sector participation in infrastructure investment should facilitate the transfer and the exchange of experience and the dissemination of all information on the reform of the electricity sector; in other terms the promotion of energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies to achieve regional integration in this field.
Water, Energy Production and Food Nexus:
Extraction, production and refining of oil and gas require large quantities of water, creating a dilemma in the Arab region and threatening the water resources.
Some Gulf countries rely on non-renewable groundwater and water desalination to meet their demand from the water sector; desalination of water consumes about 30% of the total energy used in Bahrain and groundwater pumping operations consume 14% of the total amount of fuel used in Libya.
Water production consumes a lot of energy in most Arab countries( majority of which is not having an abundance in water resources).
Climate change, water scarcity, agricultural land degradation and desertification are reflected negatively on food production in the region, prompting some countries to import quantities of needed products.
The increase in fuel prices has led to the deprivation of large quantities of food on the world market, such as rice and sugar. These consequences have negatively affected the populations of the region and some countries have taken extraordinary measures to ensure a minimum of food for their citizens, Egypt deliberately for example prevented the export of rice from its territory in order to avoid its loss from the local market.
Conditions of occupation and internal conflicts lead to malnutrition and food insecurity, especially among the poor categories of people.
Proposal of an institutional Framework and Regional Cooperation:
Regional cooperation, is - now more than ever- a mandatory condition for achieving the common development goals in the Arab region in order to achieve the desired prosperity.
Regional cooperation helps to facilitate the flow of production factors, capital and direct investment as a way to accomplish a sustainable development.
Based on the information presented above, we propose the establishment of a high authority for water, energy and food to identify all the needs of the Arab countries and to develop a general guideline and a comprehensive road map that should be adopted by Arab governments at very high level to face all risks and rush to solve the problems of water, energy and food in the Arab world, while relying on the concept of integrated management to maintain social security for future generations.
