How the great tides of history turned

Stemming the flow

Sardasht is one of three dams that have been built on the Iran-Kurdistan border. Around 30 per cent of the Tigris’ water originates from Iran, leaving Iraq vulnerable to the actions of the Islamic republic.

But Iran is not the only neighbour investing in dams and Iraq is not the only regional power being hit by issues around cross border water flows. Both the Tigris and the Euphrates – once the natural borders of the historical region of Mesopotamia – are being dammed by Turkey.

Meanwhile, in North Africa, Egyptian politicians have been quick to sabre rattle in a bid to stop the construction of Ethiopia’s multibillion-dollar Nile River dam project.

Along the Nile, Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, some of history’s most important civilisations were born and raised, developed and flourished. From some of the earliest human agricultural communities, these rivers have sustained life in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa for millennia. It was along the banks and in part because of the steady supply of fresh water that three of the seven ancient wonders of the world are believed to have been build – the Great Pyramids at Giza, the Great Light House at Alexandria and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in modern day central Iraq.

But today, all three rivers are under threat. 

From the proliferation of dams and poor management to climate change, these ancient waterways and their beneficiaries have for some time been at the mercy of a man-made crisis.

But who’s the real culprit in this crisis: climate change or damming?

According to Kira Walker – a writer focused on environmental security in the MENA region – they both play different but critical roles. “Each contributes to present and future shortage while also compounding the other,” Ms Walker told The National.

“Building dams is considered shortsighted… as it won’t actually address water shortages in the long-term, will worsen the impacts of climate change and cause havoc for the people up and downstream,” she explained. On the other hand, she added, “climate change will exacerbate existing water issues – many of which were caused by decades of water mismanagement, including the building of dams –and cause new water-related stresses.”

In Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, where rivers once threatened to drown unsavvy swimmers, some tributaries are so depleted they can be crossed by foot – their murky waters barely lapping against the river flank.

With the ongoing work across Iraq’s borders in Turkey and Iran, officials in Baghdad last year said the percentage of annual flow through the Tigris-Euphrates river basin had decreased by more than 40 per cent. 

And with around 70 per cent of Iraq’s river water resources coming through neighbouring countries, Iraqis cried foul. Between two and nine per cent of water in Iraq comes from the ground – making the country highly dependent on its rivers.

In addition, farmers using outdated techniques tend to over irrigate, wasting more water. Though reforms are needed, the country’s ongoing state of conflict has left little space for authorities and organisations to focus on proper management or education of more sustainable farming techniques.

Livelihoods at stake

In addition to the Ilisu dam, Iran in 2015 began filling the Daryan dam, situated on the Sirwan River, another one of the Tigris’ major tributaries. It is expected to reduce the flow to the Shatt Al Arab by up to 18 per cent. 

But while massive dams and government mismanagement have played key roles in water scarcity and the consequent social upheaval, climate change is also playing a major part. Iraq’s long, hot summers, are becoming increasingly unbearable.

However, Ms Walker warns that “framing climate change as the worst perpetrator risks absolving political leaders and governments of their responsibilities to deal with the actual causes of water shortages – which they often had a heavy hand in causing – through governance, management and policy.”

Indeed, some politicians are quick to point fingers. Former Iraqi water minister Hassan Al Janabi last year accused Ankara of using the resource as a bargaining chip. By June 2018 the rift between Baghdad and Ankara had widened. It wasn’t until October when Turkey agreed to release more water to ease Iraqi shortages, that an amicable relation was restored.

In another sign of reconciliation, Turkey last week appointed a former forestry and water affairs minister as the new special envoy to Iraq, Daily Sabah reported on Thursday. Veysel Eroglu will be tasked with taking the necessary steps to resolve the ongoing water dispute.

Mr Erdogan admitted during a press conference with Iraqi President Barham Salih last week that there were problems with water management between the two countries, but added that they could be solved in two years. The aim, said Mr Eroglu, is to ensure an equitable share of water from the Tigris and Euphrates.  

Although water has been used to strong-arm more vulnerable nations, experts are wary of the term ‘water wars’. 

“There’s often political hysteria over water,” says Mr Selby. “Water can be an easy nationalist rhetoric.”

For some, however, water is a more personal matter – their livelihoods depend on a functioning irrigation system.

On the Nile Delta north of Cairo, farmer Ragab Eissa says he has grown rice for years. “Two years ago, they restricted the land I can grow rice on. Of my five acres, I can only grow two with rice, and still the water is not enough,” says Mr Eissa.

“A government inspector is always coming to check, and he decides the watering schedule for me and others.” Most rice is grown by flooding the fields from planting to harvest, using up a lot of water – it is estimated to use about two and a half times the amount of water needed to grow wheat.

Since 2017, farmers in many parts of the country have been required to replace the method of watering by inundation to sprinklers. Last year, the ministry slashed the area of land that can be used for water-intensive growing of rice, imposing heavy fines of between 3,000 (Dh 615) and 20,000 (Dh 4,100) Egyptian pounds on violators and a possible six-month prison sentence.

Last year, Cairo decreed the area of land that can be used to 724,000 feddans – 750,000 acres – a sharp drop from the officially allotted 1.1 million feddans the year before and the 1.8 million feddans grains traders believe were actually grown.

The government also banned rice growing in the centre and south of the Nile Delta as well as in four provinces outside the delta. It allowed rice growing in regions close to the Mediterranean or salty lakes alongside its coast, with the intention of preventing the sea’s salty water from encroaching on the soil in the area.

Cairo, for years an exporter of rice, also began importing rice as production dropped.

“I no longer grow rice like I used to. Now, we grow crops that don’t consume so much water, like wheat,” explains the farmer. Wheat, however, has a lower market price than rice with the benchmark US wheat averaging at $232 per tonne versus $423 for rice, according UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.

Although farmers lament the lack of water, Egypt – under agreements reached in 1929 and 1959 – receives more than 55 billion of the 88 billion cubic meters of water that flow down the river each year. That amount has been challenged by other Nile basin nations as unfair.

Despite a large quantity of water flow, Egypt’s government was quick to criticise Ethiopia’s self-financed dam project when they began building it in 2011.

But fast-forward eight years and Egypt’s share of the Nile’s water has yet to be affected by the under-construction Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, home of the source of the Blue Nile, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the river’s water going downstream to Sudan and then Egypt.

The mere prospect of a cut in the country’s share of the river’s water has created sufficient concern in Egypt to introduce the new agricultural policies that emphasize the conservation of water. This in turn has seen the Egyptian government take a rare proactive stance.

As parts of efforts to conserve water, authorities have also been investing in the cleansing of heavily polluted canals and recycling water. There has also been growing use of subterranean water across much of the country along with solar power in irrigation networks. Egypt has also been gradually lifting state subsidies on potable water, part of its ambitious economic reforms but also a step that forced Egyptian households to cut down on waste.

Egypt's respite

Construction of Ethiopia’s dam has been suspended over a corruption case and technical hiccups. This gives Egypt a little leeway to negotiate an agreement with their neighbour on how to proceed without subjecting mostly desert Egypt to a hugely damaging water shortage.

That agreement heavily depends on the management of the flow and how fast the Ethiopians fill the reservoir behind the dam, which can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water. A fast-fill would block more water from reaching Egypt and Sudan, while a slower one would mean less reduction downstream.

A study by a Cairo University agriculture professor estimated Egypt would lose a staggering 51 per cent of its farmland if the fill is completed within three years. A slower, six-year fill would cost Egypt 17 per cent of its cultivated land, the study claimed.  

Curiously, Egypt also has one of the lowest per capita shares of water, less than 700 cubic meters a person, but with the population – which stands at 100 million now –  expected to double in 50 years, shortages are forecast to be severe by 2025.

But some Egyptians are already feeling the effects. Mohammed Sayed, 48, is a farmer from Atfeeh, south of Cairo. Mr Sayed says he was forced to dig a well because his canal had dried up.

“We were accustomed to watering our farm fields from a Nile canal. The longest we used to stay without water was a month and that was always in January,” he said, referring to the month in which the Nile water-level is at its lowest. But the canal has disappeared.

“There is just no water…so we dug a well and we are now pumping out water. It’s expensive. We need either electricity or fuel to operate the pump. It’s about 100 [Egyptian] pounds every time we water our farm.”

So in the coming months and years, governments across the region are going to need to proactively tackle brewing and existing crises, but there is a precedence for bilateral solutions to the problem.

“Research shows that historically water issues have almost always been dealt with cooperatively,” says Ms Walker. Yet with trust dwindling between many of the nations concerned and differing priorities, hashing out agreements on the use of dams or pumping out for agriculture will be a challenge.

With political infighting, insecurity, major challenges for development in both Egypt and Iraq as well as Cairo’s ever-tightening budgets, the competing imperatives offer politicians the perfect opportunity to neglect the thorny process of finding solutions. But one thing is clear, populations along the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile and others will not stand idly by and watch the historic resource dwindle.

* additional reporting by Youssef Hamza in Cairo and Mohammed Rasool in Erbil