The leaders of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmental organization that uses environmental advocacy as a peacebuilding tool, were recently recognized as “Heroes of the Environment 2008” by Time magazine. FoEME understands that “the road to sustainability, like the road to peace, is going to be a slow, messy human project of community organizing, education and trust-building,” says Time correspondent Andrew Lee Butters.

FoEME’s projects include Good Water Neighbors, which uses joint water management to strengthen ties between Israeli and Arab communities on opposite sides of the Jordan River; as well as a plan to build a transboundary peace park on an island in the Jordan River that would attract ecotourism. “We share the same environment, particularly the same water resources,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of FoEME. “And if we don’t start working together, we’re not going to have an environment.”

For more information on FoEME’s environmental peacebuilding activities, see “Rehabilitating the Jordan River Valley Through Cross-Border Community Cooperation” (May 8, 2006) and “Good Water Makes Good Neighbors: A Middle East Pilot Project in Conflict Resolution” (January 22, 2003), two events hosted by the Environmental Change and Security Program.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a paper examining climate change’s likely effects on water resources, as well as how these changes in water resources could affect ecosystems, agriculture, human health, and the economy.

In “Warfare Ecology” (abstract), an article published in the September issue of BioScience, Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson argue that a new, holistic approach to the ecological study of warfare is needed, encompassing preparations for war, combat, and post-conflict activities.

The conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 cusec inside Pakistan at any time,” according to Dawn. India continued to fill the dam well into September, provoking outrage from Pakistan, despite guarantees that water flow into Pakistan would not diminish. Pakistani officials reported that “Pakistan had been losing up to 15,000 cusec of water every day because of India’s action.”

Regional water disputes are no anomaly in Central, East, and South Asia, where population growth and increases in per capita consumption have led to competition over water resources. In recent years, Indiahas invested in hydroelectric projects—such as the Baglihar Dam, projected to generate 450-900 megawatts of electricity—to satisfy a burgeoning middle class hungry for energy. With the dam just up the river from the Pakistani border, Pakistanis have long worried that the dam would severely limit the region’s water and curtail farmers’ ability to irrigate crops. Since construction began in 1999, Pakistani officials have objected to the project, arguing that the more energyIndia attempts to generate from the dam, the less water will reachPakistan.

Last week, Pakistanissued a formal protest to the Permanent Indus Commission, a body formed by the 1960 treaty, over the reduction of Chenab River flows and asked for an emergency meeting with the governing body in order to address the danger posed to Pakistani rice farmers who rely on water flow to irrigate their crops. Since then, prospects for diplomatic resolution have warmed: Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on the “sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly” last week to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the Permanent Indus Commission is schedule to meet this month, following an invitation from India to Pakistan’s Indus Water Commissioner to meet to resolve the issue.

Fortunately, water disputes have been one area where Pakistan and India have been able to manage their grievances and find resolution through diplomacy rather than force. By working together on environmental issues—whether water resource management, transboundary forest conservation, or endangered species protection—where cooperation is often possible, even longtime foes can move closer to resolving their larger conflict.

Photo: The Chenab River, flowing here through Himachal Pradesh in the Indus Basin, provides farmers and local populations with the water required to meet their sustainable needs. Courtesy of flickr user Motographer.

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Drought, continuing violence, returning refugees, and the spike in global food prices are combining to produce a serious threat to Afghan food security, reports the New York Times. The World Food Program has expanded its operations in Afghanistan to cover a total of nearly 9 million people through the end of next year’s harvest, sending out an emergency appeal to donors to cover the costs.

In the new video “Water Wars or Water Woes? Water Management as Conflict Management,” Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) Director Geoff Dabelko explains that although newspapers and politicians constantly warn of impending “water wars,” water rarely leads to interstate violence. By focusing on “water wars” – which evidence shows are extremely rare – we “are missing a lot of what is important around conflict management around water,” argues Dabelko.

In a speech last week, National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar hinted at the contents of Global Trends 2025, the intelligence report being prepared for the next U.S. president on future global threats. It predicts that U.S. global dominance will decline over the next several decades, as the world is buffeted by climate change and shortages of energy, water, and food. The intermediate draft of the report was reviewed this summer at a Wilson Center meeting hosted by ECSP.

The Middle East is home to some of the most intractable conflicts in the world. But it is also generating some of today’s most creative approaches to peacebuilding—several of which use the environment to promote harmony and stability.

Time magazine recently highlighted the efforts of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) to restore the Jordan River to a more healthy, natural state (video). Currently, the Israeli and Jordanian governments both heavily subsidize water for farmers, who grow unsustainable, water-intensive crops. As a result, in many places, the Jordan River has been reduced to a sluggish, polluted trickle. The water level in the Dead Sea, which is fed by the Jordan, sinks approximately one meter each year because it is no longer being replenished. In addition, according to FOEME, because much of the Lower Jordan River “is a closed military zone and off limits to the public, most people simply do not know that the river is drying up.” If less water were diverted from the Jordan, pollution were reduced, and access to the river were increased, FOEME believes that local communities could establish—and thrive on—ecotourism and sustainable agriculture.

FOEME has also proposed the creation of a transboundary peace park on an island in the middle of the Jordan, and has secured the endorsements of the mayors and communities on both sides of the river.

A USAID-supported project on the Israeli-Jordanian border—this one in the Arava desert—brings young people together to study the environment in an attempt to forge personal connections and build peace. The students study the survival mechanisms of desert fauna and flora; learn how to tap solar energy and build structures out of natural materials; and are even carrying out research on the controversial plan to divert water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea. One-third of each semester’s students are Israeli Jews; one-third are Arabs from Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, or other nations; and one-third are American and European. “The main problem in the Middle East is that people don’t know their neighbors,” says Rabbi Michael Cohen, founding faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which runs the program.

Photo: The Jordan River is only a muddy trickle in many places. Courtesy of Flickr user j.fisher.

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For those of you following the development of the “virtual water” concept, which could help us accurately value goods on the international market, address food security in arid regions, and foster global cooperation, Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba provides useful commentary in “Water News: Bad, Good and Virtual,” his article in the current issue of American Scientist (subscription required). Like other water experts, Smil touts the potential of desalination and virtual water to change the way we address today’s water challenges (see my recent post on a Scientific American article by Harvard professor Peter Rogers), but he also argues that if we truly want to reduce our water use, we will have to adopt “rational food production” and “sensible carnivory.”

Smil defines virtual water as “all freshwater required for [the production of] a crop or an animal foodstuff in the place of its origin” and recognizes it as a valuable accounting tool. Yet he also believes that Americans and other affluent consumers must adopt two additional practices if we truly wish to change the way we use and manage our water resources. The first is rational food production; for instance, the United States currently produces approximately 45 percent more food than is needed by its population. The second is sensible carnivory; Smil calculates that if Americans reduced beef, pork, and poultry consumption by a third, they could save a total of 120-140 cubic kilometers of virtual water over the course of a year (equivalent to the amount of virtual water used to make 15 billion leather shoes).

For those who desire a more technical understanding of the concept, the article also goes into detail as to why some crops require more water, why the virtual water costs of dairy and meat products are so high, and why the amount of water saved by importing virtual water depends on the conditions in both the importing and exporting countries.

Photo: Men plowing fields in Mali. Virtual water would encourage arid countries like Mali to import food and devote their scarce water resources to other uses. Courtesy of Curt Carnemark / World Bank.

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