Monday, June 8, 2009

Study: Climate change threatens Mideast stability

Ynet, via Reuters: Climate change could spark "environmental wars" in the Middle East over already scarce water supplies and dissuade Israel from any pullout from occupied Arab land, an international report said last week. Rights group says West Bank facing severe water crisis, claims settlers receive 3.5 times as much supply as Palestinians, accuses Israel of refusing to allow drilling of new wells. This year over 40 cubic meters will be missing

Almost 10 years of failed peace talks between Syria and Israel have focused on water in and around the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The vital resource is also a point of conflict between Israel and Palestinians seeking a state.

…"The expectation of coming environmental wars might imply that the way to deal with shrinking resources is to increase military control over them," said the Danish-funded study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, an independent organization headquartered in Canada. The Golan supplies 30% of the water for the Kinneret, Israel's main water reservoir.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the report said sea-level rises as a result of climate change threatened to contaminate Gaza's sole aquifer supplying 1.5 million Palestinians in the territory. The coastal aquifer, which is shared by Israel, is the only source of fresh drinking water for Gaza, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. The report said its water quality was abysmal.…Climate change will diminish water resources across the Middle East, the report said….

A hospital in Quinetra, the Golan Heights, shot by Soman (I think), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License.

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