I very much enjoyed reading your insightful thesis, “Why states cooperate over shared water: water negotiations in the Jordan River valley. I am not a scholar, nor an expert on the Middle East. I am a water resources and environmental consultant, and have completed water resources projects in Damascus, Gaza/ West Bank, Jordan, and broader in the region, in Egypt and India. I currently am working in Iraq. My limited knowledge and experience in the Jordan River valley indicate:1. The Yarmuk River watershed, which recharges the Upper Jordan River, supplies little runoff from Syria as Syria has had an aggressive and effective dam-building program for several years. There is concern that if Jordan builds some planned projects in the Upper Jordan, these reservoirs will remain dry or well below their design storage. As there are several riparian parties to the Jordan River Valley, they all must be part of a long-term, integrated solution, if there is to be one.
2. The annual flow of the Jordan River, except for occasional winter storms, is minuscule for several years because of Syrian and Israeli diversions and overpumping by riparian entities. The Jordan River today is no more than a canal with occasional flow, not the river of several decades past.
3. There is concern in Jordan that reservoirs behind dams in the basin generally remain dry or at very low storage, causing re-think of reservoir use as not to store surface water for later use, but to hold it shortly as a supply to immediately artificial or enhanced groundwater recharge through basins and wells.
4. Since about 1970, the annual average rainfall throughout much of the Middle East, including the Jordan Valley, has declined significantly, to perhaps half.
5. The 50 million cubic meters per year of fresh surface water, which Israel diverts by treaty from the Jordan is returned annually in the form of rather saline water, unsuitable for irrigation or domestic use.
6. Groundwater levels are dropping significantly within the Jordan Valley, mainly due to lack of recharge and increases in irrigation well pumping without significant replenishment. Declining water levels, of course, reduces if not eliminates base flow in streams, and, moreover, dries up shallow wells, increases costs to deepen or drill new wells, raises pumping costs, and increases the salinity of pumped groundwater.
7. The diminishing water available on the West Bank side to the Palestinians is increasingly saline, and contaminated with irrigation return flows and domestic wastewater.
8. The Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians have again put forth the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal scenario to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg Summit in August 2002, which would cost initially on the order of US $50 billion. This scheme would pump raw water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, restoring the now diminishing Dead Sea, and using the drop in elevation on the order of 444 meters to offset pumping costs and to desalinate significant quantities of water to supply the three entities. Many engineering firms have evaluated the technical feasibility of variations of this scheme, and it appears technically feasible. I understand the World Bank is considering it as well. However, given the history of transnational cooperation, especially regarding pipelines, in the region, this may not be a practical solution.
9. Water is more than an economic good or commodity that can be controlled by supply-and-demand economics. As a natural resource essential to life and agriculture (the largest water user in the Jordan River Valley), it is distributed with consideration of multiple factors, including historical, cultural, and political.
My suspicion is that transnational negotiations will not find lasting water solutions in the region, as “mean spiritism” is unfortunately the norm, not the exception, though “water is the source of life,” as you write in your Chapter 1. Unfortunately, the charming Proverbs 25:21 quote, like many from the great books of the region, is not the case-in-point, “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink.” I very much like the title of your thesis: “Why states cooperate over shared water: The water negotiations in the Jordan River basin,” and wish it were true. Is it not odd that the greetings in the region are “salaam” and “shalom,” yet these seem unachievable?
Years ago, an old Middle Eastern water engineer told me this tale, which is more applicable than Proverbs 25:21. Seems a scorpion on one side of the Nile River wished to cross to the other side. As scorpions are incapable of swimming, he asked a frog, “Would you mind swimming over to the other side of the Nile so I can cross?” The frog responded, “Yes, I am a natural swimmer, but I fear you may sting me and I would die.” The scorpion said, “Why would I sting you? If you would die in the Nile, so would I, as I would drown.” The rational frog agreed to carry the scorpion on his back and swam across the Nile. Along the way, the scorpion stung the frog, who in dying said to the scorpion, “Why would you sting me? We both shall die?” The drowning scorpion replied, “But this is the Middle East.”
I suspect that individual riparian entities in the Jordan River valley will likely go it alone. Water purchases for importation; desalination; water harvesting; wastewater treatment and reuse; substitution of wastewater for non-domestic uses like mining, cooling, and landscaping; reallocation of water supply; increased irrigation management; and local water demand management are options, IHMO.
Barney P. Popkin, bppopkin@mindspring.com
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