Water Conflict in the Jordan River Basin: What Should Strategists Ask

Download or read book Water Conflict in the Jordan River Basin: What Should Strategists Ask written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a fresh water shortage in the world, which is rapidly growing worse. Nearly every source is full of ominous statistics, indicating broad consensus among government, corporate, and scientific experts that the problem is real. Sometimes, such numbers framing global issues are difficult to grasp. But a senior official of NASA's Earth Sciences Directorate offers us a relative comparison, "Our concerns about global warming are trivial compared to the issues that we face over water." Water may be the key resource in the new century. Trying to break the issue down into regional pieces, these same experts claim the 240-300 river basins of the world shared by two or more countries are the potential battlegrounds. Given climate and geopolitics, the Middle East may already be the site that poses the greatest challenges. In fact, diverse American and international organizations have been researching water disputes along the Jordan, Euphrates, and Nile Rivers for decades. Many predict the five nations of the Jordan River Basin Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine may go to war over water. Other experts, especially Mostafa Dolatyar and Tim S. Gray, take issue with this conclusion. But with the sheer complexity of issues in the Middle East compounded by a year of intensified fighting, waging war specifically over water may not be the most pressing question. Certainly, water disputes still constitute a threat, and, perhaps, an opportunity. This paper attempts to summarize the current situation regarding water shortages in the Jordan River Basin, and to frame some of the complexities about how to deal with it. It will also pose some questions for the strategist regarding the cause and scale of the dispute, the costs associated with any potential resolution, and turning awareness of the problem into useful action. application.