Projections indicate that over the next 30 years, the outlook for the water situation in the Mediterranean zone — including the Levant — is dire. Over the past century or so, most of the area witnessed a clear trend involving a decline of up to 3 millimeters (mm) per year in annual precipitation.
And things are not set to get any better in the future: the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas predicts a 10 percent drop in precipitation in the region during the next three decades compared to the average over the past 100 years. Moreover, most of the decline will take place during winter and spring, when decreases of up to 20 percent are expected, which means that the growth cycle of the vast majority of major field crops will be affected with potentially disastrous consequences.
At the same time, the mean annual temperature of the region is expected to increase by 0.5-1.5 degrees over the coming 30 years, with most of the change occurring in the summer (when it will be approximately one to two degrees hotter). The most affected areas will be Syria and Jordan, where 30 percent of the land will deteriorate from a steppe to a desert, while Lebanon and the West Bank will also witness substantial, if less drastic, change. This will lead to shorter growing periods, with much of the region experiencing reductions of up to 15 days and the decline in parts of Syria, the West Bank and Cyprus more pronounced. Only in some of the high mountain areas of Lebanon will the length of the growing period actually increase due to the rise in temperature, as this will reduce the number of days when cold weather limits growth.
Such trends will thus be highly significant for the economy in most of the Levant. Climate change — whatever its cause — means that more frequent and severe droughts can be expected in the near future, and that desertification is a greater threat than ever. Drought may not be preventable, but actions can be taken to adapt water demands and mitigate the impact.
Turkish temptation
The countries of the Levant may look west, where Turkey bathes in apparent aquatic abundance. But with a growing population and difficulty harnessing supply to its full potential, the Turkey of the future may have its own problems to solve.
For the last few decades the country has been touted as the lifeline and reservoir of the Fertile Crescent, that arc of relative greenery that stretches from the end of the Persian Gulf through Iraq and the Levant to the western tip of Egypt.
At first glance, Turkey would seem to be water-rich: it has some 120 natural lakes, the largest and deepest of which is Van, with a surface area of more than 3,700 kilometers square and a depth of over 100 meters. The Turks also have hundreds of large dam reservoirs, of which the biggest is the 817 square-kilometer lake behind the Ataturk Dam, one of the world’s largest projects of its kind. Moreover, the country is well endowed with rivers, many of which rise and empty into seas within Turkey’s borders, though others such as the Tigris, Euphrates and Orontes are shared with Arab neighbors.
All of this bounty is renewable thanks to extensive rain and snowfall. Turkey’s mountainous coastal regions receive abundant precipitation of up to 2,500 millimeters per year, though areas away from coastal fringes get less: 500 to 1,000 millimeters per year in the Marmara and Aegean regions and in the plateau of East Anatolia, while most of the central and southeastern zones receive only 350 to 500 millimeters annually. Snow falls all over Turkey, and is retained in high mountain areas — in spring, the meltwater feeds rivers and ground water sources.
Climate change may make inroads into all this, but Turkey is in better shape than its southern neighbors. With such an abundance of water, sending some of the stuff to slake the thirst of a parched Levant may at first glance seem simple. In fact, well before growing regional drought and desertification became widely recognized, various schemes to pump Turkish water south were touted.
These included two pipeline projects for which preliminary feasibility studies were completed late in the late 1980s. The first was the ‘West Line,’ a 2,650 kilometer long route to transfer 3.5 million cubic meters daily from Turkish rivers to Syria and Jordan, and on to the Saudi cities of Tabuk, Yanbu, Medina, Mecca and Jeddah. It was to be matched by a ‘Gulf Line’ carrying 2.5 million cubic meters over 3,900 kilometers through Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to the Arab Gulf states. The projects never got off the ground.
In only two decades, Turkey could become a water-poor state
Thirst for efficiency
But the Turkey of today is not the same as that of the mid-20th century in terms of water supply and demand.
Countries are “water-poor” if annual available water volume per capita is less than 1,000 cubic meters, or “stressed” if the figure is between 1,000 and 2,000 cubic meters. According to this common international norm, Turkey is now water-stressed; the annual available volume of water has recently been approximately 1,500 cubic meters per capita, whereas in 1960, when the population was only 28 million, it was 4,000.
The official State Institute of Statistics has estimated that Turkey’s population will reach 100 million by 2030; so, all things remaining equal, the annual amount of water per capita available to the Turks will be about 1,000 cubic meters. In only two decades, Turkey could become a water-poor state. Under these conditions, it is more important than ever for the Turks to develop and allocate water resources efficiently before thought is given to sending it south to supply the parched Levant or Gulf regions.
Inside the country, a lot still has to be done to make the best use of water wealth; despite implementation of some ambitious plans to dam and otherwise better store and utilize water, Turkey in recent years has only been using 37 percent of the available exploitable potential of 112 billion cubic meters.
One problem is that distribution of precipitation in the country is uneven: water is not always in the right place at the right time to meet needs. For example, the average number of days on which it snows and the duration of cover vary considerably among regions, from less than one day a year in the Mediterranean zone to over 40 in Eastern Anatolia. The trouble here is Turkey’s settlement patterns are the opposite; people and industry tend to be located in the dryer Mediterranean region. Another issue is that rivers have irregular regimes and natural flows cannot always be diverted directly.
These problems could be addressed through massive new investments which would allow the country to make better use of its water, in which case it could conceivably export some of it to thirsty southern neighbors.
Otherwise, the water wealth of Turkey will continue to be underexploited, to the detriment of Turks and Arabs alike.
