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Lessons From International Water Sharing Agreements for Dealing With Climate Change
›Scientists agree that many countries in tropical, subtropical, and arid regions should expect changes to water availability and supply from climate change. The U.S. intelligence community has likewise warned of water-driven challenges not only for countries directly affected by water changes, but indirectly to various U.S. national security interests. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the popular literature has been quite clear about prophesizing wars over water.
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Historic Drought Prompts Water Innovation in California – Can It Be a Model?
›Pray for rain. Mega-drought. Winter salmon run nearly extinguished. Sierra snowpack dismal. These were just some of the headlines in California newspapers over the last five years during a historic drought that elevated water security to the top of everyone’s minds.
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The Rising Tide of Water Insecurity: Moving from Risks to Responses
›“Water is the frontline of climate change. It’s what every report that you see identifies as the sort of first and foremost effect we see from a climate changing world,” said Sherri Goodman, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center and formerly of CNA and the U.S. Department of Defense, on October 19.
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“You Are Asking About Pollution?”: One Journalist’s Perspective on the Mid East’s Environmental Crisis
›It was some point in May last year, shortly after ISIS surged into the city of Ramadi, and I was working on a story about Iraq’s fast-disappearing Mesopotamian Marshes. Keen to fact-check a few statistics with the Ministry of Water Resources and to hear the government line on the wetlands’ struggles, I dialed its Baghdad offices. After being passed from official to official like a hot potato, a young employee, Hussein, finally gave it to me straight. “No, no, we don’t have this sort of information,” he said, clearly impatient to get off the phone. “There are much more important things in Iraq right now.”
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Major Water Disputes Are Often Beyond War and Peace
›Early this June, the Israeli government cut off drinking water to people living in the Salfit region of the West Bank and three villages east of Nablus. The consequences have been dire. Thousands of Palestinians have been left with no running water in their homes, and factories have been forced to shutter. The power imbalance that leaves Palestinians so vulnerable to Israeli turns of the valve plays out every year, made possible by Israel’s occupation of the water-rich Golan Heights in 1967. What is perhaps most surprising is that the situation persists.
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Rowand Jacobsen, Ensia
Can New Water Tech Help Reduce Conflict in Middle East?
›August 9, 2016 // By Wilson Center StaffTen miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.
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Governance in Focus: Insights from the International Expert Forum on Climate Change and Conflict
›The International Expert Forum (IEF) is a series of seminars meant to facilitate dialogue between experts and policymakers on peace and security. Meeting in Stockholm this past May, the forum explored the connections between environmental issues, peacebuilding, and conflict while considering how environmental governance can aid in peacebuilding. The summary brief produced after the forum provides a useful snapshot of a fast-changing field of study.
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Behind the Headlines, Emerging Security Threats in the Middle East
›The Middle East, as much as ever, is the focus of international attention, but the obvious crises may be a distraction from deeper underlying issues.
Showing posts from category Israel.