The UNDP's 2007/2008 Human Development Report on climate change is a wake-up call for all, particularly on water in the Middle East region, writes Amira El-Noshokaty Following the release late last year of the 2007/2008 edition of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report devoted to climate change, international experts met in Cairo last month to discuss the report's warnings about future water scarcity in the Middle East region and threats to the region's fresh water supplies and aquifers. "As a result of climate change, the 2007/2008 Human Development Report predicts water scarcity in the Mediterranean area, including most of North Africa and several Arab countries and Turkey," Hosni Khordagui, leader of the Water and Environment Team at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told the Weekly. The redistribution of rain patterns in terms of place as well as of quantity as a result of climate change could mean that rains that had previously fallen over a period of months could in future fall within the space of a few days, meaning that the future could see "floods followed by droughts," he said. However, rainfall patterns was only one of the topics discussed by Khordagui and other national and international experts at last month's meeting, which focussed on the threat of climate change to aquifers in the Mediterranean region. Two aquifers in particular received the attention of the experts: the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) in Africa and the Nahr Al-Kabir Al-Junobi Basin, located between Syria and Lebanon, both of which were looked at in terms of capacity building and joint management. The Cairo meeting came as part of the reaction to the fact that the ground water resources of the Mediterranean region are under severe stress, and a partnership arrangement is already underway between countries on the northern and the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, both of which are threatened by climate change. Sea water intrusion into coastal aquifers as a result of higher sea levels associated with global warming and climate change is a problem for countries on both sides of the Mediterranean. According to Khordagui, "the consequences will be particularly drastic if these developments affect Turkey, since it is the main source of ground water to downstream countries such as Iraq and Syria." Climate change, he said, is already having measurable effects on Arab countries in the eastern Mediterranean, with rains in Palestine and Lebanon having measurably declined, affecting fresh water reserves. Elsewhere, "reservoirs of fresh water in the form of the ice-caps on mountains are dwindling since the ice-caps themselves are melting due to global warming, and this is having an effect on rivers, which require larger dams." There is a greater need than ever to preserve underground water reserves, and one project designed to do this, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System targeting the north-east corner of Africa where Libya, Sudan, Chad and Egypt share underground water, was developed from the late 1990s into the early years of the new millennium. The project, which aims to enhance cooperation between the four countries, covers the approximately 2.2 million square km covered by the NSAS, and is implemented by the Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE), which is committed to the development of a regional strategy for the sustainable use of the system. Replenishment of the NSAS may have stopped some 8,000 years ago at the end of the rainy era in the region and the beginnings of desertification. Yet, extraction of ground water from the aquifer system, beginning in 1960, continues, and it has resulted in a general decline in water levels. According to Khordagui, Egypt's dependency on underground aquifer water is not high in comparison with other countries, because 96 to 98 per cent of fresh water consumption in the country comes from the River Nile, leaving underground water usage limited to remote areas such as the oases, the Western Desert and some parts of the Eastern Desert. However, most of the underground water in the region dates from prehistoric times, taking some 30,000 to 40,000 years to form. It is thus a non-renewable resource, and what is used today cannot be replaced by any increased rain associated with climate change. "A new management system should therefore replace the customary element of 'certainty' when it comes to water management," Khordagui says, adding that "in the light of ongoing climate change we must learn to adjust to new conditions." According to the UNDP's Human Development Report, the consequences of climate change will last for a century or more. Greenhouse gas emission is irreversible, and the heat- trapping gases that are already in the atmosphere will remain there until 2108 and beyond. Global temperature increases of 3-4 degrees Centigrade could result in 330 million people worldwide being permanently or temporarily displaced as a result of flooding. Six million of these people could be in Lower Egypt, due to potential flooding of the Nile Delta, and this would transform the country's agricultural production. "If such predicted scenarios come to pass as a result of climate change, then we are the ones who will pay the highest price, given the great differences between the industrialised and non-industrialised countries. Despite the fact that the 13 Arab states in the ESCWA are together responsible for less than three per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, they will be the first to suffer from the effects of greenhouse gases and climate change," Khordagui told the Weekly. Meanwhile, some countries, notably in the Gulf, have abused non-renewable underground water supplies by using them to produce wheat grown for export. This was a mistake, since such strategic reservoirs of underground fresh water should have been preserved for emergencies or for the use of future generations. According to Khordagui, today there is a greater awareness of the need to reduce ground water consumption, and the increased use of new technology and genetically engineered crops can cut down on water consumption. Arab countries headed by Egypt are currently also focussing on renewable and clean energy supplies that use less water, such as wind farms and solar panels. There is still, however, a need to treat the existing underground water supplies as a kind of "Plan B" for survival in the light of future water scarcity brought on by climate change. The United Nations is therefore also supporting a project that aims to build the capacities of member states to jointly manage their underground water. According to Fatma Attia, coordinator of the Integrated Irrigation Improvement and Management Project (IIIMP) at the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Egypt's share of underground water from the NSAS amounts to around 1,3 billion cubic metres annually; some of which is used for bottled water and the rest for irrigation, mostly in the oases of the Western Desert and elsewhere. Joint management of the NSAS started in the early 1990s in the form of a cooperation agreement between Egypt and Libya. This was later joined by Sudan and then Chad. Today, there is a joint body managing numerous projects funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Islamic Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the executive body of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the ESCWA. Prior to the implementation of the annual water management plan that started in 2002/03, the impact of excess use of underground water within the oases was greater than it was on the NSAS itself. "Underground water below some oases had decreased sharply due to intensive usage," Attia says. As for seawater intrusion into aquifers located near the coast, this is being addressed through integrated water management projects, in which brackish sea water is drained and used for fish (nurseries and fish-farms) in the northern Delta. "We have 29 fish-farms today that are major sources for exports, jumping from some 10,000 tonnes ten years ago to 280,000 tonnes annually today," Attia adds. "To protect against seawater intrusion into coastal ground water, breakwaters have been built to protect the coast at Damietta, on the northern coast and in Sinai." One world is not enough "If every person living in the developing world had the same carbon footprint as the average for high- income countries, global carbon dioxide emissions would rise to a level that would require six planets. With a global per capita footprint at Australian levels, we would need seven planets, rising to nine for a world with Canada and the United States levels of per capita emissions... As a global community, we are running up a large and unsustainable carbon debt, but the bulk of that debt has been accumulated by the world's richest countries." Droughts and floods "Droughts and floods are already the main drivers of a steady increase in climate-related disasters. On average, around 262 million people are affected each year between 2000 and 2004, over 98 per cent of them living in developing countries. With an increase in temperatures above two degrees Centigrade, warmer seas will fuel more violent tropical cyclones. Drought-affected areas will increase in extent, jeopardising livelihoods and compromising progress in health and nutrition." Collapse of ecosystems "All predicted species extinction rates accelerate beyond the two degrees Centigrade threshold, with three degrees Centigrade marking the point at which 20-30 per cent of species would be at 'high risk' of extinction. Coral reef systems, already in decline, would suffer extensive 'bleaching' leading to the transformation of marine ecologies, with large losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services. This would adversely affect hundreds of millions of people dependent upon fish for their livelihoods and nutrition." Increased health risks "Climate change will impact human health at many levels. Globally, an additional 220-400 million people could be at increase risk of malaria. Exposure rates for Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for around 90 per cent of deaths, are projected to increase by 16-28 per cent." The world's most water-stressed region "Scenarios for the Middle East, already the world's most water-stressed region, point in the direction of increasing pressure. Nine out of 14 countries in the region already have average per capita water availability below the water scarcity threshold. Decreased precipitation is projected for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Meanwhile rising temperatures and changes in runoff patterns will influence the flow of rivers upon which countries in the region depend." Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2007/8, Fighting Climate Change.
