Middle East: Water

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Alderdice for putting down this subject for debate in your Lordships’ House. I also thank him for inviting me to a seminar earlier this year where I heard detailed speeches about the report to which he refers. It made me thirst to find out more about water. We must remember, as he has said, that there are other examples such as the European Coal and Steel Community, which was a six-nation international organisation. That brought people together in what were difficult times. Whatever one’s views on the European Union—this week there have been a lot of views on the European Union—it must be said that linking economies together has resulted in western European peace for over 60 years.

So can the same be achieved by a regional sharing of water? I believe it can. The problem is that there is not enough natural water to go round. Water or lack of it could be tomorrow’s conflict in many arid regions—Turkey/Syria, Turkey/Iran and Egypt/Sudan to name several. The region described as the “southern circle” in the tome to which my noble friend Lord Alderdice refers shows how co-operation in this field can be made even without formal peace and has been shown for decades between Israel and Jordan. I take a certain amount of pessimism from his comment about people not being able to sit down, but Israel and Jordan have been sitting down quietly on this issue. I believe the way forward is shown by water technology in Israel, as he referred to. Israel is a leading producer of alternative, marginal water—essentially, desalination and waste-water treatment. This will in the next 10 years make up 50 per cent of Israel’s total water supply. Ninety-two per cent of Israel’s waste water was treated and about 75 per cent of that is used in agriculture. Other technologies include three large desalination plants. Within 10 years 23 per cent of potable water in Israel will be from desalination. Of course, the water of choice is freshwater and recharge from rainfall.

In the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, waste-water treatment is sadly poor and there is no production of desalinated water. They have obviously had other problems which have been given priority. There are some desalination plants in Gaza but there is a great need for more. With Gaza’s geographical position on the coast, there is a huge potential for more desalination. As the Arab spring, referred to by my noble friend Lord Alderdice, moves into the autumn, it is bound to struggle. When economies suffer terribly and agriculture is sadly devastated because of water shortage and desertification, co-operation needs to be built as soon as possible. Know-how on water treatment, sophisticated desert agriculture and the fight against desertification exists in the region in centres of excellence. I hope the EU, including the UK, will push forward with cross-border co-operation in these areas without waiting for slow political processes or listening to extremists in any country who flourish when conditions deteriorate. Co-operation in these areas is vital and might create better grounds and confidence that will accelerate political solutions.

I welcome The Blue Peace report on which this debate is based. There is, however, a view in the region that existing co-operation on water resources in what is called the southern circle in the book—that is, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories—is already more advanced than the proposals in the report. Things move fairly quickly but there is always room for improvement. As an example of this, an expert on regional water co-operation at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs was this week in Oman at the biannual meeting of the organisation for regional co-operation in water, the Middle East Desalination Research Center. The organisation is located in Muscat in Oman, and its members are, amazingly, Oman, Qatar, USA, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Next week, Israel is planning to hold a course on desalination in Israel for Palestinians and Jordanians. Next week, too, the biannual meeting of another regional organisation for co-operation on water, EXACT, will take place in Jerusalem. At the same time, a new trilateral project between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians, managed and sponsored by the USA and Norway, will be launched to deal with monitoring polluted ground water.

There is already impressive dialogue and co-operation on water issues between Israel and its neighbours in the region. This far exceeds regional co-operation in other areas and, amazingly, has managed to survive the problems that have beset the peace process.

Regional co-operation and dialogue on water issues began as long ago as 1992 as one of the five working groups established at the Madrid summit in 1991. The five areas covered were, as your Lordships will remember, water, environment, refugees, regional economic development and security. Water is the only main activity that has survived from the five groups and it remains active. Matters have moved on from the position in the Blue Peace paper.

The idea proposed in the Blue Peace paper to import water from Turkey is currently off the table for Israel as well for the Palestinian Authority, first of all for economic reasons. Even if Israel were to change its mind, it would need the water only for the next two years before it completed its national desalination project in 2013-14. The Palestinians do not have the facilities to absorb and distribute this water, even if Turkey were to provide it for free, although that may be a pessimistic viewpoint.

The paper suggests that the RSDSC—the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal—is a long-term project, but the feasibility study is, I am pleased to say, in its final stage. By way of a subproject of the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal, the general intention of the three beneficiaries, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians, is to build a desalination plant in Aqaba to create additional water for all three parties in the short term.

Co-operation on water between Israel and Jordan has improved in the past two years. During that period, because of the drought in the region and common work on the feasibility study for the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal, new ideas were exchanged and things have moved forward, and there is an element of optimism. With the Palestinians, relations are more complex—perhaps I should not go into them in detail.

Israel implements its commitments on water provision. However, it is true that not everything goes smoothly and none of the Governments in the area is perfect. But generally, if one takes into account the multilateral regional co-operation, it can be said that the water situation is in some ways the opposite of the political situation in the region.

Water co-operation can help to build confidence between rival parties. No doubt this can be a good model for other areas of co-operation, but it cannot be a substitute for other tracks of the peace process.

We have a conundrum: can water bring peace, or does peace bring water? I am not sure, but what I am sure of is that I compliment my noble friend Lord Alderdice on bringing this debate to the House, on the expert way in which he has presented the paper, and on the background briefing that he has given to people such as me to make us more enthusiastic about water as a means to peace.