Showing posts with label Access to clean water. Show all posts

Sunday, January 7, 2018

2791. The Role of Water Crisis in the Recent Iran Protests

By Louis Proyect, The Unrepentent Marxist, January 7, 2018

Lake Urumiah, the largetst salt lake in the world has dried out in recent years.

On January 2^nd, an NY Times article about the protests in Iran included a couple of paragraphs that caught my eye:

For decades, those living in Iran’s provincial towns and villages were regarded as the backbone of the country’s Islamic regime. They tended to be conservative, averse to change and pious followers of the sober Islamic lifestyle promoted by the state.

In less than a decade, all that has changed. A 14-year drought has emptied villages, with residents moving to nearby cities where they often struggle to find jobs. Access to satellite television and, more important, the mobile internet has widened their world.

In a nutshell, this is exactly the sort of social contradictions that helped to fuel the Syrian revolution as I pointed out in an article titled “Syria, Water and the Fall from Eden”, where I quoted a high-level government official:

There is no more rain, but there are more and more people. We forget that we are living in the desert here and that more than a quarter of the Syrian population now lives in Damascus. We have no water anymore and our Barada River cries. In the plain, in the Ghuta, it’s the same thing: there used to be five large springs there that fed the crops. They have all dried up.

–Nizar Hussein, agricultural engineer, Barada & Awaj River Authority, Damascus, Syria

In going through 16 years of articles on Lexis-Nexis about the drought in Iran, I came across a Financial Times article dated August 21, 2014 that cited a high-level government official who was just as terror-stricken:

Thousands of villages rely on water tankers for supplies, according to local media, while businessmen complain shortages are a daily hazard in factories around Tehran. At least a dozen of the country’s 31 provinces will have to be evacuated over the next 20 years unless the problem is addressed, according to a water official who declined to be named.

The situation may be even worse than that, says Issa Kalantari, a reform-minded agriculture minister in the 1990s. “Iran, with 7,000 years of history, will not be liveable in 20 years’ time if the rapid and exponential destruction of groundwater resources continues,” he warns, adding that the shortages pose a bigger threat to Iran than its nuclear crisis, Israel or the US.

It is important to understand that the migration of countryside people to the cities of Syria and Iran were not exclusively like the Joad family in “Grapes of Wrath”. It did not just include farmers but those tied into the agrarian economy as well such as farm equipment vendors and their workers, shopkeepers, professionals and the like. When the farm is the hub of a wheel, the spokes will certainly be affected when it is removed.

Most dramatically, Iran has suffered the loss of major sources of water in the last few decades that were as much of a cultural landmark as they were economically critical. It would be somewhat analogous to the Rio Grande river drying up in the USA (a not far-fetched comparison in light of this article https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us/mighty-rio-grande-now-a-trickle-under-siege.html).

On September 18, 2001, the NY Times reported that Lake Hamoun, Iran's largest body of fresh water and one of the largest in the world, had turned into a desert. The drought was to blame but so was the geopolitical conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which controlled a major dam on the Hirmand River that fed Lake Hamoun. Despite a 30-year-old agreement allowed some water to flow even in dry years, the Taliban cut off the supply. After the Taliban were ousted, the American-supported regime had just as little interest in cooperation with Iran for obvious reasons. As I pointed out in my review of Müşerref Yetim’s “Negotiating International Water Rights: Resource Conflict in Turkey, Syria and Iraq”, this is not uncommon:

Competition for Euphrates and Tigris water has reverberated in domestic politics, especially in Iraq and Turkey. Following the March 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq, Iraq began to step up suppression of the Kurdish movement in the north. This prompted Syria to undermine Saddam Hussein by reducing the Euphrates flow. In effect, the conflicts between states in the Middle East over strategic goals almost inevitably spills over into the conflicts over water.

Lake Urmia, another key water resource, was also deeply impacted but in this instance, drought was conjoined with government mismanagement to create an environmental disaster as the Guardian reported on September 6, 2011. This time it was not an Afghan dam that was drying up a lake but the 36 dams within Iran on rivers flowing into Lake Urmia. Since Urmia was a salt lake, the ecological impact would be catastrophic for farms surrounding it. When salt lakes go dry, the salt disseminates into the earth and will kill the crops that were grown traditionally in the area such as almond and garlic. It is also necessary to understand that the loss of Lake Urmia would be a major loss to the Azeri people who lived in the region. This video shows a protest held in September 2011 about the pending loss of the lake.

One other example should give you an idea of the gravity of the situation. Zayanderud is a river whose name means “life-giving waters”. In the FT article referenced above, you discover that it has flowed through Isfahan for more than 1,000 years from its source in the Zagros Mountains to the vast wetlands of Gavkhooni south of Isfahan. But the FT now described it as “a vast, gravelly beach, a dead stretch of sun-baked land that winds through the heart of Isfahan”. A man quoted in the article has the exact profile of those who were raising hell a few days ago:

“No water in this river means I had to leave my farmlands in the town of Varzaneh and work for the Isfahan municipality for 15,000 tomans [$5.6] per day,” says Afshin as he cuts weeds on the riverbed.

A loss of this river meant that about two million people who depend on agriculture have lost their income, according to Mostafa Hajjeh-Foroush, head of the agriculture committee of the Isfahan Chamber of Commerce. “If this situation continues they should think of changing jobs,” he adds.

Despite the FT’s obvious neoliberal bias, its analysis of how this came about is quite accurate. Under Ahmadinejad, profits generated through the sale of oil helped to prop up a water distribution system that was unsustainable. As a rentier state, Iran’s economy was based on handouts rather than the production of manufactured goods. Ahmadinejad targeted the farmers as a primary source of support without regard to the broader consequences for the nation. Cheap oil and subsidies made the massive use of pumps feasible just as was the case in Syria. As groundwater became more and more diverted into growing water-hungry crops like melons for the export market, the mostly urban population had to pay the piper. According to the UN, groundwater extraction nearly quadrupled between the 1970s and the year 2000 while the number of wells rose fivefold.

To give you an idea of how irrational such practices can become, the Trend News Agency reported on November 7, 2017 that Iran continues to prioritize the agri-export sector even as increased production yields fewer revenues. Last year exports increased by 15 percent but their value fell by 9 percent.

Watermelon was an exception to the norm. It registered an 18 percent and 33 percent growth in terms of volume and value respectively. This is a water-consuming commodity par excellence and as its name implies is mostly water. Some economists in Iran argue that Iran is actually exporting water in a period of drought.

As the drought and the misuse of water resources began to take its toll on society, Ahmadinejad came up with a novel excuse. In 2012, he made a speech claiming that the drought was “partly intentional, as a result of the enemy destroying the clouds moving towards our country”. Supposedly Europe was using high tech equipment to drain the clouds of raindrops. As might be expected, Global Research found this plausible. To bolster its case, the conspiracist website informed its readers:

Hollywood just released a film on Weather Modification gone mad titled, ‘Geostorm’ right after the worst hurricane season in a century. The film is about a network of satellites designed to control the global climate landscape. The plot of the film is that the satellites turns on Planet Earth with the intention to destroy everything in it by causing catastrophic weather conditions including hurricanes and earthquakes.

“Geostorm” earned a 13% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with one critic opining that a Sharknado or two could have livened things up.

Not to be outdone by Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai-Nejad from the city of Isfahan that lost its legendary life-giving waters blamed the drought on—who else—impious women. In a sermon, he offered this version of why the lakes and rivers were running dry: “They have brought me pictures that shows women by the side of the dry Zayanderud river. These actions will ensure the upper stream of the river will become dry too. Believe me it is true. You may ask yourself why European countries with so much crime and sin have so much rainfall ... God punishes the believer, for remaining silent and letting girls take pictures by the river as if they were in European countries.”

Although the Ayatollah might be dismissed as Iran’s version of the idiot living in the White House, he reflects a deep structural problem in the political system that militates against a solution to these deeply entrenched policies that are typical of the short-term mindset of rentier states. With the revenues generated by oil exports, it is likely that the elites will not pay much attention to the overall need for a sustainable economy but to seek out technical solutions, the most recent of which is the use of desalination plants.

Ahmadinejad, the conspiracy theorist, initiated something called the Caspian Project that envisioned a vast network of pipelines that pumped desalinated water to the major cities. This was met with skepticism by the nation’s water and environmental experts who warned that the infrastructure necessary for such a system would cripple fragile agricultural communities and ruin ecosystems, especially near the desalination plants. These massive operations separate the salt from the incoming water and funnel the brine byproduct back into the ocean. In so doing, it has caused irreparable damage to marine life. In effect, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are also heavy financing requirements that are just as onerous as those involved in building nuclear power plants. If Iran is in a race to build a society that has a future, it is probably a big mistake to use technologies so wedded to the past.

There is only one scholarly article that deals with these intractable problems, which fortunately can be read online. Titled “Iran’s Socio-economic Drought: Challenges of a Water-Bankrupt Nation”, it reviews the main causes of the crisis in terms geared to a mainstream audience. The section on the role of agriculture is worth quoting in its entirety:

The agricultural sector uses up to 92 percent of Iran’s water. Due to having an oil-based economy, Iran has overlooked the economic efficiency of its agricultural sector in its modern history.10 The desire for increased agricultural productivity has encouraged an expansion of cultivated areas and infrastructure across the country. However, this sector is not yet industrialized and is suffering from outdated farming technologies and practices leading to very low efficiency in irrigation and production.

The agricultural sector in Iran is economically inefficient and its contribution to gross domestic product has decreased over time. Irrigated agriculture is the dominant practice, while the economic return on water use in this sector is significantly low, and crop patterns across the country are inappropriate and incompatible with water availability conditions in most areas. Recently, concerns about the embodied water content of produced and exported crops have increased, but business still continues as usual as interest in crop choice by farmers is mostly correlated with crop market prices and their traditional crop choices in the area.

The claimed interest in improving the living conditions of farmers is inconsistent with their relative income, which has decreased over time due to increasing water scarcity and decreasing productivity. Forced migration from rural to urban areas has been observed in some parts of the country where farming is no longer possible. However, agriculture continues to play a major role in the country, providing employment to more than 20 percent of the population. This role will remain significant as long as alternative job opportunities are unavailable in other sectors such as services and industry. The recent turmoil in Syria underscores that a loss of jobs in the agricultural sector can cause mass migration, creating national security threats and serious tensions.

While I would agree with the general analysis presented above, I would not call the protests a “national security threat”. If anything I have confidence in the ability of ordinary working people to solve the nation’s problems once they overthrow the Maserati-driving elites and their clerical allies and begin to build a society based on the common good rather than private gain. Iran has long-standing revolutionary traditions that will acquit the country well as the state lurches unsteadily into an approaching storm that will pose very sharp class contradictions.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

2662. Audubon Society Report: Water and Birds in the Arid West: Habitats in Decline

By National Audobon Society, July 5, 2017

Executive Summary

Water is the most precious resource in the West—for people, birds, and other wildlife. Riparian habitats like the forests and wetlands that line the Colorado River support some of the most abundant and diverse bird communities in the arid West, serving as home to some 400 species. The Colorado River also provides drinking water for more than 36 million people, irrigates 5.5 million acres of farms and ranches, and supports 16 million jobs throughout seven states—with an annual economic impact of $1.4 trillion. But dams, diversions, drought, and water demand are triggering declines in cottonwood-willow forests and other native river habitat. Saline lakes—landlocked saltwater lakes fringed with wetlands found throughout the Intermountain West—are beacons for millions of birds crossing an otherwise arid landscape. However, these lakes are shrinking and in some cases nearly disappearing. In short, precipitous declines in western water quantity and quality are exacting a toll on health, prosperity, and quality of life for rural and urban communities—and putting birds and wildlife at jeopardy.

Water and Birds in the Arid West: Habitats in Decline represents the first comprehensive assessment of the complex and vital relationships that exist among birds, water, and climate change in the region. Our research focused on two of the most imperiled and irreplaceable western ecosystems: 1) the Colorado River Basin; and 2) the West’s network of saline lakes—including the Great Salt Lake and Salton Sea as well as other smaller but vitally important lakes. Audubon science staff collaborated with outside experts in hydrology, water chemistry, and ecotoxicology, as well as ornithology, in an extensive review of the scientific literature on birds, water, and climate change in the region, with a particular focus on eight western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. In addition, we synthesized regional bird data from a number of sources to assess impacts on birds in the region, and convened avian experts to deepen our shared understanding of the migratory movement of shorebirds and waterbirds among western saline lakes.

Research Objectives:

Increase our understanding of how the decline of riparian habitat in the Colorado River Basin and at saline lakes is impacting birds
Assess the status of key western bird species representative of multiple species that depend on riparian and saline lake habitat
Analyze impacts and threats to these species’ habitat posed by lack of available water and the anticipated effects of climate change
Provide recommendations for water management policy priorities and practices and future science research

Click here to view a PDF version of this summary, including a foreward by David O’Neill, Audubon's Chief Conservation Officer and Senior Advisor to the CEO. Click here to view a PDF of the full report. Have questions? Click here to read the FAQ.

Map of Water Assets and IBAs in Western US — Western Water Priority Landscapes: A map of the rivers, saline lakes, Important Bird Areas (red stars) and Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network sites (yellow stars) of the western United States.

Although riparian zones account for less than 5 percent of the southwestern landscape, they support over 40 percent of all bird species found in the region and over 50 percent of breeding bird species. These include at least 400 species along the lower Colorado River. If current western water trends continue and are compounded by climate change, many bird species face diminished and degraded habitat and an uncertain future.

Key Findings:

Native riparian trees and shrubs such as cottonwood-willow ecosystems that provide productive habitat for birds and other wildlife are disappearing as a result of water development—including damming, flow regulation, surface water diversion, and groundwater pumping.
Hydrology changes have also spurred the spread of non-native plants, particularly saltcedar, throughout the Colorado River Basin—reducing biodiversity and the number and variety of birds in many riparian habitats.
Populations of the following breeding birds, once common along the Colorado River, have experienced significant regional declines: Bell’s Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, and Summer Tanager.
Three species—Yuma Ridgway’s Rail, Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and Southwestern Willow Flycatcher—are now listed as federally threatened or endangered, and at risk of extinction if current trends continue.
Climate change is projected to exacerbate habitat declines across the basin, reducing water supply, raising temperatures and aridity, and disrupting phenology—the timing of seasonal natural phenomena such as spring floods, plant flowering, and insect hatching.

The Colorado River Basin: How Reduced Flows Impact Birds and Habitat

Water levels in Colorado River over time — Time series of average annual peak flows in the Lower Colorado River and Colorado Headwaters sub-basins over the past century. Both sub-basins show a sharp decline in the magnitude and variability of peak flows over the past century, concurrent with increasing hydrologic modi cations within the Colorado River Basin. Text boxes depict construction of major dams (blue), notable changes in vegetation (green), and federal listing of threatened and endangered species (red) that relate to the lower Colorado River as a case study of change. Peak flow data are from the National Water Information System (USGS 2016b).

Success Story: Bringing a Desiccated Delta Back To Life

The 2014 Colorado River pulse flow taught us just how resilient habitat can be. For nearly two decades, the river had failed to reach the sea. But in 2014, billions of gallons of water flowed for three weeks to its long-dry delta as part of the agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. The Colorado River “pulse flow” proved that a limited return of water can have immediate impacts on even on the most desiccated of landscapes, providing a scientific argument for continued work in this area. A 2016 International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) report on the pulse flow describes the results: newly germinated plants and increases in bird diversity and abundance. Further studies will help demonstrate if these encouraging developments will hold.

Saline Lakes and Wetlands of the West

We focused our analysis on the nine western saline lakes with the greatest importance for birds. More than half of these have shrunk by 50 to 95 percent over the past 150 years. However, despite widespread awareness of the importance of water—and concern about adequate western water supply—much of the available research on saline lakes and birds was focused on individual lakes. By bringing these isolated studies together, we were able to better understand how birds “use” the widely dispersed lakes and wetlands as an interconnected network of habitats. No other linked ecosystems in the Intermountain West can meet these species’ requirements—and because shorebirds and waterbirds congregate in large numbers at major lakes, they are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss.

Key Findings:

Collectively, saline lakes in the West support global populations of birds, including over 99 percent of the North American population of Eared Grebes, up to 90 percent of Wilson’s Phalaropes, and over 50 percent of American Avocets.
Saline lakes are critically important to migratory shorebird species, whose populations have declined nearly 70 percent since 1973.
Water levels in saline lakes have declined dramatically in the last 100+ years due to draining, diversions of inflows, and lake and groundwater extraction.
Lower water levels have increased lake salinity, altering food webs and reducing invertebrate food sources for migrating and resident shorebirds and waterbirds.
Drier conditions under climate change will exacerbate the impacts of water diversion on saline lakes by decreasing freshwater inflows.

Saline Lakes: a Critical Web for Waterbirds, Waterfowl, and Shorebirds

Success Story: Owens Lake

Photo: Kim Davies/Flickr CC (BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Work initiated by Audubon and partners two decades ago demonstrates how science-based planning can restore vital bird habitat, even with limited water. By directing relatively small amounts of water to southern California’s saline Owens Lake, we were able to create an array of distinct bird habitats. This experiment in habitat restoration was a resounding success: in a recent spring count, 115,000 birds—including 20 different shorebird species—were tallied.

Recommendations

Approaches to western water that protect the needs of birds and wildlife as well as people are possible, but only if stakeholders align good outcomes for water-dependent habitats with solutions that decrease shortage risks for people. Ultimately, the challenge is to find sustainable ways for people and birds to use water and co-exist in the West. That is where Audubon—and this report—comes in. By providing a clear, credible assessment of the importance of sound western water management for birds and habitat, we can mobilize the Audubon network of members, chapters, and others who love birds around balanced water solutions. The following recommendations provide a springboard for conservation action; they also lay the foundation for further research and the development of innovative water management solutions.

Identify and support balanced solutions and water policies at the local, state, and federal levels that avoid depleting water supplies for rivers, lakes, and wetlands and associated habitats
Engage with water users, policy-makers and community leaders to collectively improve understanding of the importance of finding solutions that work for people and birds
Train and mobilize the Audubon network on behalf of creative, sensible water solutions and policies
Increase public and private investment in water conservation, habitat restoration, and research
Secure voluntary water-sharing agreements, including market-based solutions, and encourage flexible water management practices to improve water flows for habitats
Leverage our science to develop and implement management plans that factor in habitat needs and restoration of native vegetation
Advance scientific understanding of bird populations and habitat linkages across western landscapes through additional research, field study, and monitoring
Use climate change and connectivity modeling to prioritize conservation and restoration
Foster greater dialogue and action to reduce global climate change and its impacts on water availability

Conclusion

Water management practices that fail to take into account ecosystem health and the impacts of climate change are the greatest threats to birds that rely on the Colorado River Basin and western saline lakes. It is our hope that the findings and recommendations in this report will play a vital and much-needed role in shaping the future of water in the West. Decisions about water allocation and management are being made now: cities, states, and even countries are coming to the table to develop water solutions. The challenges we face on the Colorado River and across saline lakes are significant. However, this does not mean there is not enough water to go around. There is. We need a new phase of collaboration, innovation, and flexibility when it comes to how we use, share, and manage water, coupled with investments in water conservation, improved infrastructure, and habitat restoration. Solving these water management challenges will enable the people, birds, and wildlife of the arid West to thrive together—now and into the future.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

2477. For These Americans, Clean Water Is a Luxury

By George McGrow, The New York Times, October 20, 2016

LOS ANGELES — Most Americans take safe water for granted: Turn the tap, and there it is. But recent protests against the Dakota Access pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota are a reminder that some Americans still worry every day about having enough clean water to survive.

As events in Standing Rock and Flint, Mich., capture national attention, long-running water emergencies fester in near-total obscurity elsewhere across the country, many of them on native reservations.

Nearly 24,000 Native American and Alaska Native households somehow manage without access to running water or basic sanitation, according to 2015 figures from the Indian Health Service, living in what my organization calls “water poverty.” About 188,000 such households were in need of some form of water and sanitation facilities improvement.

Perhaps the worst case is on the sprawling Navajo reservation in the Southwest, home to about 170,000 people.

I found this out only inadvertently, though I run Digdeep, a nonprofit group focused on improving access to clean water in some of the places you might expect: South Sudan and Cameroon. But not in the United States.

In 2013, a woman called our office to make a sizable donation, with the stipulation that we spend it in the United States. I told her that her gift would be better spent in the developing world, but she was adamant that we use it on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

So I drove the 10 hours from my Los Angeles home to Thoreau, N.M., part of the Navajo Nation. The reservation is the country’s largest, covering parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

There, I was greeted by Darlene Arviso, a Navajo known as “the water lady.” I rode with her in a 3,500-gallon tank truck, and we delivered water free to 10 households across the arid high-desert plateau.

The first home we visited belonged to Lindsay Johnson. The house had no running water or electricity; a car battery powered the TV. Ms. Arviso took out a hose and everyone grabbed cups, bowls, buckets and barrels to store the water.

There’s not much water in the high desert — and much of what’s there is bad. Large parts of the reservation lack any water-supply equipment. The low population density makes building a water distribution system economically unfeasible. Tribal members rely on surface water and shallow aquifers, many of which have been poisoned by uranium mining.

Ms. Arviso explained that because of high demand for her service and the remoteness of the Johnson home, she is able to deliver only 400 gallons of water to the family each month. That amounts to less than three gallons of water per person, per day. (The typical American uses about 100.) The Johnsons use the same water to wash dishes and their hair, and finally pour what’s left into the toilet tank. They invariably run out of water before Ms. Arviso’s next visit.

Benjamin Lewis, a retired miner, lives 30 miles from the Johnsons. Before Ms. Arviso began delivering water, Mr. Lewis relied on a water trough meant for sheep that is supplied by a well pumped by a windmill. That water tested positive for uranium in 1976. More recent tests have been positive for nitrites. Some neighbors still use the sheep tank in emergencies.

While about 6 percent of American Indian and Alaska Natives live in water poverty, the problem is not confined to the reservations. About a half a million American households lack basic plumbing amenities like hot water, a tap or toilet, according to the Census Bureau. As in Flint, they are disproportionately poor and minority.

In the Coachella Valley, southeast of Los Angeles, for instance, low-income and undocumented farm workers living in trailer parks endure open sewage ditches and contaminated drinking water.

I visited one of the worst of these parks, Duroville, before a federal court closed it in 2013. More than 4,000 people lived in a park built for 500. Tenants complained that they were forced to pay their landlord up to 30 percent of their income for delivery of drinking water that made them sick. While most of these families have been resettled, similar conditions persist in the nearby localities of Thermal and Mecca.

Pockets of water poverty exist in nearly every state, particularly in rural Appalachia and New England, and in the “colonias” along the border with Mexico.

These conditions shouldn’t persist. Even relatively inexpensive and simple solutions can have a profound impact.

In Thoreau, we optimized Ms. Arviso’s delivery route, outfitted a second water truck and hired a new driver, doubling the delivery capacity for only $64,000. Last winter, we began installing cisterns and electric pumps for 204 homes; when the project is finished, hot water will flow from taps and showers at a cost of less than $4,000 per household. This spring, we will break ground on a 1,500-foot-deep well close to the Johnsons’ house, expanding water delivery to more homes.

Ending water poverty in the United States will require a concerted effort. Nonprofits can play an important role by working with communities to develop low-tech, low-cost solutions. These programs should be managed with the communities to ensure they are sustainable. Federal and state government should focus on water-supply and sanitation projects with the goal of making these local programs unnecessary someday.

With dedication and money, water poverty on the Navajo Nation could be eradicated within a decade. That would be a powerful start.

George McGraw is the founder and executive director of Digdeep.

Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism