MENA Environment

Radical History Review #115, “Water” Call for Proposals The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue on water.

We welcome works that examine the human impacts on individual bodies of water as well as works that address the interconnections between multiple water worlds. Possible submission may also include: • The impacts of oil and gas production on water systems • Fishing and aquaculture • History of waste and water • The regulation of transnational river systems • Spatial conceptions of water and water systems • Water as a global commodity • The science of water and water safety • The history of conflict over mineral resources in the oceans and seas Radical History Review publishes material in a wide variety of forms. The editors will consider scholarly research articles as well as photo essays, film and book review essays, interviews, brief interventions, essays on museum and other public history forums, “conversations” between scholars and/or activists, teaching notes and annotated course syllabi, and research notes.

The Solar Panels also enabled the residents to run a water-pump to provide the village with water supplies, especially since it does not have running water.

Several Israeli NGO’s, and the United Nations, are trying to convince the army to void its decision that came without prior notice. The Spanish government is also using diplomatic channels in an attempt to prevent the army from removing the Solar Panels. The project was implemented with a total cost of nearly 365.000 Euros, largely funded by Seeba. Head of the village council, Ali Hreizat, told France Press that “these Solar Panels were they ray of hope to the residents”, and added, “We have been living here since 1948, and have nowhere else to go”. Hreizat added that the village was never recognized by Israel, and all of its constructions were built without construction permits, therefore, asking Israel to permit the installment of the Solar Panels would be in vain.

an application was actually filed to Israel before the project started, but the military division, in charge of construction permits, never responded.

Tunisia may be significant because it is one of a cluster of countries that combine elitist regimes with rapid population growth and economic stagnation. This shared experience helps explain the emergence of further unrest across the region - and state attempts to prevent, deflect, and mollify it.  In this delicate moment, most governments may calculate that - even though divisions will likely widen further in the next decade - they can maintain control.Where this assessment begins to come apart is that the world community is facing not just a dangerous socio-economic divide, but profound environmental constraints as well. The most potent of these is climate change, though the impact of peak oil may not be far behind.

Back in the 1990s, the CIA opened an environmental center, swapped satellite imagery with Russia and cleared U.S. scientists to access classified information. But when the Bush administration took power, the center was absorbed by another office and work related to the climate was broadly neglected.In 2007, a report by retired high-ranking military officers called attention to the national security implications of climate change, and the National Intelligence Council followed a year later with an assessment on the topic. But some Republicans attacked it as a diversion of resources.And when CIA Director Leon Panetta stood up the climate change center in 2009, conservative lawmakers attempted to block its funding."The CIA's resources should be focused on monitoring terrorists in caves, not polar bears on icebergs," Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said at the time.

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who led the CIA from 2006 to 2009, said issues such as energy and water made Bush's daily briefings, but climate change was not a part of the agenda."I didn't have a market for it when I was director," Hayden said in a recent interview. "It was all terrorism all the time, and when it wasn't, it was all Iran."

A 2007 congressional oversight report found the administration "engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."

President Mohamed Mursi has asked Hisham Kandil, a relatively young water minister little known outside Egypt, to form a new government, disappointing investors who had hoped for a high-profile economy specialist. Kandil was a senior bureaucrat in the ministry until he was appointed minister in July last year after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. He obtained a doctorate in irrigation from the University of North Carolina in the United States in 1993

"This is quite a surprise as most of the names put around had been from the financial sector. The market is definitely reacting negatively,"

while supporting the development of its nuclear technology, America is insisting that Jordan purchase its reactor fuel on the nuclear market (it will “allow” Jordan to mine the uranium ore, but not convert it into fuel).  The Obama administration stresses that it will refuse to help Jordan if it makes use of its own uranium, and intends to model any deal with Jordan on the USA's recent nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates, who agreed to purchase their uranium on the international market, but reserve the right to renegotiate this deal if another country concludes an agreement on more favourable terms. Pursuing its right to enrich uranium without America's agreement would prove difficult for Jordan: the USA plays a powerful role in the Nuclear Supplier Group which monitors the sale of nuclear technology.  Moreover, many reactors from countries outside the USA contain American components which would require Jordan to gain America's approval to purchase.  But the USA's insistence that the country give up the right to use its own uranium seems to be a strategic miscalculation with the potential to alienate one of America and Israel's key Arab allies.  While the Jordanian government under reformist King Abdullah can certainly be criticised for its benign and even not-so-benign authoritarianism, it remains a positive presence in the Israel-Palestinian peace process (and the strongest ally of the USA in the Arab world). In fact, it was its willingness to 'help' in the war on terror that caused concern for human rights campaigners. Undermining the country's nuclear intentions when Jordan has done more than it is required to do in terms of tranparency and negotiation gives the impression that America will always treat Middle Eastern nuclear projects with suspicion, and that there's little incentive to cooperate.

To knowingly alienate Jordan by undermining the country's right to energy independence would be an act of masochism by Israel, particularly when the country's nuclear programme presents an opportunity to develop a model of transparency in nuclear energy development, and a chance to strengthen a more moderate presence in the region at a time when it is sorely needed.

Gazans are spending as much as one-third of their household income on drinking water, and are facing growing health risks

Monther Shublaq, the director of Gaza’s Coastal Municipal Water Utilities (CMWU) told The Media Line that Israel has recently raised prices for the water it provides from 75 cents per cubic meter to $1.00 per cubic meter. And while Israel has offered more water, he says, it will not say when it will provide it. “I don’t want it in the winter when I don’t really need it,” Shublaq said. “I want it all year.”

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says Israel is doing everything possible to help Gazans drink clean water. “Israel has been helping to improve the water infrastructure in Gaza and Israel was willing to double or even triple the amount of water going into Gaza,” Regev told The Media Line. “It is the same water that you and I drink, and the Gazans would pay less than what we pay but they weren’t willing to accept that solution.”

Alwash, 52, a citizen of Iraq and the United States, is a hydraulic engineer and the director of Nature Iraq, the country's first and only environmental organization. He founded the organization in 2004 together with his wife Suzanne, an American geologist, with financial support from the United States, Canada, Japan and Italy. His goal is to save a largely dried-up marsh in southern Iraq. In return for giving up his job in California, Alwash is now putting his safety and health at risk.

Only 20 years ago, an amazing aquatic world thrived in the area, which is in the middle of the desert. Larger than the Everglades, it extended across the southern end of Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers divide into hundreds of channels before they come together again near Basra and flow into the Persian Gulf. For environmentalists, this marshland was a unique oasis of life, until the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, had it drained in the early 1990s after a Shiite uprising.

Within a few years, the marshland had shrunk to less than 10 percent of its original size. In a place that was once teeming with wildlife - wild boar, hyenas, foxes, otters, water snakes and even lions - the former reed beds had been turned into barren salt flats, poisoned and full of land mines. In a 2001 report, the United Nations characterized the destruction of the marshes as one of the world's greatest environmental disasters.

"For reasons of public health as well as religious integrity, baptism should be banned from taking place in the river," said Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East. Israeli authorities said on Tuesday (July 27) that tests done on the water of the lower Jordan River show the popular site for baptismal ceremonies at Qasr el Yahud on the West Bank meets health ministry standards. Bromberg, however, said the ceremonies should not take place until pollutants are removed from the water. The site, inside an Israeli controlled military zone, faces another baptismal site on Jordan's side of the river. Both sites attract pilgrims who come to the Holy Land, and both are claimed as the authentic site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. "Our call is to halt baptisms on both sides of the river. It is exactly the same polluted water," said Bromberg.

the river suffers from "severe mismanagement," including the diversion of 98 percent of its fresh water to Israel, Syria and Jordan, as well as the discharge of untreated sewage and agricultural run-off.

Fahim Brahm, a worker at Tunisia’s SONEDE water company, supported these claims. “The cut-off is due to an increase in consumption – especially in light of the hot weather – and is also due to weak electrical production capacity. The water cut-offs have nothing to do with people not paying the water distributor,” he asserted. Brahm explained that the water supply has been severed every day in the entire governorate of Sidi Bouzid from 9:00 am until 12:00 pm, with suspensions sometimes lasting the entire day.

In 2008, Al-Ahram newspaper cited a study by Cairo University’s National Toxicology Centre which claimed that a half-million Egyptians suffer from various degrees of poisoning due to high levels of toxins in their drinking water. 

Nobody is talking about it, but the elections were garbage. Lots and lots of garbage. The political messages are garbage. Democracy is garbage.

Those serious, menacing faces, promising to clean up the country, have become part of the problem.

Iraq is an environmental disaster. Iraq is a wasteland, a landfill the size of a country. Mounds of trash, like surreal sand dunes, pile up around residential buildings in Baghdad. Plastic bottles scattered everywhere, plastic bags flying from the barbwire like prayer flags. Burning tires. Feral dogs dig in the refuse; sheep and cows graze over industrial leftovers. And toddlers play among the sheep and the cows.

"no one in the international community is going to take Israel seriously going forward," said Jon Cohen, CEO of the Arava Power Co. "The natural resource exists, the real national need exist — it's really a mystery why (solar) is being blocked."

no more large-scale projects have launched since Ketura Sun began operating in June 2011

Cohen has 10 projects in the works that envisage producing a total of 100 megawatts when completed. Three are still awaiting government approval, a situation he described as "tense and endless."

The committee has confirmed that it will include an article in the constitution underlining the responsibility of public and private institutions towards protecting the environment.

a Constitutional Environmental Commission, comprised of environmental experts, politicians, and representatives of civil society

Selma Baccar, vice-president of the Rights and Liberties Committee, insisted that “the Tunisian constitution must be pioneering in all respects.”