In the coming years, it is thought that water will become a more important geopolitical resource than crude oil with demand set to rise more than 50 percent by 2030.

As climate change and higher consumption dry up already scarce water supplies, especially in the Middle East and North Africa region, the risk of conflict over this vital resource also increases.

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) hopes to avoid this and provide water security through the Blue Peace Strategy, which promotes water sustainability as an asset for political and social peace.

Blue Peace has noted that access to water has been a cause of conflict and migration in the region before, with wars fought over water sources throughout history. Continuing political tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam are a recent example.

In Lebanon, water scarcity resulting from the country’s continuing financial meltdown and poorly managed water systems has caused a slew of hygiene issues, especially for refugee populations.

“Water has also been weaponised in recent times, despite the fact that access to water and appropriate sanitation is a human right: In 2017 alone, water was a major factor in open conflicts in at least 45 countries, including Syria, also entailing direct attacks on water infrastructure,” SDC senior water policy adviser for Blue Peace André Wehrli told Al Jazeera.

“Blue Peace aims to promote systemic water cooperation among borders, sectors and generations to foster peace, stability and sustainable development, thereby contributing to increased water, food and energy security, as well as durable ecosystem services in a changing climate.”

Blue Peace is currently active in Central Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East, where it has been running programmes for more than a decade in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and others.

“In practice, Blue Peace is advanced when different stakeholders come together to make equitable decisions about and invest in shared water resources to promote peace, as a basis for sustainable development and vice-versa,” said Wehrli.

Blue Peace has highlighted various methods to prevent or reduce tensions over shared water resources, including diplomatic-political dialogue, technical exchange and support, financial tools, capacity-building and awareness-raising, he added.

The SDC has offered countries support in managing their water resources more effectively and in reducing tensions between different users, such as private consumers, the energy industry, and agricultural infrastructure.

Since 2019, a regional management committee of experts from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and SDC members, has overseen the programme, with coordination support from the Turkish Water Institute SUEN until the end of 2022.

Between 2019 and 2022, more than $4m was assigned for MENA projects alone.

“The Middle East is one of the most water-scarce regions in the world, with water availability including both rainfall and other sources of less than 1,000 metres cubed per year,” Wehrli said. “Eighty percent of available water resources in the region is used for irrigation, however, to a large extent is under low efficiency and effectiveness with very limited contribution to GDP.”

Other water-related issues in the region include desertification, he noted. “Desalination plants are an overuse of water resources with 70 percent of desalination plants located in the MENA, found mostly in Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait.”

Efforts to establish baselines

In Lebanon in 2015, Blue Peace began establishing a baseline for the Orontes River Basin, assessing the water resource usage and building on existing networks of academia, civil society, and public institutions, in partnership with the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute (LARI) and Litani Authority.

Blue Peace Middle East in its current phase has been working on establishing scientific baselines that could serve as common ground for negotiations, such as in the Yarmouk River that runs through Jordan, Syria and Israel.

Its capacity-building programmes included the establishment of the Water Diplomacy Center at the Jordan University of Science and Technology, which offered coaching and training workshops to water and environmental stakeholders in the region.

New improved and adapted granular filtration systems have been used as a natural grey water treatment system, saving 33 percent of freshwater consumption and 35 percent of the monthly water bill for houses using treated grey water.

The support of startups in the water sector together with their partner CEWAS has continued, and the next phase is set to start in 2023.

Six rehabilitated water-monitoring stations are being built, aiming to further the Iraq-Turkey dialogue regarding the Tigris River that flows through both countries. Four gauging stations are being rehabilitated by Blue Peace along the Tigris to help obtain accurate water data to better inform water-sharing between the two countries.

“We plan to further consolidate the regional mechanism with increased regional ownership-potential outcome being a regionally owned Blue Peace mechanism fostering systemic transboundary water cooperation in the Middle East,” Wehrli said. “This can also include an increase of the membership of the regional mechanism to include additional countries.”

By 2025, Blue Peace estimated the region’s renewable freshwater supply will have dropped below one-third of the level from the 1970s.

Sustainable water use is, therefore, vital, and the exchange of data between countries that share water sources is critical for effective management. With Blue Peace’s aid, nations could help stave off water scarcity by working together.

Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles form its soil that hit Erbil’s capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The missile attack earlier this month that blasted a villa in Iraq’s Kurdish region was prompted, by a plan in the works with Israel for the Kurds to supply natural gas to Turkey and Europe, Reuters reported Monday, citing Iraqi and Turkish officials.

 

There has been considerable speculation as to why Iran targeted the villa, which is owned by Baz Karim Barzanji, a Kurdish energy billionare.

 

Two Turkish officials confirmed talks involving US and Israeli officials were held to discuss Iraq supplying natural gas to Turkey and Europe, though they didn’t say where they were held. An Iraqi security official, however, said that at least two meetings with US and Israeli energy specialists were held at the villa.

 

“There had been two recent meetings between Israeli and US energy officials and specialists at the villa to discuss shipping Kurdistan gas to Turkey via a new pipeline,” the Iraqi security official was quoted as saying.

 

The officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give details of the alleged plan, what stage it is at, or Israel’s role in the project. They said the gas was to be shipped through a new pipeline to Turkey and from there to Europe.

 

Barzanji’s villa was hit on March 13 in a cruise missile attack. Reuters reported that no one was seriously hurt in the attack, which Iran claimed responsibility for, alleging that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was operating from the mansion.

 

The Iraqi official as well as a former US official with knowledge of the talks confirmed that Barzanji was working on the gas export plan.

 

“Some talks were held for northern Iraq natural gas exports and we know that Iraq, the United States and Israel were involved in this process,” one of the Turkish officials told Reuters. “Turkey supports this too.”

 

They both said that Barzanji’s KAR Group is working to advance the gas pipeline plan. The US official said that it will connect to an already completed pipe in Turkey near the border.

 

“The timing of the attack in Erbil is very interesting,” the Turkish official said. “It seems it was more directed at northern Iraq’s energy exports and possible cooperation that would include Israel.”

 

An Iraqi government official, as well as a Western diplomat in Iraq, told Reuters that Barzanji was known to host foreign officials and businessmen at the villa, including Israelis.

 

However, the Iraqi Kurdish president’s office denied that any meetings with US and Israeli officials about a pipeline were ever held at the villa. The Kurds have insisted there is no presence of Israeli military personnel or officials in the territory.

 

Barzanji’s KAR Group built and manages a domestic pipeline in the Kurdish region, according to a Kurdistan presidency official. It owns a third of the region’s oil export pipeline in a lease agreement. The remaining ownership is held by Russia’s Rosneft.

 

KAR Group could not be reached for comment, Reuters said.

 

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it was not familiar with the matter, according to the report, while Barzanji didn’t respond to a request for comment.

 

Last week, the UK-based Iran International, a Persian-language media outlet, tweeted that Barzanji said the missile strike was intended to stop a natural gas pipeline from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey, but did not mention any Israeli involvement.

 

Iran’s Islamic Republican Guard Corps took responsibility for the missile attack, saying it was in retaliation for the deaths of two of its members in Syria in an alleged Israeli airstrike. It said the villa was a “strategic center” of Mossad.

 

Barzanji denied any links to the Israeli spy agency.

 

The Iraqi and Turkish officials told Reuters they believe the attack was meant to send a message regarding Iran’s military capabilities to US allies in the region, but that the gas pipeline plan was also a major reason behind it.

 

All of the officials who spoke to the news agency said such a pipeline would be a threat to Iran, which is a major supplier of natural gas to Iraq and Turkey, especially as Iran’s economy sags under international sanctions.

 

Israel and Turkey, which for years were at odds, have been drawing closer together. At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked fears of shortages of Russian gas in Europe.

 

Last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his country could cooperate with Israel to bring natural gas to Europe. Israel also has offshore natural gas reserves that it hopes to sell in the continent.

 

According to Reuters, Erdogan has met with Barzanji and told him Turkey wants to sign a deal for natural gas from Iraq.

 

Nearly a quarter of the world’s children are estimated to live in countries affected by armed conflict or disaster. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the children there are experiencing the devastating consequences of living in a war zone – the constant threat of shelling, shooting and losing loved ones, as well as the worry over accessing food, clean drinking water and healthcare, and the breakdown of their usual routines and structures.

“The legacy of this war will be a traumatized generation,” wrote Serhii Lukashov, the director of SOS Children’s Villages in Ukraine. The mental health impact of this is likely to have consequences for years to come.

Post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression are the most common mental health disorders in the aftermath of war – for both adults and children. While the incidences of these disorders are difficult to estimate, most studies have found significantly raised levels of disturbance compared with control populations. For example, past studies of newly arrived refugee children show rates of anxiety from 49 percent to 69 percent, with prevalence dramatically increasing if at least one parent had been tortured or if families were separated.

PTSD can occur in children after even a single traumatic event, but repeated or prolonged trauma increases the risk. The symptoms of PTSD vary; sufferers may show intense fear, helplessness, anger, sadness, horror or denial. They can also develop physical symptoms including headaches and stomach aches; show more sudden and extreme emotional reactions; or have problems falling or staying asleep. Children who experience repeated trauma may develop a kind of emotional numbing to deaden or block the pain and trauma. This is called dissociation.

Depression can occur in children as young as three years old – they can feel sad or hopeless, or show disinterest in things they used to enjoy. Their sleep patterns and energy levels may change, and some may even self-harm.

How a child’s mental health is affected will depend to a large extent on the support they receive from their caregivers. But this, too, becomes difficult during times of war as normal attachments are frequently disrupted. Some children could lose their caregivers, be separated from them as some members of the family flee and others stay behind to fight, or find that their caregivers are themselves too depressed or anxious or too preoccupied with protecting and finding subsistence for the family to be fully emotionally available.

For children, the detrimental effects of war trauma are not restricted to specific mental health diagnoses but also include a broad and multifaceted set of developmental outcomes that compromise relationships, school performance and general life satisfaction. This is exacerbated by the fact that violent conflict often destroys or significantly damages schools and educational systems. Without the structure offered by schools, children will need the adults in their lives to provide this; we have seen videos online of Ukrainian children in underground bunkers where adults are facilitating lessons and designated playtimes.

It isn’t just loved ones and routines children may be separated from. Many will have to flee their homes at short notice, leaving behind their treasured possessions, such as a specific ‘attachment object’ – usually a favorite blanket or a soft toy. Children often reach for these things when they need to feel safe. But during war, when children are forced to flee and need these objects more than ever, many are left without them.

 

By Mark Episkopos

Here's What You Need to Remember: A press statement released on Monday announced the review’s conclusion, the Defense Department said that the “review directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea.”

The Department of Defense has announced the completion of its Global Posture Review. The full review will not be made available to the public, said Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Mara Karlin, citing security concerns relating to classified materials.  

The study did not call for any major shifts in U.S. military strategy. Instead, it reaffirmed prior defense commitments and policy decisions made by the Biden administration. “[The Indo-Pacific] is the priority theater. China is the pacing challenge for the department,” the senior defense official reportedly said during a Monday briefing. “I think you’ll see a strong commitment in the forthcoming NDS [National Defense Strategy] as well that will guide further posture enhancements.”  

A press statement released on Monday announced the review’s conclusion, the Defense Department said that the “review directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea.” Karlin noted that the Biden administration continues to “remain concerned” about North Korea’s “problematic and irresponsible behavior,” adding that this issue will be a “robust topic of dialogue” during Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s upcoming visit to Seoul. The Pentagon statement called for rotational aircraft deployments in Australia, as well as “enhancing infrastructure in Australia and the Pacific Islands.” 

The review reportedly stresses the need to continue the U.S. military presence in Germany, with the Biden administration poised to rescind former President Donald Trump’s cap of twenty-five thousand active-duty force cap in that country. Austin said in April that the Pentagon seeks to station an Army Multi-Domain Task Force and a Theater Fires Command, totaling five hundred personnel, in Germany.  

The review did not cover the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Karlin said is the subject of a separate interagency inquiry.  

The review has come under fire from critics who maintain that the Pentagon has failed to make the tough strategic choices necessary to put the military on the path to a sustainable global footing. The Quincy Institute’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos characterized the review as little more than an affirmation of the status quo, with the Pentagon seemingly doubling down on maintaining the U.S. military footprint in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  “So far as we can tell (the entire product won’t be released to the public), the results of the Global Posture Review range from unimaginative to pitiful,” wrote defense expert and foreign affairs columnist Daniel DePetris. “For those who strongly believe that the military is overstretched, performing too many tasks, and guided by an ingrained assumption that American primacy in a multipolar world is still appropriate, this was a disappointment.”  

If you want to understand the revolution taking place in renewable energy, come to a power station called Gemasolar in southern Spain. Here, in the dusty plains of Andalusia, they have worked out how to generate solar power 24 hours a day.

Yes, you can read that sentence again. At Gemasolar they create electricity even when the Sun is not shining. They have rigged up more than 2,500 huge mirrors on hydraulic mounts that follow the Sun's passage through the sky.

The mirrors - each about the size of half a tennis court - reflect the Sun's rays to one central point, the top of a 140m (459ft) tower, where molten salt is heated to almost 600C. This liquid salt is carried down the tower to where it heats the steam that powers a turbine.

And here's the trick: not all the salt is used at that point. Some is stored in huge tanks and used later when the Sun has gone down. So long as the Sun shines every day, the plant can generate power 24/7.

Is this the beginning of the end of coal?

Rise in global wind speed to boost green power?

How liquid air could help keep the lights on?

Why Australia is debating a vast underground 'battery'?

I tell you this not just as an illustration of how fast renewable technology is changing - this particular innovation is not that new - but also as an example of how electrified our energy is set to become.

 The expansion of electric vehicles is predicted to accelerate significantly, to a point when it will become the norm rather than the exception.

Battery technology still has far to go but many scientists and businesses are competing to find ways of storing electrical power that is lighter and longer-lasting. Already some electrically powered passenger aircraft are in production. How long before ships can be powered by batteries rather than fuel oil?

The plane that can fly 600 miles on batteries alone

The obvious and much-contested question is when this renewable revolution will reach its peak and whether it will come in time to protect the planet from global warming. That is not something I am qualified to answer.

What interests me is a separate question: what impact might this new technology have, not on the world's climate, but its politics?

What happens to the global balance of political power when so many countries no longer need to buy so much oil and gas? This is a question that Adam Bowen and I have sought to answer in a documentary for the BBC World Service and Radio Four.

For more than a century, nations that had oil and gas had power, literally and politically. Wars were fought over the stuff. The Iraqi military set Kuwaiti oil fields on fire after their retreat in 1991

It all began before the World War One when Winston Churchill - as First Lord of the Admiralty - converted the British navy from Welsh coal to imported oil.

To secure British access to that oil, the future British prime minister bought a controlling stake in the Anglo Persian oil company, the forerunner of BP, in what is now Iran.

From that moment, much of the history of the 20th Century can be seen through countries' pursuit of hydrocarbons, from Adolf Hitler's attempts to secure the Baku oil fields to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait to last September's drone and missile attack on Saudi oil facilities.

Countries with oil and gas used their monopolies to sell the stuff for huge profits; those countries which relied on it spent much blood and treasure defending their access to it.

The question is how much the renewable revolution might change this geopolitical equation. How much influence will be lost by some of the world's big fossil fuel producers, in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere?

 Might there be more regional conflict as these countries fight over an ever-decreasing share of the hydrocarbon energy market? And what might happen to these countries internally if they lose their main source of revenue?

Often these are nations have huge state-led economies, with many workers employed by governments, with youthful populations accustomed to cheap fuel.

There is little consensus over when the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy will take place. There are many different predictions about when global demand for oil will peak and fall away but the planners at Shell recently forecast it could happen as early as 2025.

So some oil-producing countries are playing safe and preparing for the moment when they can no longer rely on oil. They are looking to diversify their economies and find other sources of energy.

But other countries are more skeptical, trusting that demand for their oil and gas will last for some time.

Some of these countries stand accused of talking about diversification but doing little about it. The potential consequences of this are becoming an increasing source of concern.

This is what Prof Paul Stevens, distinguished fellow at the UK foreign affairs think tank Chatham House, said "The oil producing government gets revenue; if that revenue falls or disappears, the government is no longer able to sustain the non-oil sector, which means you will have rising unemployment, you will no longer be able to pay subsidies to keep your population happy.

"Many of the large oil and gas exporters are what might politely be described as politically unstable. So the faster the transition [to renewables], the greater the fall in gas and oil revenues, the more disruptive it is going to be and so you are looking at potentially a large number of failed states."

This is what Tom Burke, chairman of the E3G environmental think tank and a former UK government adviser says: "If you can't deliver food, energy and water security, as we have seen across the Middle East, it is pretty difficult to deliver internal stability. Urban populations, when you fail to meet their expectations, riot. You could have the basic structures of the state fall apart.

"But much more than that, when people riot or look like they might riot, what tends to happen in those situations in countries is they seek foreign adventures in order to distract people from their unmet expectations."

 Just imagine a currently stable oil-producing country in the Gulf that suddenly becomes a failed state. Not only would this be a disaster for the country itself, but it could also have huge implications for the world.

Failed states often become the homes to extremist violence - think Syria - and they often produce mass migration.

This potential disruption might not be confined to the Gulf. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of oil and gas in the world. Its economy and its government depend hugely on the revenues this brings in. Little wonder that President Putin describes the development of "green technologies" as a one of the "main challenges and threats" to Russia's economic security.

Many Russians remember that falling oil prices contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the current government is investing little in alternative renewable energies. If one day the world needs to buy less Russian gas, that could have a huge impact on the stability of the Russian state and could transform its relations with Europe.

There are other potential sources of tension and conflict in a world of clean energy.

There could be a race to secure access to minerals such as cobalt and lithium which are vital for batteries and can be rare. Much of the world's best cobalt is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has a history of instability and poor governance.

At the same time, the new so-called super grids through which electricity will flow between countries will be more vulnerable to cyber-attack.

An interesting question is how environmental campaigners should respond to the political risks involved in the move towards renewable energy.

Should those potential downsides be taken into account or is the need to protect the world from climate change so paramount that all other considerations are secondary? How might public opinion be affected if reducing global warming meant more terrorism and migration?

 These, of course, are some of the worst-case scenarios. There are many potential positives.

When the transition to renewables takes place, countries that were previously energy dependent will be able to produce their own power. One of the advantages of renewables is that many more countries have the ability to generate clean energy.

Some countries with lots of sun, wind or tide could not only become self-sufficient but could also export some of their energy via huge so-called interconnectors. There may be something of a peace dividend: if the world no longer needs so much oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz each day, then perhaps they will not need such large armies and navies to defend it?

To a large extent, the geopolitics of energy may cease to be so significant. As Prof Stevens says, people will still find things to kill each other over, such as food and water.

But energy, maybe not so much.

 

 

 

As Russian forces move further into the country they  are also destroying parts of Ukraine’s cultural heritage – something not uncommon to war. Last week the UN cultural agency released a statement saying it is “gravely concerned” about the destruction of Ukrainian art and history.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said “we must safeguard the cultural heritage in Ukraine, as a testimony of the past but also as a catalyst for peace and cohesion for the future, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve.” Ukraine is home to seven sites on Unesco’s World Heritage List, including the 11th-century Saint-Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the historic city center of Lviv. The recently damaged cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv host some of the country’s greatest art collections.

In early March, a Russian raid hit the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, which commemorates more than thirty thousand Jews killed by Nazis in a two-day period during World War II. UNESCO is now working with Ukrainian authorities to mark cultural sites and monuments with the distinctive “Blue Shield” emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to avoid deliberate or accidental damage.

 Since time immemorial, invading armies have looted in the pursuit of going home richer. It’s also been a way to eradicate culture – defeating people’s sense of place, identity and belonging. But in the sixth century BC, Sun Tzu wrote in ‘The Art of War’ that destroying the cultural heritage of your enemy is bad military practice as it invites eventual retaliation and often makes it harder for victors to govern a defeated population.

Only six months is left for preparing for the Iraqi Kurdistan parliamentary elections. Political parties have not agreed to amend electoral law, and HIC’s legal term has expired that needs to be renewed before it can manage the upcoming elections.

HIC has introduced three proposals to the presidency of the Iraqi Kurdistan parliament to reactivate HIC’s and solve their problems. Before holding the elections, first, the HIC needs to be reactivated and electoral laws amended, Muna Qahwachee told Kurdsat news.

Suppose the electoral law is not amended, and HIC’s legal term is not renewed. In that case, the elections could be postponed, she added.

HIC is the executive body of an election; for the elections to process smoothly, the HIC has asked the Parliament "six months" to prepare for the elections. 

Even after months of HIC's legal term expiration, the Parliament has kept silent, said Shirwan Zrar, spokesperson for HIC. 

Last week, 39 cross-party Kurdish lawmakers, except Kurdistan Democratic Party MPs, introduced a bill to Parliament’s presidency to amend electoral laws. The lawmakers wanted the bill to be discussed soon. 

The President of Iraqi Kurdistan declared 1st of October to be the day of the general parliamentary elections. Due to severe disagreements between political parties, preparations are not made for the elections.