Is Water Key to Conflict in Syria?

In the years prior to Syria’s civil war, the country was faced with an unrelenting drought. Beginning in 2006, impacting over 1.3 million people, killing up to 85% of the country’s livestock in some regions, and forcing as many as 160 villages to desert their homes and livelihoods due to crop failures and migrate unto urban centers.

Syria is relatively rich in natural water resources; however there has been a huge decline in availability per capita.  According to the UN Development Program’s (UNDP) Arab Human development Report of 2009, Syria was ranked 13th out of 20 Arab countries for precipitation per capita. Annual water consumption per capita was 300 cubic meters; significantly below the global water scarcity mark of 1,000 cubic meters per capita, but placing Syria ninth out of 18 Arab countries. The global average is 6,750 cubic meters. In 2007 Syria consumed 19.2 billion cubic meters of water, 3.5 billion more than the volume of water that is replenished naturally.  According to the Ministry of Irrigation the deficit was taken from groundwater and reservoirs. 

Moreover, information from NASA satellites, between 2003 and 2009, suggest that the Tigris and Euphrates River basins (the boundaries of which lie in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran) lost 144 cubic kilometers of fresh water, an amount equal to the volume of the Dead Sea.  It was determined that roughly 60% of the water lost resulted from the depletion of the regions aquifers, making Syria the second worst affected region for groundwater depletion in the world. With only NW India experienced greater groundwater losses in the same time frame. Succeeding reports have shown that those rates of water loss continue into the present.

This picture, from the Huffongton Post, shows groundwater depletion in the Middle East, with Syria experiencing it's full force.

Syria’s water crisis has arguably played a major role in triggering uprising and violence. The next few posts will look into a few causes of Syria’s water scarcity.

References-

Comair, Georges F.; McKinney, D. C.; Scoullos, M. J.; et al. 2013, Transboundary cooperation in international basins: Clarification and experiences from the Orontes river basin agreement: Part 1, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & POLICY  Volume: 31   Pages: 133-140

D.J.H. Phillips, M. Daoudy, J. Öjendal, A. Turton, S. McCaffrey, Transboundary Water Cooperation as a Tool for Conflict Prevention and for Broader Benefit-sharing, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden (2006)