Climate chaos in the Middle East: Bad news and a glimmer of hope
By Lucy Michaels
It’s easy to switch off when you hear another story of just how bad the situation in the Middle East is. News from this part of the world is usually bad and rarely hopeful yet it often has global ramifications. Well, as you probably imagined, it can still get worse. The two burning issues of our time meet in this little corner of the Eastern Mediterranean and the result is not pretty.
Sadly the death of the fabulous but sensitive Red Sea coral will be just the tip of the iceberg for this troubled region. Predictions range from droughts in this already water scarce region, to rising sea levels on the Mediterranean. This will have the biggest effect in the Nile Delta in Egypt, where a rise in sea level of just half a meter could displace between 2-4 million farmers by 2050, and create a massive refugee crisis. The rise in sea level would also lead to sea water intrusion into the already polluted coastal aquifers, the main water source for 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip, and a major water source for Israel.
The region’s farmers face a particularly challenging time with erratic and changing weather patterns such as high temperatures, floods and droughts, decreasing growing seasons, and increasing desertification as the desert belt moves north degrading the soil. Arable land and water resources are already scarce in a region where population growth is high: this will thus have huge implications for food security.
In Israel, farming is largely symbolic amounting to around 2-3% of GDP and providing employment to around 2% of the population and thousands of Thai workers. Farming nevertheless consumes around 60% of available water in Israel each year, and despite developing hi-tech solutions to deal with the water shortages such as desalination and treated waste-water for agricultural use, there is currently a serious debate in Israel as to whether farming is still a viable option. These voices have been strengthened due to a serious drought facing the region this year which sees water levels in Israel’s main reservoir, the Sea of Galilee, falling well below the red line set for safe yield.
Jordan has one of the lowest levels of water resource availability, per capita, in the world. In the Jordan valley, the country’s major agricultural zone, farming is highly controlled; drip irrigation is encouraged and the government banned new orchards of thirsty crops such as bananas. Nevertheless, despite the unheard of snow in Amman this year, the country is also bracing itself for drought. This may lead to conflict with Israel which safeguards 50 million cubic meters of water in the Sea of Galilee for Jordan each year as part of the 1994 Peace Treaty. With the hydrological integrity of the Sea of Galilee threatened by low levels and the need to meet domestic demand, Israel may be loath to give this up.
The situation looks a lot worse in Palestine where a severe economic crisis has meant that agriculture is an economic buffer, keeping around 20% of the Palestinian population afloat and 17% of Palestinian families relying on subsistence farming to survive (2004 figures). In addition, a further 39% of the Palestinian population is employed as agricultural labourers in the informal sector. Until the mid-1990s many Palestinians found work in Israel, as professionals or temporary labour. However, with the signing of the Oslo Accords, accessing the Israeli labour market has become increasingly difficult as permits are harder to obtain, security measures make it more difficult to work illegally, and the flow of foreign labour has increased into Israel.
Ancient terraces dating from the Ottoman Era and magnificent gnarled olive trees reputed to be over 2000 years old bear testimony to the fact that the Palestinian people were traditionally agriculturalists. Palestinian farmers have shown incredible resilience and dynamism despite having to work in increasingly challenging conditions. From 1967, Israel has controlled the main groundwater source under the West Bank, the Mountain aquifer, resulting in Palestinian farmers mostly relying on rain-fed agriculture, with most families practicing rain-water harvesting. Further threats to Palestinian farmers have come from the ‘Separation’ Wall being built by Israel since 2002 for ‘security’ purposes. This has resulted in a well-documented annexation of Palestinian land and water sources, and in some cases, has totally separated farmers from their livelihoods and markets. Israeli settlements on the West Bank have also expropriated land, and made it difficult for farmers to access land nearby.
Despite restrictions on movement imposed in the West Bank by the Occupation, Palestinians have still succeeded in developing a viable agricultural industry, especially in cash crops such as strawberries, vegetables and cut flowers as well as high quality extra virgin olive oil, exporting where possible to Israel, Jordan and Europe. Expanding agriculture should be a major development strategy for Palestine, however the extensive water shortages and the threat of climate change may well prevent this from happening.
This year is a schmita or fallow year in Israel. According to Jewish tradition every seven years farmland in Israel is left uncultivated. This was expected to have been a good opportunity for Palestinians to grow export crops for Israel, however, the unseasonably cold and dry winter has damaged crops, putting pay to that expectation.
The problem in Gaza is of a different and more urgent nature. Hundreds of illegal wells established for agriculture as well as the lack of sewage treatment facilities over the coastal aquifer have resulted in a drastic drop in water quality threatening the health of the million or so Palestinian residents of the tiny strip.
Climate change is thus a ‘threat multiplier’ to an already water scarce region where conditions have been exacerbated by conflict and injudicious management. The next 50 years are likely to see increased economic and political unrest which could threaten current regimes, heightening tensions both internally and placing greater pressure on already strained cross-border relations.
A small hopeful message comes from the growing permaculture movement in the region. Permaculture makes a lot of sense in Palestine and Jordan, not least because it has great similarities with traditional ‘falcha’ agriculture which is eminently suited to the land, climate and to scarce water resources.
During the 1990s, two permaculture centres were established in the village of Marda in the West Bank, and in Khuza’a in the Southern Gaza Strip with Australian funding and support workers. These projects ground to a halt with the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, however in recent years several new grassroots projects have been established. This includes a new Marda Permaculture Farm, which held its first permaculture course in March 2008, and the Arab Women’s Union eco-guest house in Bethlehem. Meanwhile, in Jordan, a project is currently underway in the village of al-Joffa in the Jordan valley.
These recent Palestinian permaculture projects are politically engaged – seeing permaculture both as a strategy for self-reliance, thus breaking dependence on humanitarian aid and the Israeli government, and as a form of resistance to the Occupation through renewed connection to the land, re-learning traditional farming techniques and preserving local seed varieties. Such projects are a means to empowerment in the face of the hopelessly disempowering daily grind of the Occupation.
In Israel the permaculture movement is well established and ranges from the apolitical to highly radical. A project in the West Bank village of Budrus saw a weekly skill-sharing between traditional Palestinian farmers and Israeli permaculture activists, who had been involved in joint struggle against the Separation Wall. The aim was to create an organic market garden to support the Awad family who lost their land and livelihoods to the Wall. The garden is now flourishing, although local political objection to Israelis entering the village put an end to the joint work. Nevertheless, the friendships developed over the eight months of the project give hope that it will continue in some form in the future, and a similar project is being established in a neighbouring village.
The Bedouin struggle within Israel, often overlooked by international activists, is also a struggle against land expropriation and displacement with the resultant loss of traditional lifestyles. Bustan, a joint Israeli-Arab environmental justice NGO, currently runs a number of permaculture-inspired projects in Bedouin areas, introducing alternative technologies such as bio-gas and solar fridges into unrecognised Bedouin villages with no access to electricity, as well as preserving traditional knowledge such as local medicinal plants. Bustan’s most famous project was the building a straw bale clinic in an “unrecognised village”, as a political and practical statement about the lack of Government health care provision for the Bedouin.
Whilst these tiny projects have struggled to survive in the complex climate of Israel’s brutal military Occupation and internal Palestinian political strife, they offer a small glimmer of hope in a region starved of creative and positive ways forward.
All these projects are looking for support and volunteers. Please contact the author if you want more information.
For more information see:
Climate Change: A New Threat to Middle East Security EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East www.foeme.org
Bustan website – www.bustan.org
Arava Institute for Environmental Studies – A peace-building and environmental leadership programme for students from Israel, Palestine, Jordan and internationally which focuses on shared regional environmental problems. www.arava.org
