Palestine, Gaza: US artists raise awareness about water crisis

A delegation of US artists visited Gaza to bring worldwide attention to the water crisis in the besieged territory. The artists came to help the local community paint murals about drinking water a basic human right. The initiative is part of the Water Writes project of the Estria Foundation, which is creating a series of 10 collaborative mural projects in 10 cities across the globe in areas impacted by water rights issues.

The murals in Gaza are being painted at the sites of water treatment units, which have been installed at schools and kindergartens, as part of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) Maia project, which was launched in September 2009, to provide Palestinian children with clean drinking water. Other organizations involved in the Maia Mural Brigade project are the Break The Silence Mural and Arts Project and the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project.

Water experts say that more than 90% of ground water in Gaza is not suitable for human consumption, adding that Palestinians get only a quarter of the water Israelis have access to. According to the Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility, Gaza will not have any fresh groundwater by 2015. Gazans consume more than 170 million liters from an aquifer which is the only source of groundwater in the strip.

The ongoing five year siege of Gaza has meant an increasingly long waiting list of spare parts and building materials. This directly has affected Gaza’s ability to maintain its sanitation and water treatment facilities.

Related web sites:

• Estria Foundation – Water Writes project
• Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) Maia project
• Facebook – Maia Mural Brigade

Source: Yousef al-Helou, Press TV [Iran], 11 Jul 2011

USAID supports MENA Network of Water Centers of Excellence with US$ 1.5 million grant programme

Seventeen water centres from 10 countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) came together in February-March 2011 to create the MENA Network of Water Centers of Excellence (MENA NWC).  The launch of the network took place during a meeting co-sponsored by USAID and the Qatar National Food Security Program (QNFSP) held from 28 February to 2 March 2011 in Doha, Qatar.

The network aims to link technical institutions across the Middle East and North Africa with each other, with counterpart institutions in the United States and elsewhere, with governments, and with the private sector to solve the critical water problems confronting the region.

On 8 May 2011, USAID Egypt launched the US$ 1.5 million MENA Water Grants Program. The focus is on training, applied research and the dissemination of information to transform water policy, management and capabilities within the MENA region. The grants are available for activities lasting 12-24 months up to a maximum of US$ 500,000 per year. The deadline for applications is 15 June 2011.

Web site: MENA NWC – mena-nwc.net

Source: John Wilson, USAID Impact Blog, 10 Mar 2011

Saudi Arabia: wastewater reuse gains importance

As Saudi Arabia faces an increasing demand for water to support its rapid population and economic growth, General Electric (GE) held the Saudi “Used to Useful” Water Reuse Summit in April 2011 to explore water reuse solutions to support water security in the Kingdom and the region.

Saudi Arabia’s advanced treated water reuse capacity is growing at more than 30 percent annually and is expected to reach 2.2 million cubic meters per day by 2016, from a current level of 260,000 cubic meters per day.

Saudi Arabia has mandated a target of 11 percent of its water use to come from treated wastewater, which is suitable for domestic and industrial uses such as landscaping.

On World Water Day 2011, GE released a white paper called “Creating Effective Incentives for Water Reuse and Recycling“.

Source: Saudi Gazette, 06 Apr 2011

Jordan: 300,000 year old Disi aquifer to quench water shortage

Jordan is considering “unconventional” and “environmentally unfriendly” plans to solve its water shortage, experts say. These plans include tapping into the ancient southern Disi aquifer, despite concerns about high levels of radiation, and the controversial Two Seas Canal running from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

Disi Water Conveyance Project

The US$ 990 million Disi project (2008-2012) involves extracting 100 million cubic metres of water a year from a 300,000-year-old aquifer and transporting it over 325 km south to the capital Amman. The plan would ensure enough water for Amman for the next 50 years.

However, Disi’s water has 20 times more radiation than is considered safe, according to a 2008 study by Duke University in the USA. The government said the problem can be solved by diluting the water with an equal amount of water from other sources. Jordan University professor Elias Salameh also stated it was not complicated to deal with the radioactivity.

Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) warned against the threat of overpumping, which could cause problems likes problems like sinkholes. The group also says there were no studies that said for certain how long the aquifer water would last.

Two Seas Canal

The World Bank is conducting a feasibility study on this project, but environmentalists warn that saline water intrusion could damage Dead Sea’s fragile ecosystem.

The degradation of the Dead Sea began in the 1960s when Israel, Jordan and Syria began to divert water from the Jordan River – the Dead Sea’s main supplier.

Over the years 95% of the river’s flow has been diverted by the three neighbours for agricultural and industrial use, with Israel alone diverts more than 60% of it, according to FoEME.

The impact on the Dead Sea has been compounded by a drop in groundwater levels as rainwater from surrounding mountains dissolved salt deposits that had previously plugged access to underground caverns.

Water mismanagement

Water expert and a former Jordan Valley Authority chief Dureid Mahasneh, says that Jordan is suffering from massive water mismanagement due to a lack of a proper strategy. The country cultivates crops with a large water footprint that easily could be imported to save water. Over 60% of Jordan’s annual water consumption of 900 million cubic metres goes to agriculture, which only contributes 3.6% to the gross domestic product. In addition, around 48% of pumped water supplies are lost annually due to worn-out pipes and theft, Mahasneh claimed.

Source: Sapa / Saving Water SA, 06 Apr 2011

The Blue Gold: Water Supply in the Middle East

More so than any other region, countries in the Middle East rely heavily on technology to guarantee their water supply. Elisabeth Fischer profiles some innovative large and small-scale projects in Abu Dhabi and Yemen designed to overcome the severe water problems in the region in water-technology.net (28 March 2011).

The Water Security Risk Index, released by the British risk consultants Maplecroft, at the World Water Day 2011 on 22 March, found that 18 countries around the world are at ‘extreme risk’ of danger to their water security. Of these countries 15 are in the Middle East.

 Several key oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Libya and Algeria are worst off, according to the study, and the insecurities surrounding the water supply contribute to heighten political risks in an already volatile region and may even lead to higher oil prices in the future.

“Awareness about water shortages in the Middle East is undoubtedly growing,” says programme officer of the global team at the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC), in The Hague, the Netherlands, Cor Dietvorst. “Maplecroft’s Water Risk Index identifies the Middle East as exposed to the most overall risk.”

Obviously, the need for innovative solutions to the problem of water supply is there. “Water plays a very important role in the Middle East,” says Dietvorst and quotes International Development Research Centre (IDRC) senior program specialist, Naser I. Faruqui, who wrote in his 2001 book Water management in Islamthat “it seems that in the Quran, the most precious creation after humankind is water.”

Read the full article

Libya: what role for Great Man-Made River Project in conflict?

Rumours that the huge underground pipes of the Great Man-Made River Project (GMRP) are hiding Libyan tanks and missiles, have re-emerged during the current conflict. Back in in 1997, the New York Times reported that the US$ 33 billion project, which provides 6.5 million cubic metres a day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirt and elsewhere, “has some clandestine military purpose”. Now, in April 2011, the Guardian newspaper reported that the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is hiding his armour from NATO air strikes in the irrigation tunnels of the GMRP.

Earlier, the Libyan government warned that the NATO-led air strikes could cause a “human and environmental disaster” if they damaged the GMRP. Engineer and project manager Abdelmajid Gahoud said that three pipelines, one for gas, one for oil and another for water, run underground parallel to the 400-kilometre-long road from the eastern city of Benghazi to Sirte, through an area where there had been many coalition air raids.

Israel: water shortage greater than previously thought

New plan calls for an investment of Euro 10.47 billion in the coming decade to develop water production and supply systems to deal with the dwindling precipitation and the rise in the salinity of the groundwater which considerably exceeds previous estimates, according to a master plan for water now being finalized.

The master plan, drafted by a Water Authority task force with the help of environmental organizations, was submitted this week to the National Planning and Building Council.

About 80 percent of this development will be financed by water prices; the state will provide the rest. But the rise in water prices will not need to be significant, as the number of consumers will rise, due to population increases.

Israel’s water consumption per capita has declined sharply, from more than 110 cubic meters annually in the past to 90 cubic meters today, mainly due to water-saving campaigns and the rise in water prices, the task force said.

Environmental organizations object to this conclusion, saying that water saving must be consistently encouraged. This could obviate the need for some desalination facilities, which, in addition to high costs, have negative environmental effects, such as energy consumption and occupying large areas of the coastal region.

But in any case, the master plan’s implementation faces significant stumbling blocks. One of these is the absence of a government body in charge of policy on issues like population growth and dispersal. The Water Authority also lacks the clout to ensure that enough desalination plants are built, and it is severely short of professional personnel.

Source: Haaretz.com, May 10, 2011