Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
countries have agreements over use of the Nile's waters. Given that Egypt and Sudan are
the last two states through which the river flows before entering the Mediterranean, similar
agreement over water rights with countries further upstream would seem desirable. Ham-
mering out the details of such a treaty has, to date, proved insurmountable, and differences
in opinion over rights to Nile water continue to underlie many of the political issues in this
part of the world.
Agreements to resolve disputes over water resources have a very long history. The begin-
nings of international water law can be traced back at least to 2500 BC, when two Sumeri-
an city states - Lagash and Umma - reached an agreement to end a dispute over the water
resources of a tributary of the River Tigris in the Middle East. Wrangles over water are
still a significant potential source of conflict in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin due to a lack of
agreements in the contemporary era. While there is currently a water surplus in this region,
the scale of planned developments has raised concerns. The Southeastern Anatolian Pro-
ject in Turkey, a regional development scheme on the headwaters of the two rivers, envis-
ages the eventual construction of 22 dams. In 1990, when the reservoir behind the Ataturk
Dam began to fill, stemming the flow of the Euphrates, immediate alarm was expressed
by Syria and Iraq, despite the fact that governments in both countries had been alerted and
discharge before the cut-off had been enhanced in compensation. Full development of the
Southeastern Anatolian Project, expected by about 2030, could reduce the flow of the Eu-
phrates by as much as 60%, which could severely jeopardize Syrian and Iraqi agriculture
downstream. The three Tigris-Euphrates riparians have tried to reach agreements over the
water use from these two rivers, and the need for such an agreement is becoming more
pressing.
Force has been used in conflicts over scarce water resources elsewhere in the Middle East.
Attempts to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers led to multiple military in-
cidents between Israel, Syria, and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967, just before the
Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours, then prime minister Levi Eshkol de-
clared that 'water is a question of survival for Israel', and that Israel would use 'all means
necessary to secure that the water continues to flow'.
Since then, the spectre of 'water wars' has assumed greater prominence in popular views
of how relations between states sharing a river basin, particularly those in the Middle East,
will develop in the future. However, not all authorities see more inter-state conflicts as
either inevitable or even the most important aspect of transboundary river management.
National economic development is just one dimension of 'water security', the idea of sus-
tainable access to adequate quantities of water, of acceptable quality, for multiple uses.
Such uses also include social and cultural needs but important ecosystem functions too. All
