H. Peter Oberlander, CM
Citizenship Court Judge BC - Yukon Circuit, Canada
"You can live without love, but not without water" Talmudic observation.
The history of human settlement and its urbanizing consequences is the history of water, its availability, its location, its quality, its reliability, and its affordability.
Water has many uses and serves the urbanizing world in at least six different ways: (1) Human consumption, (2) Food source, (3) Food production, (4) Climate moderator/mediator, (5) Transport medium, and (6) Waste carrier/disposer.
Regional Background
The water resources of the Middle East are simple to outline, difficult to control. The Jordan River, the key to the system, begins in three headwater streams. The Hasbani River originates in Syria and has at least a part of its outflow in Lebanon. The Dan and the Banyias rivers originate in the Golan Heights and both flow into the Jordan above Lake Kinneret. The Lower Jordan River is fed from springs and runoff from the West Bank and Syrian and Jordanian waters, and by the Yarmuk River, which rises in Syria, borders Jordan, Syria and the Golan Heights, closely parallels the Jordan for several hundred kilometres, and empties into the Jordan at Adam Bridge. The Jordan Valley is thus an international drainage basin, a naturally defined area that cannot be artificially subsectioned. Only about 30 percent of the water in the region is surface water, from rivers. Groundwater, from the Mountain, Eastern, and Coastal aquifers, accounts for the rest. The Mountain Aquifer is the most substantial of the three, and gives Israel almost one-quarter of its total water supply. It consists of several major drainage basins: the Western, which falls almost entirely within the boundaries of Israel; the Northeastern, which is located inside the West Bank; and the Cenomanian-Turonian, under the northern West Bank. The Eastern Aquifer basin contains a number of smaller aquifers, all located within the West Bank area; 90 percent of the water in
the area comes from wells drilled into these sources. The Coastal Aquifer, of which the Gaza Strip Aquifer is a part, has been continuously overpumped for many years. The Gaza water system is in crisis: the pumping is far above the recharge rate, and there is already enough seawater in the wells that most of it is undrinkable.
The sprawl of settlements and its resulting urbanization/industrialization exerts unprecedented pressure on water resources, regardless of political soverinity or arbitrary jurisdictional boundaries.
By the mid 1990s Israel was drawing down its aquifers at beyond replenishment rates by about 15 percent a year (2,100 million cubic metres, against a supply that ranges in good years from 1,950 million cubic metres to 1,600 in drought years). Jordan was doing even worse: it was using 20 percent more water than it was receiving. The coastal aquifers in the region, especially in the critical Gaza area, were seriously overpumped, and seawater intrusions have become a major problem.
By 2010, according to Israel's own figures, it would have a water deficit of 360 million cubic metres. Jordan's deficit would be closing in on 200 million, and the West Bank's on 140 million. Considering that the Jordan River in good years yields only 1,400 million cubic metres a year and is already overstretched, where, indeed, will the water come from?
The Middle East water crisis is not only one of supply, it is one of inequitable distribution complicated by historic grievances, ideological quarrels, and national security. Everyone agrees on all these matters, implementation is the hurdle. In a zero-sum game, someone wins and someone loses - unless the rules are changed.
Urbanization and industrialization (including agriculture) is driven by the exponential needs of a growing global population and its increasing local/regional concentrations. Metropolitanization feeds on unprecedented water needs. More and more people need and consume more and more water. More and more people demand more water for an increasing range of purposes in reliable, palatable and affordable quantities.
The good news is that water is a fully renewable resource. Historically, it was considered a free good, often based on the notion that it was surplus to local needs. Gradually it has become an economic good subject to market demands.
Historically, the cost of water and its pricing was based on water as a social good, now it has become an economic one. (eg.: flat fee pricing per household, slowly moving towards metering and rationing) In most communities it is highly subsidized and its production held to high uniform quality standards, eg:all potable. This is extremely wasteful, e.g., we clean our cars with drinking water.
Ideas towards solutions
- True cost pricing, leading to reduced consumption
- Differential quality for specified limited purposes,seperate systems
- A spectrum of domestic, industrial, and agricultural uses
- Linked technology for large-scale production and consumption,
including re-cycling, de-salinization, xerescaping, drip irrigation eg. Netafin.
Urbanization challenges the age-old concept of use and distribution of water. Is it a resource or a commodity? It is BOTH. Totally renewable, but unevenly and poorly distributed, geographically, enviromentally, economically, socially and qualitatively.
Planning for water is planning for life, and has been since the beginning of time and since humanity came out of the Cave. What has changed? Water needs are accelerating exponentially. The rate of population growth, hence the rate of water consumption, and the rate of demand/need qualitatively and quantitively is overwhelming nature.
RE-DUCE; RE-USE; RE-CYCLE; RE-DISTRIBUTE AND SHARE!!!
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev