Reflections: Blue Peace and promoting a culture of efficient natural resources management in the WANA region

In March in Amman, more than 130 stakeholders gathered from around the region to debate how new evidence on the water-peace nexus might forge new solutions to shared challenges.  The water crisis in the region is both evidenced and broadly admitted. The Arab states have the lowest freshwater availability per capita of any region in the world. Supply patterns are intermittent in many areas; around 17% of the population lack access to improved sources of drinking water (worse than the world average of 11%), and 20% lack access to improved sanitation facilities. Deleterious water practices — poorly regulated wastewater and solid waste disposal and unregulated industry — mean that meager water reserves are increasingly polluted and ecosystems have been compromised. Water pollution and unsafe waste disposal also have attendant consequences for health, urban poverty and reduced productivity. In several countries, these tensions are being exacerbated by refugee influxes. Indisputably, this situation will continue to worsen. Population growth will increase demand for water both directly and indirectly through energy and food, and the affects of climate change, such as extreme weather events and seawater intrusion, will aggravate each of these challenges.

If water scarcity wasn’t enough to deal with, the conflict engulfing the region is now threatening this precious natural resource. Daesh’s actions over the past year have added water to the ever-growing list of weapons of war. Had it not been recovered, the group’s seizure of the Mosul dam could have resulted in disaster flooding of thousands. Policy experts predict that as Daesh pushes out of Iraq, water resources in Lebanon, such as Lake Qaraoun, will become a viable target.

Admittedly, this is not altogether new, with conflicts over water merging with political sensitivities throughout the region over the last decades. What is new is how scholars are beginning to see water as a causal factor to conflict as opposed to an object of collateral damage. Many opine that the 2006-2011 drought in Syria — which pushed 1.5 million people off their land and into towns — was a key driver of the civil war. Scholars at the University of Sanaa are beginning to find evidence of similar causality with respect to Yemen. We need to better understand how inequitable access to basic resources operate as conflict triggers, not only in isolation, but in concert with other factors such as inequity in resource sharing, accountability and access to services.

As the conference progressed, the most tangible source of optimism came from an unlikely source: Africa. The Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (OMVS) was created in 1972 as a cooperative effort between Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal to manage the Senegal River and its drainage basin. Within the OMVS, states share in planning, financing and monitoring of the shared water for the domestic water sector, agriculture, energy, and transport. Each country has regional and local committees which meet every month to share advice and make decisions involving the basin. Some credit this transboundary initiative with helping to end the border conflict between Mauritania and Senegal in 1989-1991.
The unspoken, painfully obvious question was how could Africa –  a region riddled with equally onerous challenges – make such tangible progress when West Asia-North Africa has not? This in turn begged the question of what would need to happen for regional icons such as the Jordan River to transform into a shelter for a diverse ecosystem, a symbol of peace, and a source of prosperity for citizens? The discussion that followed raised three important points.

First, get your own house in order before attempting to navigate the complex arena of regional cooperation. Countries facing severe and chronic water scarcity need an evidence-based, and enforceable policy framework. Action plans must take into account the inter-sectoral nature of water including tourism, agriculture, industry, health and social protection. We must admit and confront the very real divergent and vested interests of those with a stake in water, energy and agriculture policy. Policy action plans must address basic issues first. For example, Jordan has extremely limited sources of water, but aged water infrastructure means that the country loses at least 76 billion litres of water annually due to leakage. Then, policy must address the extent to which our actions are making a bad situation far worse. This will involve difficult changes. Over-pumping of water tables and improper irrigation practices (which increase salinity) must be disincentivised or sanctioned. Pricing policies and subsidies must encourage efficient use of water in the agricultural sector, complemented by encouraging farming in better performing crops and creating new jobs outside of the agricultural sector.

Second, regional challenges require regional solutions. The West Asia region doesn't just share bodies of water; it shares populations, and it shares a regional food system. But saying that trans-boundary cooperation is necessary is not sufficient, and perhaps it is time to honestly articulate the challenges in play. When we asked our guests from Africa what factors were critical to an enabling environment for cooperation, they listed: (i) mutual trust and a willingness to give up some sovereignty around natural resources; (ii) promoting transparent information sharing about resource holdings; and (iii) trans-boundary water-sharing agreements that are honored but also legally enforceable”. Without wanting to sound like a killjoy, do these really seem like things that countries in this region can do right now? The common element in each of the above requirements is political will, and right now, there is just not enough of it. Add into this equation that some of the key players are in the midst of or struggling to ward off civil war, and the realism of a regional water treaty seems a long way off. As a start, we might look more closely at the reasons that have made the Jordan-Syria water agreements so difficult to benefit from and, in contrast, what incentives and political conditions allowed Turkey and Iraq to cooperate with better success. We must also recognize that while political stability, good governance, strong and effective institutions are critical to development, so to is to water policy. As governments come closer to forging a set of Sustainable Development Goals, we must think seriously about the pivotal role that natural resources management plays in good governance.

Third, we must transform water users into water stakeholders. The message from our African colleagues was that, whether it’s transboundary water cooperation or cleaner energy practices, citizens must own the ideas. They must have a sense of ownership over water resources before they can pressure governments to uphold rights to water. In much of this region, however, people are not informed about water scarcity. They are not aware of the interconnectedness between water and other development challenges, such as energy and food production. And they are certainly not aware of their own role in environmental protection. We therefore need to think more carefully about the structural and social changes that are needed to facilitate the empowerment of citizens as water ambassadors, and to transform current feelings of apathy and complacency into a generation that is willing to defend their rights to essential resources, secure livelihoods and health.

At the WANA Institute we know that such a transition is an incremental, cross-generational, and cross-sector project. We must look to engage new partners, even unlikely ones. Religious leaders, for example, could play a pivotal role in promoting a culture of efficient natural resources management.  We’re also looking at what might be learned from commons models in Africa. Under such models land, water and cultural resources are held and managed by communities themselves; regulation is through community constitutions and community management authorities, which articulate safeguards for equity in resource sharing and protect societies most vulnerable members. The natural resources challenges of the region are pervasive, but if the solution was simple, it would have been revealed by now. We must resist the tendency to think and operate in silos and instead promote a culture of multidisciplinary thinking and problem-solving. And if the central thesis of the Blue Peace process is valid —that water cooperation can lead a path to more peaceful relations between states — then surely it is worth exhausting even the most unexpected of leads.