Sustaining water, easing scarcity - Population Action International

volume of fresh water produced. And the overpumping
of groundwater has already led to dangerous
increases in salinity as well as the rapid
depletion of the aquifers themselves. 16
This has led Namibia to launch a planning
process aimed at extending its already massive network
of supply pipelines to the Okavango River,
which runs throughout the year along its northeastern
border with Angola. The plan would divert
an estimated 20 million cubic meters of water
from the river through the 155-mile pipeline.
The problem is that the river flows into Botswana,
where it feeds the largest delta—and one of the
most delicate ecosystems—in the world. Moreover,
at least 100,000 people living along the edges of the
Okavango Delta depend on the water for survival. 17
With its water needs expected to double within
the next 20 years, 18 Namibia sees the pipeline
as the only feasible solution to keep pace with the
water demands of its growing urban centers.
Botswana, on the other hand, contends that the
diversion could damage the biologically diverse
marshlands along the Okavango Delta, which is
Botswana’s main tourist attraction, and dry up the
floodplain along which most of the delta’s inhabitants
live. 19 Hydrologists now predict that
Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, could begin to
run short of water in 1998. 20 Clearly, the need
for both governments to negotiate a long-term
solution is urgent.
The Case of the
Tigris-Euphrates Basin
A situation with more serious international implications
is the growing demand for the waters of
the Euphrates River by Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Rising in Turkey and flowing south through Syria
and Iraq into the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates is the
primary water source for millions of people who
depend on it for power generation and irrigation in
an extremely arid climate. Although the conflict
over water between these countries is decades old,
it has intensified in recent years as a result of a
massive Turkish dam building program known as
the Greater Anatolia Project (GAP). Designed to
provide a supply of water and power adequate to
fuel the development needs of Turkey’s population,
which is growing at 1.6 percent annually, GAP is
one of the most massive water infrastructure projects
in history. When completed, it will provide
Turkey with a generating capacity of 7,500
megawatts of electricity—nearly four times the
capacity of Hoover Dam—and open at least 1.5
million hectares of land to irrigated cultivation. 21
Though GAP promises to bring prosperity to
the estimated 7 million Turks who live in the
region, Syria and Iraq have good reason to worry
about the project’s impact on their water supplies.
Full implementation of the GAP system of dams
could result in a 40 percent reduction of the
Euphrates’ flow into Syria and an 80 percent
reduction of flow into Iraq. Such a scenario has
the potential to reduce the electrical output of
Syria’s Tabqa Dam, one of its primary power
sources, to 12 percent of capacity, while Iraq could
lose irrigation water to one million hectares, or
approximately 20 percent of its total arable land.
In addition, the reduction of the river’s flow and
the development in Turkey that will be fueled by
the project will increase the level of salinity as well
as the amounts of agricultural and industrial pollution
in the remaining waters that will be conveyed
into Syria and Iraq. 22
Both Syria and Iraq have already threatened
war over their access to the Euphrates, heightening
the urgency of a regional water-sharing agreement
before the existing water shortages become
even more acute. 23 As the populations of these
nations continue to expand, driven by fertility
rates well above the global average, the competition
for fresh water between agriculture and development
could engender increased instability in a
region that is already dangerously unstable.
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