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Bedouin representatives and human rights organization have sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to his cabinet colleagues arguing that the plan runs contrary to the Goldberg committee recommendations. They say that the committee recommendation was to provide recognition to Bedouin locales wherever possible, while the plan being advocated by the Prime Minister's Office would require the unjustified relocation of about 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouin against their will.

The Bosporus is currently one of the most crowded waterways in the world. Thousands of oil tankers make up part of the 53,000 civilian and military vessels that transited through the Bosporus in 2017, compared to around 12,000 ships that transited the Panama Canal, and 17,000 the Suez Canal.

At the Black Sea, the canal will link with a new, 10 billion euro airport set to open this year that will feature the largest indoor terminal in the world. It will handle 200 million passengers annually, along with an air cargo hub that Turkey hopes will draw traffic from current European airports. A new highway cutting through forest on the Black Sea coast will feed the airport and canal, bringing cargo from Europe to the west and Asia to the east.

many of the region’s environmental experts say the government has not consulted them. Some of these experts have grown critical of the massive projects, saying they could have serious ecological consequences and imperil an already tenuous water supply

A square meter of land around Şamlar that went for $6.5 three years ago now sells for up to $184

“We are going to have new hospitals, parks, marinas, luxury apartments, and a city on both sides of the beautiful canal that will look like New York or Paris,”

Around 2 million people are employed in construction in Turkey, which accounts for about 19 percent of the country’s annual economic growth. Turkish construction firms rank as the second most active in terms of overseas operations, after Chinese firms. To reach its economic goals for 2023, the government has said it will need to invest about $700 billion in new infrastructure, plus $400 billion in urban renewal projects

many of the city planners and environmental experts Turkey once asked for advice on such mega projects now say they are being ignored. Many of these professionals say they are no longer seen as advisors, but political opposition to the ruling Justice and Development Party

Residents in the area challenged the projects in 2013, filing lawsuits claiming the expropriation of their land was too hasty, and the government was paying them a fraction of the true value of the land. Based on the government’s own environmental impact report, nearly 100 other villagers then filed additional cases challenging the projects. Although a court ordered construction to be halted, the government issued a revised report in 2014. At that time they resumed construction.

The canal, airport, and highway projects directly contravene the city’s master plan, opponents charge.

In 2012, Turkey’s federal government passed new legislation that would make it easier to reclassify any reserved land. Areas can be expropriated if they are deemed an earthquake risk, if they are needed to house people in the case of an earthquake, or if their development is considered in the national interest.

“The 2009 plan was trying to at least set an aim for the population of Istanbul, capping it at 16 million,” says Atlar. “The conclusion was that there should be no more settlements in the northern forest, and that water and culturally important land must be protected. Further development would be east and west, not north.”

With Istanbul’s population growing at a breakneck pace—from 3 million in 1980 to 15 million today—the city plan was meant to ensure resources like water and housing would be able to meet demand

Of the 7,650-hectare land for the airport, which will include residential and commercial developments, 80 percent is now composed of forests and 9 percent lakes and ponds. Canal Istanbul will result in the leveling of 350 hectares of forest and run through districts that are home to more than one million people.

there is an open question of whether or not such a canal would violate the Montreux Convention, a 1936 treaty that ensures the free passage of commercial vessels and naval ships of countries along the Black Sea, including Russia, through the Bosporus, except in times of war

Turkish officials have said the new canal will be able to handle all the traffic currently in the Bosporus, hinting that although they would like all current traffic to use the new route, the internationally protected Bosporus could also remain open, so the 1936 treaty is not technically violated. “The Montreux Convention regulates access to the Bosporus. However, the regulations for the Bosporus and the canal our country plans to build to offer an alternative route are different,” Minister Arslan said in January.

city’s water supply in danger.

In the 17th century, Mimar Sinan, the same Ottoman architect famed for the Blue Mosque, oversaw the construction of hundreds of miles of new aqueducts, several dams, and water basins that fed into hundreds of fountains in the city. Most of that ancient water system relied on streams and rivers in catchment areas in the forests north of the city—the same forests where the new airport is currently being built.

around 40 percent of Istanbul’s water comes from the European side of the city, which, even according to the government’s own environmental assessments, will be severely impacted by the canal and airport. The Sazlıdere Dam will be entirely uprooted, and smaller streams and underground water tables that feed at least three other lakes in the area could end up being disrupted. A drought in 2008 depleted the capacity of the city’s water reservoirs to 25 percent, and another in 2014 to 29 percent. Even in more wet years, Istanbul residents deal with water cuts that can last days

The Marmara Sea, part of the Mediterranean, is far more salty than the Black Sea, which leads to a powerful flow of water as the two bodies naturally try to reach a state of equilibrium. That flow was put to use by engineers in the 1990s, part of a $600 million World Bank project to provide a sustainable water system for Istanbul.

a series of 67 waste treatment plants were built. The city estimates 97 percent of its waste is now treated. The effluent, including any waste that still remains, is dumped into a point where the Bosporus meets the Marmara Sea. There, it is carried by an undercurrent north to the Black Sea.

with the Canal Istanbul project, Saydam and other experts warn that system could be turned on its head, upending the delicate balance of life in the water. If the canal is built, Saydam says, it will provide an alternate route connecting the Black and Marmara Seas. Years of modeling and scientific studies suggest that could undo the unique waste water system in Istanbul, he says. The change in the salinity could also spark an anoxic state in the waters, one that would end up leaving the city smelling of hydrogen sulfide

once you do this there will be no way to turn back

on 23 April, the Israeli army destroyed two French-built Palestinian wells in the Hebron area

Israel smashed up €49-million-worth of EU-funded projects in total in the 2001 to 2011 period

Israeli-friendly member states - chiefly Italy and the Netherlands - have quashed suggestions by EU embassies in the region to impose penalties, such as suspending preferential tariffs on Israeli-settler-made products or an EU visa ban on settler radicals

"The highest price is paid by vulnerable men, women, and children whose rights are violated as they are deprived of water," Ayman Rabi, from local NGO the Palestinian Hydrology Group, noted.

the role of “The Sheikh” was invented, as mediator between the government and the inland population. Unlike the wise and elderly tribal sheikhs who were appointed through tribal consensus, these “sheikhs” were co-opted by the government. They did not protect the independence of the tribes, they did not arbitrate disputes, and they had little power in local affairs. Still the power of these sheikhs for hire was “exalted, since it was through them that decrees of government were transmitted to the tribesmen.”17 Although they were viewed as “agents of the occupier,” the Bedouins were left with no choice but to turn to them in issues pertaining to their economic and political lives

Prior to 1952, “Egypt had the largest consumer market for hashish in the Middle East. Turkey, Lebanon and Syria were the largest regional producers of the drug.”20 The smuggling route ran through the more accessible desert areas of the Middle East, crossing the TransJordanian Plateau, the Negev, and the North Sinai to Egypt. With the ousting of King Farouk in 1952, Abdel Nasser started to fortify the North of Sinai to prepare for nationalizing the Suez Canal. As a result, the smuggling route had to move to the mountainous and inaccessible South Sinai. Thus, the South Sinai “smuggler” came into being, and made use not only of his unemployment, but his nomadic prowess and knowledge of his cavernous terrain. The logic was, if the state treated them as outsiders, then they might as well exist outside the law. After all, smuggling was more lucrative than any grazing or menial government job could ever be

the smuggling business continued even after the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. “Assuming that the Egyptian border guards would be given a cut of the drugs as a bribe, they chose to allow the smugglers to continue operating the drug traffic to Egypt, on the logic that drug use by Egyptian soldiers could only benefit Israel.”21 However, when the Eilat-Sharm road opened in 1972, the Israelis feared that the inexpensive drug might find its way into their own lucrative drug scene, and effectively ended all activity

Whereas the Egyptian administration distributed a sadaga, meaning charity, through their hired sheikhs, the Israelis personally distributed basic food staples from the American charitable organization CARE to the heads of every family.25 They also organized visits to villages in Israel, built a total of eleven clinics, offered formal vocational courses in Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh, employed half the Bedouin population in the oil fields, and in military and civilian construction, and at the request of the sheikhs, built them a total of thirteen schools in South Sinai alone. The Bedouins, who had expected to be dealt with impersonally, were quite amused with the new perks. Still, while most embraced change, they never let their guard down. In other words, there were no illusions of loyalty. Israel was still seen as an “occupying power.”

the Israelis also created “The Exotic Bedouin.”

One way for the Bedouins to mark their territory was to come up with an image that would help define and differentiate them. As a result, the “Muslim Bedouin” was born. The issue of self-definition became an urgent one when relations with outsiders ceased to be conducted through sheikhs and Bedouins came into increasing contact with the West. They felt that all Westerners, whether tourists or soldiers, Israelis or Europeans, Jews or Christians, invaded their privacy and threatened their traditions and customs.28 For example, in keeping with the Sinai image as an exotic, all-natural paradise, the tourists sunbathed in the nude, a practice that Bedouins took great offense to. When they expressed their dismay and requested that the behavior of tourists be regulated, Israeli authorities responded by explaining that they wanted nothing to do with the issue. Seeing that the “Bedouins were not permitted by either Israeli or Egyptian law to impose their own laws on non-Bedouins.. the problem could not be resolved.”29 In response, the Bedouins encouraged an Islamic revival of a very paradoxical nature. They still worked in tourism and came into contact with tourists everyday, but all the money made was “purified” by lavish expenditure on mosques and shrines of Saints and excessive manifestations of religious zeal. “‘We are Muslims,’ (they said) ‘they are the Jews.’”30

While the Bedouins were trying to disassociate themselves from the West, Egyptian policy was heading in the other direction. To complicate matters even more, “state-supported Muslim institutions, such as Al-Azhar University, invested this official policy with an Islamic sanction.”31 Result was an institutional type of Islam, one that was mainly constructed to fight the remnants of Nasser’s socialist regime. In this context, it was hard for the Muslim Bedouin to demonstrate loyalty merely by waving the flag of religion. The fact that Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel did not help bridge the gap either. Were the Bedouins to be viewed as fellow Egyptian returning from exile or were they treacherous collaborators?32 More importantly, which of these images was more beneficial to the state?

“The Villain” was born; an all-encompassing figure who stood for many ills all at once. He was uncivilized, lawless, treacherous, and dangerous. The most important thing for the state was to cater to the economic interests of Cairo’s elite in the Sinai, from the military and the industrialists, to the members of political parties and ministers. This goal could only be achieved through a label that would blunt Bedouin capacity to organize, gain sympathy, and attract media attention. In 1980, “Law 104, providing for state ownership of desert land and thus making the whole Sinai government property was changed to permit private ownership.”33 The law had some devastating effects on the Bedouins. Their land claims were not legally recognized, and they were subsequently displaced “with no government compensation.”34 In their place, the land was repopulated with peasants to solve the unemployment problem in the urban center. The once virgin coast became littered with grotesque infrastructure that paid no heed to damaging the natural balance of the environment; thousands of them were framed and sent to prison after the terrorist attacks on Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab in 2004 and 2005

a 20 million pound wall was built in Sharm El Sheikh to isolate the “dangerous” Bedouin from the tourist “paradise” beyond

every Bedouin stereotype out there has been readily absorbed and exploited by the Bedouins themselves

All what is left of Bedouin life is its cultural identity, and they hold on to that dearly. “The Bedouin is not Egyptian,” a young man in a white cotton head dress said, “The Sinai is not Egyptian or Israeli. It is Bedouin.” This is all that is left. In the age of state-systems, modernization and globalization, the world is becoming increasingly hegemonic and indigenous cultures are losing the battle. The world might like to think that it is without borders, but say that to a Bedouin and wait for a response.

95 percent of the water in the coastal aquifer has dangerous levels of nitrates and chloride, often ten times what the World Health Organization recommends

the majority of Gazans now rely on private water deliveries which are not regulated and are often contaminated

Palestinians hope to eventually desalinate100 million cubic meters per year to cover most of Gaza’s requirements

We would be violating an international rule, which prohibits the transfer of the rivers' water out of their watershed. The Congo River has many tributaries in many African countries, such as Cameroon, Guinea, and the Central African Republic.

Egyptian businessman Ibrahim al-Fayoumi, considered one of the most prominent Egyptian investors in the Congo and whose company is currently executing a number of infrastructure and mining projects there, spoke to Al-Monitor concerning the government’s justifications for rejecting projects that link the Nile River with the Congo. “These justifications are nonsensical, for there is no legal impediment standing in the way of linking both rivers together,” said Fayoumi. “We have reviewed close to 300 river-related agreements, and none of them contained legal deterrents to the project. Taking advantage of the Congo River’s water would not violate international law since the water would be moved between two watersheds that lie within the borders of the same country, and would serve to exploit water that otherwise would be wastefully pushed 300 kilometers offshore,”

Last month, the public prosecutor was finally ready to submit his indictment, which meant the family’s legal team would get their first opportunity to question Yumaç on the record. He had told them he was ready to reveal everything. He never got the chance. Days later Yumaç reportedly committed suicide in a high-security prison where he had been moved for his safety. Guards claimed he hung himself in a toilet with elastic from his clothing. Many find this incredible.

For Turkey’s environmental campaigners, this is part of a broader alarming trend.

The attack on the environment now is the biggest in our country’s history.

Erdoğan refutes such claims. He says his pro-business policies are in the national interest and accuses those who try to impede development as traitors and terrorists.

Eight people died and thousands were injured in clashes between the riot police. “For what?” a scornful Erdoğan asked afterwards. “For 12 trees!” Since then, he has pushed ahead with several massive infrastructure projects – a third airport, a third bridge over the Bosphorus and a new canal – that environmentalists say has led to the felling of 100 million trees.

“To be an activist in Turkey is to be constantly worried. We have to protect ourselves as well as the environment.”

With forest conservation now such a sensitive political subject, supporters of Ali and Aysin are in a difficult position. They plan to turn the dead couple’s home into a eco-residency, to establish a memorial park in Antalya, and to continue the campaign against the quarries and to get justice for the killings. “This is the first time two people have died trying to protect nature in Turkey. If we win, it will set a precedent that will help others in a similar position,” said one of those close to the campaign. “It would be a big step for Turkey. Ali and Aysin may be dead but they can still help the living.”

a new, intercontinental energy corridor between north Africa and Europe by delivering power to homes in Italy and France

“Solar energy is an emerging opportunity that cannot be ignored,” says Zandre Campos, chief executive of ABO Capital, an Angola-based fund which invests in energy, agriculture, and technology. Campos said north African nations were “true innovators” for spearheading these infrastructural projects and for building on the falling price of solar panels and the improved efficiency of light bulbs and appliances

Potential pollution also poses a risk, as the project entails the construction of enlarged waterways connecting the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Mediterrean Sea. 

Prior projects include a massive third suspension bridge across the Bosphorus, and a new airport covering an area more than twice the size of Manhattan.

The widely reproduced claim that 2 to 3 million people were driven into extreme poverty by the 2006–2009 drought was drawn, extraordinarily, from analyses by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of pre-drought poverty levels.[4] The claim that around 1.5 million people were displaced was derived from a single humanitarian news bulletin, seemingly on the basis of a misreading of the UN’s estimate of those affected—not displaced—by the drought. Using Syrian government numbers, the UN actually reported drought-period displacement to be around 40,000–60,000 families.

A presidential decree in 2008, which tightened restrictions on land sales across the northeastern-most province of Hasakah, led to the extensive loss of land rights and was credited by some organizations as a key factor in the increased migration from northeast Syria prior to the war

during 2008–2009 rural Syria was hit by triple-digit increases in the prices of key agricultural inputs. In May 2008 fuel subsidies were halved, leading to an overnight 342 percent spike in the price of diesel. And then in May 2009 fertilizer subsidies were removed, causing prices to rise anywhere from 200 to 450 percent. The fuel subsidy cuts had particularly devastating economic consequences, especially for farmers reliant on cheap fuel for groundwater irrigation.

The fact that a number of neighboring countries experienced equivalent precipitation declines during 2006–2009—or in Iraq’s case an even larger decline—but no comparable migration crises, suggests at the very least that the migration from Syria’s northeast must have been caused more by these Syria-specific factors than by the drought.

Proponents of the climate conflict thesis typically claim that drought-induced displacement caused a “population shock” within Syria’s urban peripheries, exacerbating pre-existing socio-economic pressures. Yet Syria’s cities grew rapidly throughout the decade before the civil war, not only during the drought years. By our calculations, excess migration from the northeast during 2008–2009 amounted to just 4–12 percent of Syria’s 2003–2010 urban growth (and this excess migration was not all triggered by drought)

as Marwa Daoudy concludes in her new book on the subject, there is “little evidence” that “climate change in Syria sparked popular revolt in 2011”—but “a lot of evidence” that “suggests it did not.”

a deep and long-term structural agrarian crisis

it is evident that northeastern Syria’s agrarian troubles—and especially those in the province of Hasakah—went all the way back to 2000, and indeed earlier. Production of the two main government-designated strategic crops, wheat and cotton, was in decline in Hasakah from the early 2000s onward. Land and settlements were being abandoned there well before the drought. Net out-migration from Hasakah during this period was higher than from any other province. And the reasons for this lay not in the drought but in the contradictions of Syrian development.

Environmentally, the model relied above all on the super-exploitation of water resources, especially groundwater—a problem which by the early 2000s had become critical. And economically, Syrian agriculture had become highly input dependent, reliant on continuing fuel subsidies in particular.

climate change is also much more than a physical reality and looming environmental threat: It is simultaneously an object of discourse, debate and rhetoric, a potent meta-narrative that can be invoked for explanation, legitimation, blame avoidance and enrichment.

Within just a few short years, Syria embraced principles of economic liberalization, privatized state farms, liberalized trade and reduced price control levels. At the same time domestic oil production and exports fell rapidly, thus undermining the regime’s rentier foundations and its capacity to subsidize agriculture

Irrespective of any drought impacts, these developments essentially occurred when the props that had until then artificially maintained an over-extended agricultural production system—oil export rents, a pro-agrarian ideology and their associated price controls—were suddenly and decisively removed.

As Syria’s pre-eminent breadbasket region—the heartland of strategic crop production—Hasakah was particularly vulnerable to economic liberalization and the withdrawal of input supports. No other region of the country was so dependent on groundwater for irrigation, a factor that made it particularly vulnerable to fuel price increases. Hasakah’s groundwater resources were also exceptionally degraded, even by Syrian standards

The region was also deeply affected by intense irrigation development and over-abstraction of groundwater resources within Turkey

It was Ba’athist state policies which had turned Hasakah into a region of wheat monoculture, failed to promote economic diversification and facilitated cultivation ever deeper into the badiya (the desert) while over-exploiting surface and groundwater resources. Moreover, these measures were taken partly for strategic and geostrategic reasons, bound up with regime interests in expanding and consolidating Hasakah’s Arab population (its project of Arabization), in controlling and excluding the province’s Kurdish population and in extending its control and presence within a strategically sensitive borderland and frontier region. During the heyday of Ba’athist agrarian development, Hasakah’s population and agricultural sector expanded like in no other area. With the collapse of this development model, rural crisis and out-migration were the inevitable result.

After an initial reluctance to acknowledge the depth of the crisis in the northeast, the government eventually embraced the climate crisis narrative with gusto. The drought was “beyond our powers,” claimed Asad. The drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with,” claimed the Minister of Agriculture. “Syria could have achieved [its] goals pertaining to unemployment, poverty and growth if it was not for the drought,” proclaimed Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari.[12] Indeed, as the International Crisis Group reported, the Asad regime would regularly take diplomats to the northeast and tell them, “it all has to do with global warming,” blaming what was in essence a state-induced socio-ecological crisis on climatic transformations beyond its control.[13] This shifting of blame is essentially how the Syria climate crisis narrative began.

Official UN reports on the crisis in the northeast, which were produced in collaboration with the Syrian regime, were predictably drought-centric, barely mentioning any factors other than drought, omitting any criticisms of government policy and ignoring the existence of a discriminated-against Kurdish minority

International media reports on the subject were similarly focused on  drought, no doubt partly because of media preferences for simplified and striking narratives, but also because they relied upon UN sources and took these at their word

The climate crisis narrative reached its apogee in 2015, in the run-up to the UN Paris conference on climate change, when countless politicians and commentators turned to the example of Syria to illustrate the urgency of international action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

regurgitated as a statement of fact in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and by Western liberal politicians and eco-socialist campaigners alike

it is reasonable to say, per the Columbia study, that climate change did make this particular drought more likely

climate change is already regularly invoked to questionable ends across the Middle East and North Africa. It is used to explain away ecological catastrophes actually caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion, to make the case for investment in new and often unnecessary mega-projects, to obscure state mismanagement of local environmental resources and to argue against the redistribution of such resources to oppressed and minority groups

blaming climate change is often a distraction from the real causes of socio-ecological crisis