The Danger of Water Wars

Fred Pearce is the author of When the Rivers Run Dry: Water the Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century, March 22nd is World Water Day, an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

by Fred Pearce

Water consumption has tripled in the past 30 years and there's a growing danger that disputes over the most necessary of resources could erupt into violence

Water is rapidly becoming one of the defining crises of the 21st century. Climate change is making its availability increasingly uncertain. And we are using ever more of the stuff. In the past three decades the human population has doubled but human use of water has tripled -- largely because, ton-for-ton, modern 'high-yielding' crop varieties often need more water than the old crops.

A typical Westerner consumes, directly and through thirsty products like food, about a hundred times their own weight in water every day. That is why some of the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, Indus, Yellow River and Colorado, no longer reach the sea in any appreciable volume. All their water is taken.

Many parts of the world, notably the Middle East, are running out of water to feed themselves. In response, a vast global trade is emerging. Not in water itself, but in thirsty crops like grains and sugar and cotton. Europe is a major importer of thirsty crops. Meanwhile the US, along with a handful of other countries, like Australia, Argentina, Thailand and Canada, are major exporters.

Economists call this the 'virtual water trade.' Many countries would starve without it. But as more and more countries run short of water, the trade will be disrupted. And the threat of wars over water will grow.

Link Roundup: Israeli Soldiers Speak, UUs in Kenya

Beacon author Philip Winslow, in his recent book Victory for Us is to See You Suffer, several times quotes and highlights the activities of the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, "an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah."

Breaking the Silence sponsors tours to Hebron, and has organized exhibits to illustrate the enormous strain the occupation places on the soldiers who are assigned to protect settlements, as well as the myriad injustices and indignities inflicted upon the Palestinians in the Territories. Currently on display in Philadelphia until February 24, and coming to Cambridge March 1, is their exhibit of photos taken by soldiers (including the one featured here), artifacts of the occupation, and video testimonies from former soldiers. Hours and locations are available on their website, as well as photos, video, testimonies, and more information about the group and their goals.

Via Philocrites, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee just returned from a trip to Kenya. The emergency delegation was dispatched to assess the political and human rights situation there in the wake of the election in December. UUSC President Charlie Clements, in addition to submitting testimony to Congress on the mission (pdf), sent blog dispatches describing the unrest:

Kenya feels like it is on the edge of a precipice. Anguish and anger are pushing people into a free fall toward communal violence, which neither the leaders nor the security forces may be able to easily stop once it begins. As Kisumu, and now perhaps Nakuru (if the reports we got this afternoon are true), slip toward economic meltdown, the volatility of the situation will only increase. I fear that both Kibaki and Raila may be too insulated by hardliners to sense that they are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

For more information on the crisis, visit the UUSC's Kenya Crisis page.

Letter to the Palestinian Leadership: Try a New Approach

by Philip C. Winslow

Open Letter to:

President Mahmoud Abbas, Ramallah
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza City
Occupied Palestinian Territories

Dear President Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyeh:

I write to you in frustration and some alarm as the latest violence unfolds in the Gaza Strip and in Israel. I write as a journalist and humanitarian aid worker who has lived in the West Bank, believes in a two-state solution, and supports no political agenda. The violence, driven by factions that should be under your control and then by subsequent Israeli strikes, has again reached dangerous levels. Your leadership and a radical new approach are urgently required.

The week’s news photos were familiar to me, as they were to you and all Palestinians and Israelis. Body parts and glass shards littering the street after the suicide bombing on February 4 – the first in more than a year – at a shopping center in Dimona in southern Israel. The same week, more pictures of Israelis standing in their shattered living rooms in traumatized Sderot after the latest barrage of Palestinian rockets from Gaza. The photos that preceded and followed were equally familiar, of the inevitable funerals of Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids: mourners wearing green Hamas headbands and shouting for revenge and hoisting aloft youthful corpses in open caskets; grieving Palestinian mothers holding photos of their martyred sons.

The empty statements were as disappointing as ever. The script could have been lifted verbatim from any incident between 2001 and 2004 when I lived and worked in the West Bank. Same slaughter, same excuses, just change the place and the name of the speaker.

Of Hoopoes and Hummus: Resisting Pessimism in the West Bank

by Philip C. Winslow

Driving north out of Jerusalem after twelve months away was like settling back to watch a favorite film. The olive trees and stony hills baked under the late summer sun and the eroded limestone cliffs at Wadi Harimiya— “thieves,” in Arabic—looked as smooth as they must have thousands of years ago. There used to be a tough Israeli army checkpoint at Harimiya, and Israeli settlers once fired a few shots at me and my assistant just south of there when I was a field operations officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The September air smelled hot and clean, and we made it to Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank, with no delays. I even spotted a hoopoe, my favorite bird, with its exotic flight and plumage. As a foreign visitor I could afford to watch birds. Palestinians, who still queued for hours at the grimy checkpoints, wouldn’t have cared whether I was enjoying the scenery. Their lives had not changed for years, and in this territory, about the size of Delaware, more than 500 obstacles of various types, plus the formidable West Bank barrier, kept them from moving freely.