Water oil, and the Arab regions sustainable development?

Abstract EN

Water basins in the Arab region may not be connected geographically, but they are connected strategically.

Israel and Turkey have forged strategic alliances that are under-pinned by manipulating water availability to other riparians.

Israel's long arm has reached Ethiopia trying to pressure Egypt into a more accommodating stance, and Turkey is trying to extract political and economic concessions from Syria and Iraq by adjusting the flow of the Euphrates.

It is clear that the Arabs need not only work towards a more sustainable economic development strategy by moving off non-renewable resources and a more rational conservation of their resource base.

They also need desperately a strategic posture, an alliance to coalesce their powers into a meaningful force that can protect and safeguard their water interests in an environment of global warming in which water is becoming increasingly more scarce.