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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/03
Water As a Factor of Conflict Challenges Around the Mediterranean Basin
February 2001
Abstract
The southern shore of the Mediterranean region is an area with very high population growth. National economies haven't - but for Israel - the strength and vitality of northern-shore states. On the southern shore the state has generally a pervasive role in the society. Inefficient state-owned industries and subsidised agriculture give way to products that are scarcely competitive on the world market. Weak southern Mediterranean economies, that could somehow get along with a stable population, risk the failure in trying to keep pace with the ongoing population boom and with globalisation. For this reason, on the southern shore of the Mediterranean resource disputes have emerged, especially since the seventies, as an area of contentions between states. The latter more and more is perceived as a dangerous and hardly manageable issue.
This is particularly true, however, for water [Allan; Ferragina; Soffer; Swain]. On the southern shore of the Mediterranean region, water is a rare commodity. The World Bank statistics identify some twenty countries “chronically water-scarce”. Three of these countries - Israel, Egypt and Jordan - belong to the Mediterranean region.[Hughes Butts: 68].
At the beginning of the nineties, a number of Mediterranean leaders have all referred to water as a direct cause of war. Former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali is on the record for the following 1991 statement: “The next war in the Middle East will be over water, not politics” [Hughes Butts: 65]. Turkish President Turgut Özal, former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and King Hussein of Jordan have all made declarations linking water disputes to war. [Beschorner: 6].
Significant tensions have arisen and conflict could erupt over the fresh water of three river systems of the region: the Nile, the Jordan and the Tigris-Euphrates. The Nile basin involves nine states with varying claims on its waters: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire.
Sudan and Egypt have since long exploited Nile's waters for generating electricity, irrigation and industrial production. Ethiopia has not yet begun exploiting the waters of the Blue Nile, which develops on its soil and accounts for 86% of the waters of the river. Nor have begun the others above mentioned central African states.
The only existing agreements are between the two final users of the Nile's water, Sudan and Egypt. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan signed a bilateral agreement by which 55.5 billion cubic meters of water went to the former and 18.5 to the latter.
