Middle East: Water

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, it is very useful to have this debate at this time. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and all noble Lords who have taken part. I especially congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan, on an outstanding maiden speech. He is a great friend, a great diplomat and a great addition to your Lordships’ House.

At present, little is happening to inspire confidence in the Middle East peace process, much as we would all wish it. This fact alone should encourage us to seize the moment to engage in genuine strategic thinking about what is happening, what could make the problems of the region more acute and what might be done to mitigate them. To be candid, I fear that today’s debate will identify a problem that has been explored before. However, what we have is an opportunity to review past efforts to consider water insecurity and to evaluate whether any new proposals can take us forward appreciably. It is in this light that I welcome a debate on the work of the Strategic Foresight Group and the publication of The Blue Peace. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, for making sure that I had a full copy of it; I appreciate that greatly.

In particular, I welcome the fact that the report starts with hard data. No solutions, other than those that take a hard look at hard data, have any prospect of success. Some of the data are telling. The region is home to 6.3 per cent of the world’s population but contains just 1.4 per cent of the world’s renewable fresh water. Climate change will make that worse. This is a region greatly challenged by developing efficient, collaborative, multinational governance systems. All of these factors bear on the issues that we are discussing.

I started by saying that the issues of water insecurity and its implications for regional peace and prosperity have been discussed on past occasions. I shall set out just one or two examples. They have not led to concrete action and they illustrate why it is sensible to look at a new programme. First, in its quite remarkable periodic exercises in scenario planning, Shell considered not oil but water security in the Middle East. It considered social, economic and political dynamics in that context. Its analysis illustrated the dangerous confluence of factors that might increase regional insecurity.

The demands for reliable water sources in the region become sharper when considered against the background of demographic change. Developments in medical science are likely to have a large impact on a region’s population, especially when it becomes increasingly possible to intervene in, for example, genetically carried diseases that have lowered life expectancy in the Middle East. Although the number of live births per mother halved between 1960 and 2001, it remains likely that the upward trend in population will continue. A far larger, healthier and, by definition, initially far younger population will in due course place greater demands on water resources. The more this trend develops, the greater the competition for water resources will be. Indeed, as Shell suggests, it will become more significant than competition for oil resources. Between the nations of the region, the population grew from 173 million to 366 million between 1970 and 2001. However, the amount of fresh water per capita halved in that period. The greater the competition, the sharper the possible conflicts over control of river flows, especially where there are few viable developments in the use of seawater or desalination.

The second example comes from the work of RUSI and Chatham House, which suggests that states in the region have begun to turn their attention to securing the military capacity, if necessary, to secure their future water requirements. I do not suggest that this inevitably leads to an arms race but it is likely to produce a significantly different military doctrine in the region. In a troubled region, that could promise still more trouble, as several noble Lords have said.

These have been brief summaries of important past analysis. I suggest with great respect that this report might have been a little stronger if it had also made an assessment of those efforts. However, what this research unquestionably adds to the past thinking flows from what I have tried to summarise. If water insecurity is liable to prepare people for potential conflict, it is imperative to argue that the better alternative is regional co-operation among nations that have not co-operated to any great extent. Water sources know no boundaries and the route between open and inland seas almost always passes through more than one polity. Cross-border management of this scarce resource is possible only if it is a peaceful option. A good deal of work, including by the Swiss Foreign Minister, has been done in observing that five of the seven nations covered by this report are already experiencing a structural deficit in water, with a huge depletion in the rivers of the region.

I am able, with some enthusiasm, to support the creation of joint water co-operation councils. Given the river flows—I will return to artificial channels—it is rational to advocate the creation of a council involving Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, although there are obvious problems in the practicality of the grouping at this stage. I can see the rationale for a further joint water council, involving Turkey, Syria and Iraq, to manage the Tigris and Euphrates river basin. On the artificial channel proposals, I also support the idea of pressing the World Bank to go beyond its report and its research stage to see whether it can drive this towards reality.

My reservations are all obvious. In many countries, in each council grouping, there is more of a history of mistrust over water than there is of co-operation. That must change, but it will not happen soon. Some of the countries—Syria is the most obvious, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, noted—show that they are more likely to tear themselves apart and their political institutions are not likely to deal adequately with that. So that change will not happen any time soon either. The report suggests circles of co-operation, with Israel becoming involved only in a second phase. That may be a statement of regional realism, but I suspect that if there is not parallel development—or an attempt at parallel development—across all the nations in the region at the same time, one key and very valuable goal of this report could be undermined. That goal is this reality: with water co-operation and water security, it is not only available, potable water that hugely improves the human condition, but the development of the prospect of diplomatic normality, of peaceful co-operation in other spheres and of mutual economic development—in short, the creation of social circumstances in which health, education and all other advances become possible.

I wholly subscribe to that perspective, but I observe that the possibility of delaying the entry of one of the major military powers in the region, a state which has projected military power when aspects of its security are believed, by it, to be at risk, may significantly limit the potential for peace and normalisation that this kind of programme could achieve. This analysis may be wrong, but I think it identifies an important risk which may not have been addressed fully in the report.

If this report is to be successful in the way it is received, it needs to do a number of things with great effect. First, we must ask whether the proposals constitute a viable plan, owned and led in each of the participating nations and to which the international community and the domestic military of those nations can contribute without shaking local ownership. Secondly, will the institutional forms created generate coherence and greater coherence from the outset? There is a risk that they could be a theatre for staging conflict and we need to be sure to mitigate that risk. Thirdly, are all the lead nations involved? I have already commented on that. Fourthly, will the programme build local capacity, to ensure local ownership of technical and managerial objectives? I believe it has that capability. Fifthly, will the programme help focus aid and development priorities, providing the best and most sustainable outlets for aid expenditure? Sixthly, will the programme create employment, providing routes out of poverty and will it grow employment by cutting the costs of starting and doing business? The provision of potable water has, in general, been a significant factor in achieving that objective. Finally, is there a reliable and detailed audit of the impact of this kind of programme on all the local economies, showing the value of peace building as opposed to conflict and helping the programming of donor support? I admire much of what is in this report. If it can begin to address those questions about long-term stability, it will be a very important contribution indeed.