Accountability for Better Water Management Results

April 2008 – Are countries in MENA region able to adapt their current water management practices to meet these combined challenges:

As the region’s economies and population structures change over the next few decades, demands for water supply and irrigation services will change accordingly;

Rainfall patterns are predicted to shift as a result of climate change;

Per capita water availability will fall by half by 2050?

The World Bank report “Making the Most of Scarcity: Accountability for Better Water Management Results in the Middle East and North Africa” tries to answer the question.

Source: Word Bank, 04 Apr 2008

Iraq: DFID-funded water plant opens in Southern Iraq

A new water filtration unit that will provide daily drinking water for up to half a million more people in Basra was opened [on 31 July 2008] by the Deputy Consul-General at the British Consulate, Fionna Gibb.

The project in Az Zubayr, which cost £1.25 million, was co-funded by DFID and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It is one of the final projects of DFID’s £42 million Iraq Infrastructure Services Programme which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Read more: DFID, 31 Jul 2008

Palestine, Gaza: drinking water contaminated with high levels of nitrate

Gaza/Leipzig. Palestinian and German scientists have recommended to the authorities in the Gaza Strip that they take immediate measures to combat excessive nitrate levels in the drinking water. 90 per cent of their water samples were found to contain nitrate concentrations that were between two and eight times higher than the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), say the researchers from the University of Heidelberg and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) writing in the specialist journal Science of the Total Environment.

Over the long term they recommend that the best protection would be provided by quality management for groundwater resources.

Read more: Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, ENN, 14 Aug 2008

Iraq: After 5 years of war, Iraqis desperate for water

Water and sewage are perennial challenges in {Iraq], where the overhaul of decrepit public works has been hindered by years of war and neglect.

Nearly a billion litres of raw sewage is dumped into Baghdad waterways each day — enough to fill 370 Olympic-sized pools.

[...]

Since 2003, the United States has spent about $2.4 billion on Iraq’s water and sanitation sector, and the Iraqi government has now taken over funding major construction. But the World Bank estimates that at least $14 billion is needed.

[...]

Acute cases of diarrhoea are three times more common in eastern Baghdad, where water service is most problematic, than in the rest of the city, the United Nations says. That side of the city has also seen a higher incidence of cholera.

[...]

[W]ater production now amounts to about 2.8 million cubic metres a day in Baghdad, still far below daily demand of 4 million cubic metres.

The state of Baghdad’s sewage system may be even more bleak. [...] “There wasn’t a lot of focus from the (former) regime on the long-term consequences of dumping raw sewage onto river banks,” an official at the U.S. embassy said on condition of anonymity.

The United Nations says that sewage seeping and being dumped into water supplies has “grave implications” for Iraqis’ health and the environment.

Read more: Missy Ryan and Sattar Rahim, Reuters, 24 Aug 2008

Yemen: alarm bells over water

Water availability in Yemen has been worsening by the year and the government has no clear strategy on how to deal with the problem, experts have said.

They say water shortages, which affect about 80 percent of the country’s 21 million people, are exacerbated by the high fertility rate, rapid urbanisation, the cultivation of `qat’ (a mild narcotic), a lack of public awareness, and the arbitrary digging of wells.

The experts made the remarks at a symposium on 12 August in Sanaa city organised by the Sheba Centre for Strategic Studies (SCSS), a local think-tank. Entitled Water Security in Yemen: Challenges and Solutions, the symposium brought together dozens of local officials and experts on water.

Read more: IRIN, 14 Aug 2008 ; SCSS, 12 Aug 2008

Iraq: IDPs in tent camps continue to suffer – IOM

While the rate of people fleeing their homes in Iraq has decreased during the first half of 2008, daily life for the thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in tent camps remains grim, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

“Tent camp residents have little or no access to basic services, cannot protect themselves against the elements or extreme weather, and are located far away from medical care, education and other services,” the IOM statement said. “These harsh conditions, combined with a cultural aversion to living without familial privacy and personal dignity, make tent camps a last resort for Iraqi IDPs.”

[...]

IOM, the 125-nation migration body, described the miserable conditions in Iraq’s largest IDP camp, al-Manathira, which is 20km south of Najaf (about 160km south of the capital, Baghdad) and home to 231 families (about 1,400 individuals). It said “families who were evicted from public buildings live in cramped tents and caravans with limited sanitation and drinking water”.

A lack of family privacy – highly valued in Iraqi culture – combined with unemployment and overcrowding has caused “significant tensions” among the inhabitants, it said.

[...]

“[E]very five to 10 tents shares one toilet and that embarrasses families as they can’t have privacy and that is why we’ve dug a pit in one corner of our tent,” [al-Khafaji, a father-of-two said].

In Qalawa camp in the northern province of Sulaymaniyah, IOM said that a group of IDPs who had settled on a piece of open land two years ago still do not have sanitation, electricity or toilets.

They “live surrounded by garbage”, the report said. “As a result, cases of typhoid have recently been reported.”

Source: IRIN, 17 Aug 2008

Jordan: new study could lead to a cleaner city of Zarqa

A team of local and international environmentalists is to conduct a six-month study of the polluted channel (known as `Saeil’), which cuts through the city of Zarka. The study [...] is funded by the Spanish government and other donors, including the European Union [and] is due to start in September [2008].

[...]

Effluent from chemical and other factories, the Ain Ghazal sewage facility, car wash stations, broken drains and the Greater Amman Municipality slaughterhouse, has been blamed for the growing pollution problem.

“We have a serious problem from the sewerage system in Abu Nusseir area: effluent seeps into the channel and affects agricultural land that produces some of the city’s needs,” said Mayor Mohammed Ghweiri. [T]he authorities were considering a US$15 million project to cover over the channel to curb the foul smells and improve the lives of local people.

The government is also contemplating building a water treatment plant close to the channel to treat industrial effluent from nearby industries.

Source: IRIN, 21 Aug 2008

Arab Water Academy Launched in Abu Dhabi

High level officials from more than 15 Arab countries, including 8 ministers in charge of water, and some 80 water experts from the Arab region and beyond attended the formal launching [on 6 July 2008] of the Arab Water Academy (AWA) in Abu Dhabi, under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, deputy prime minister of the UAE and chairman of the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD).

The Arab Water Academy is the brainchild of the Cairo-based Arab Water Council (AWC), a regional water policy think-tank chaired by Dr Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation and former President of the World Water Council, who also attended the meeting. Hosted by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB)’ s Dubai-based International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), in partnership with EAD, the Academy is a groundbreaking regional capacity development programme targeting decision-makers and industry executives. The Academy is being supported by the IDB and the World Bank.

[...]

Speaking to, reporters, Dr Shawki Barghouti, the ICBA Director General, said “The Academy will serve as a regional center of excellence for capacity development,for example, in integrated water resources management, utility management and water governance with a view to improving the delivery of water services through sustainable water sector strategies for advancing national economies of countries in the Arab region”. The Academy will also make extensive use of virtual communication platforms, media and broadcasting resources.

[...] the Academy will also forge strategic partnerships with leading academic and research institutions worldwide, such a Harvard University, Oxford University, Cambridge University and Cranfield University.

Source: SPA / IDB, 15 Jul 2008