(UPI) -- Israel's feud with the Palestinians over dwindling West Bank water resources stymied an EU effort this week to secure a water management strategy for the Mediterranean region where 290 million people face shortages by 2025.
Last month, Israeli troops killed a 16-year-old Palestinian and critically wounded another teenager in a clash with Jewish settlers over a well near the city of flash point city of Nablus.
That's an extreme case, to be sure. But it reflects the growing tension in the West Bank, which Israel is slicing up with its security barrier and annexing a large chunk of land Palestinians want for a future state.
The Palestinians claim Israel is stealing their water, while the 400,000 Jewish settlers are up in arms because they fear they will be forced to abandon the West Bank as part of a peace deal.
The March 20 bloodshed in Nablus, many fear, is a portent of the battle ahead as the water shortage goes beyond crisis, worsened by years of drought, growing Israeli requirements and on the Arab side, poor conservation and planning.
According to the World Bank, Israelis consume four times as much water per person as Palestinians.
In October, Amnesty International accused Israel of neglecting Palestinian infrastructure development and leaving 200,000 Palestinians without running water.
Jewish settlers use the same amount of water as 2.3 million Palestinians, Amnesty alleged. Israel denied the allegations.
By most estimates, half the water Israel consumes is taken from its neighbors, the Palestinians and the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1980.
These sources are drying up and Israel needs to find new sources. One it has long coveted is the Litani River in south Lebanon, which at one point flows 2 miles from the border.
Even before Israel became a state in 1948, Zionist leaders had their eyes on the Litani, and wanted the Jewish state to extend deep into what is now Lebanon, amounting to around one-third of the modern-day state.
The Litani, along with the Syrian headwaters of the Jordan River, were considered to be vital for the economic well being of the future Jewish state.
Much of this territory was conquered in the 1967 war. Israel's invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were motivated in part by the desire to control the Litani.
But that all ended when Israel quit south Lebanon in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.
The irony is that while Israelis and Palestinians scrap over the West Bank's overworked water sources, the Lebanese are literally letting their water drain away through inept management and failure to conserve or build a proper supply system.
Tiny Lebanon is relatively rich in water resources, with an average 73.5 billion cubic feet of renewable hydraulic resources.
"We use about half of that as drinking water or for irrigation and industrial purposes," said Fadi Comair of the Energy and Water Ministry. "The rest … is dumped in the Mediterranean."
He said that unless action is taken soon -- and there's no sign it will -- Lebanon could effectively run dry within four years.
And as water supplies dwindle, so tension between Israel and its neighbors, and between Arab states such as Egypt and their neighbors, will intensify.
Israel, technologically the most advanced state in the region, has major recycling projects. According to official figures, some 70 percent of recycled water is reused.
However, notes David Newman, professor of political geography at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, "There have been numerous incidents during the past 50 years in which water has been an added source of conflict … between Israel and its neighbors."
Two days before the 1967 war began, Israeli warplanes bombed a dam being built by Syria to block the Yarmuk River flowing into the Jordan and from there into Lake Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel's main reservoir.
"The message was sent that any attempt to tamper with the natural flow of water into Israel would be seen as a casus belli," Newman noted.
Ghazi al-Rababah, a Jordanian political science professor, warned in late November that Israeli will go to war against Lebanon, Syria and Egypt over water, with a major conflict with Egypt for control of the Nile River within seven years.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/04/16/Arab-Israeli-water-feuds-get-worse/UPI-31031271437138/
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
20 % of the world's supply of fresh water in jeopardy
The future of 20 percent of the world's supply of pure fresh water is in jeopardy because a surprise decree by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will allow a heavily polluting pulp mill to reopen on the southern shore of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia.
Magnificent, almost pristine Lake Baikal, the "Pearl of Siberia," is a source of national pride and awe, an icon for the Russian environmental movement, a World Heritage Site and the only natural area in Russia that's protected by its own law. Many locals consider the enormous lake - at 12,248 square miles, it's the size of Maryland and Delaware combined - sacred. Between its size, its 5,380-foot depth and its remarkable biodiversity, the lake's fate has global significance.
The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill is the only industrial enterprise that dumped waste directly into the lake, and the fight against its construction gave birth to the Russian environmental movement and emboldened public figures to speak out against the Soviet state.
Using chlorine to produce bleached cellulose, BPPM discharged as much as 4 million cubic feet of toxic waste into Lake Baikal annually. More than 6 million tons of solid waste accumulated in huge open-air pits near Baikal's shore, in an active earthquake zone. The estimated costs of cleaning it up run into the millions of dollars.
The Russian government tried for almost 20 years to halt pulp production and convert the mill to other uses. In 2000, as Russia's president, Putin ordered BPPM "to end discharge of toxic wastes into Baikal at the earliest possible date," and in 2007 he declared the lake a national treasure and moved a proposed oil pipeline beyond its watershed.
The next year, the Russian government prohibited the production of pulp and paper on Baikal without a closed wastewater cycle.
"If there is even the smallest, tiniest chance of polluting Baikal, then we must think of future generations," he declared. "We must do everything to make sure this danger is not just minimized, but eliminated."
Last summer, Putin came to Baikal and took a dive to the bottom of the world's deepest lake in a mini-submarine. Upon emerging, Putin declared Baikal to be "in good condition." Then, however, he declared that the lake was almost unpolluted and hinted that the shuttered mill might reopen.
Putin's change of heart came as a surprise, and opponents of his January decree say it's a shortsighted attempt to protect the business interests of one wealthy and well-connected Russian oligarch at the expense of a unique and precious ecosystem.
Oleg Deripaska, described as close to the Kremlin who saw his fortune dwindle in the financial crisis, owns 51 percent of BPPM's shares, and the Russian government owns the rest.
Environmentalists began to mobilize almost immediately, claiming that Putin's decision is illegal under Russian and international law and asking the United Nations Economic and Social Council to decide whether Baikal should be considered endangered.
More than 34,000 people have signed a petition to Medvedev on a popular Irkutsk Internet news site alone, and late last month, hundreds of people in Irkutsk braved the Siberian winter to protest Putin's decree.
As environmental groups across Russia raised the alarm, Irkutsk police raided Baikal Environmental Wave, a local environmental group that protested Putin's decree, on suspicion that it was using pirated computer software. No one believed that, however.
"Two of the four policemen were from the Center for Fighting Extremism," the group said. "They had a camera and asked us provocative questions, for example, 'Do you participate in anti-government demonstrations?' As they took a photograph of our student volunteer's identification card, they told her that her career was over."
Putin's new amendments to the Law on Lake Baikal allow the production of cellulose, paper and carton without a closed wastewater system, as well as the storage and burning of waste on Baikal's shores.
Environmentalists say the mill, built in 1966 and closed in 2008, shouldn't be allowed to resume operations without an independent investigation of the existing conditions, and they point to the fact that two years ago the mill was at the epicenter of a strong earthquake.
Former workers report that because the owner didn't invest in maintenance and repair, the mill's equipment is dangerously worn out. Even a pro-mill representative of the Baikalsk city council who came to a news conference organized by local environmentalists described the mill as "a house that needs to be torn down that someone just decided to put siding on."
The current director of BPPM said the enterprise would be "even more environmentally sound in the future than it was in the past." The mill's owners, however, recently admitted that the closed wastewater system never functioned properly, and said they'd need another three years to upgrade it.
The workers' trade union, however, reports that the mill is signing contracts for only three to seven months of work, and critics say Putin acted mainly to give more budget money to Deripaska and to give him a chance to sell the mill.
"I am sure that the mill will never work," said Vladimir Naumov, the president of a local investment fund and the founder of a charity fund called Baikal 3000. "Otherwise they can write off Siberia and Baikal entirely, because no one lives here, and no one cares."
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/12/2672177/putin-about-face-on-paper-mill.html
Magnificent, almost pristine Lake Baikal, the "Pearl of Siberia," is a source of national pride and awe, an icon for the Russian environmental movement, a World Heritage Site and the only natural area in Russia that's protected by its own law. Many locals consider the enormous lake - at 12,248 square miles, it's the size of Maryland and Delaware combined - sacred. Between its size, its 5,380-foot depth and its remarkable biodiversity, the lake's fate has global significance.
The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill is the only industrial enterprise that dumped waste directly into the lake, and the fight against its construction gave birth to the Russian environmental movement and emboldened public figures to speak out against the Soviet state.
Using chlorine to produce bleached cellulose, BPPM discharged as much as 4 million cubic feet of toxic waste into Lake Baikal annually. More than 6 million tons of solid waste accumulated in huge open-air pits near Baikal's shore, in an active earthquake zone. The estimated costs of cleaning it up run into the millions of dollars.
The Russian government tried for almost 20 years to halt pulp production and convert the mill to other uses. In 2000, as Russia's president, Putin ordered BPPM "to end discharge of toxic wastes into Baikal at the earliest possible date," and in 2007 he declared the lake a national treasure and moved a proposed oil pipeline beyond its watershed.
The next year, the Russian government prohibited the production of pulp and paper on Baikal without a closed wastewater cycle.
"If there is even the smallest, tiniest chance of polluting Baikal, then we must think of future generations," he declared. "We must do everything to make sure this danger is not just minimized, but eliminated."
Last summer, Putin came to Baikal and took a dive to the bottom of the world's deepest lake in a mini-submarine. Upon emerging, Putin declared Baikal to be "in good condition." Then, however, he declared that the lake was almost unpolluted and hinted that the shuttered mill might reopen.
Putin's change of heart came as a surprise, and opponents of his January decree say it's a shortsighted attempt to protect the business interests of one wealthy and well-connected Russian oligarch at the expense of a unique and precious ecosystem.
Oleg Deripaska, described as close to the Kremlin who saw his fortune dwindle in the financial crisis, owns 51 percent of BPPM's shares, and the Russian government owns the rest.
Environmentalists began to mobilize almost immediately, claiming that Putin's decision is illegal under Russian and international law and asking the United Nations Economic and Social Council to decide whether Baikal should be considered endangered.
More than 34,000 people have signed a petition to Medvedev on a popular Irkutsk Internet news site alone, and late last month, hundreds of people in Irkutsk braved the Siberian winter to protest Putin's decree.
As environmental groups across Russia raised the alarm, Irkutsk police raided Baikal Environmental Wave, a local environmental group that protested Putin's decree, on suspicion that it was using pirated computer software. No one believed that, however.
"Two of the four policemen were from the Center for Fighting Extremism," the group said. "They had a camera and asked us provocative questions, for example, 'Do you participate in anti-government demonstrations?' As they took a photograph of our student volunteer's identification card, they told her that her career was over."
Putin's new amendments to the Law on Lake Baikal allow the production of cellulose, paper and carton without a closed wastewater system, as well as the storage and burning of waste on Baikal's shores.
Environmentalists say the mill, built in 1966 and closed in 2008, shouldn't be allowed to resume operations without an independent investigation of the existing conditions, and they point to the fact that two years ago the mill was at the epicenter of a strong earthquake.
Former workers report that because the owner didn't invest in maintenance and repair, the mill's equipment is dangerously worn out. Even a pro-mill representative of the Baikalsk city council who came to a news conference organized by local environmentalists described the mill as "a house that needs to be torn down that someone just decided to put siding on."
The current director of BPPM said the enterprise would be "even more environmentally sound in the future than it was in the past." The mill's owners, however, recently admitted that the closed wastewater system never functioned properly, and said they'd need another three years to upgrade it.
The workers' trade union, however, reports that the mill is signing contracts for only three to seven months of work, and critics say Putin acted mainly to give more budget money to Deripaska and to give him a chance to sell the mill.
"I am sure that the mill will never work," said Vladimir Naumov, the president of a local investment fund and the founder of a charity fund called Baikal 3000. "Otherwise they can write off Siberia and Baikal entirely, because no one lives here, and no one cares."
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/12/2672177/putin-about-face-on-paper-mill.html
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)