 Okay, well, I think I can welcome everyone. Good afternoon to our lovely loyal visitors to the Tuesday lectures of the Siles Middle East Institute, which my colleague, Dina Matar and myself are delighted to have organized for the duration of this academic year and this really culminates our series. We don't normally have the Tuesday lectures in term three, but it took us a long time to capture and pin down our speaker this evening, Peter Schwarzenegger, because he's always on the road and there's always a crisis which he needs to go and investigate. So we're delighted to have been able to have him this evening. He squeezed us in. The topic of tonight couldn't be more timely, talking about the water crisis in the vast Middle East region. And I found it rather poignant, because I know we were going to have this talk lecture last term, but it got postponed. And of course, since then I very much regret and with a broken heart have to tell those of you who've perhaps not heard the news that Professor Tony Allen, the absolute pillar of Siles Middle Eastern studies passed away about a couple of weeks ago. And of course, all of us who had studied at his feet at Siles over the decades and as well all our students of development studies in geography and economics and so on learned this concept of virtual water. And I remember him more than 30 years ago, almost, really being horrified. I remember him telling me about the crisis that Iran is going to face with water. And at that time, it was nothing like it is tonight. So I am very privileged and delighted to be able to welcome Peter Schwartz in, who is an environmental journalist and consultant who works on particularly on water, food security and conflict based around climate issues across Middle East, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. There are no shortages of delightful articles pinned by Peter, which I very much encourage you to visit his website and look at them. The most recent one that really took my breath away was the article that he wrote for the National Geographic magazine. There are many other media outlets that have printed his work, you know, including BBC and the Center for Climate and Security. And in preparation for Peter's talk, which is going to be looking at the consequences of this shortages of water, this potent combination of climate shock, rampant mismanagement and increasing demand for water that is actually going to potentially push the region to the brink as millions of people already exist with very limited or no access to water. And in preparation, I was just looking at some Iranian press. This is, you know, government outlets in Iran. Never mind the other parts of the region. Of course, Iran has some of the driest places on earth at its heart about the serious concern of Iranian authorities about how the wells that they dig are getting deeper and deeper. And they are, you know, wells for fresh water that are four hundred meters deep. I mean, this is, you know, twelve hundred feet. And the fact that the water that they extract is now quite salty. The salination level of this water is alarming. And one of the articles that I was reading had suggested that in the past 30 years, the water table in the Alborz region, so this is a central mountain range that sort of overlooks Tehran, has dropped by 21 meters. I mean, when one sees these figures, then it is really quite astonishing and horrifying. Peter, so with that introduction, can I first of all welcome you to virtual sauce and virtual sauce Middle East Institute. We're delighted that you have managed to squeeze us in between packing your bag to set off for another journey. So really lovely to have you here this evening. Oh, you can you hear us? How is your connection? Yes, I can. And I hope you can hear me. We do. Thank you very much for that. It's a unique introduction. Not at all. So I think we have quite a respectful number of visitors already and others are coming in and watching the numbers escalate. So the floor, the screen, the mic is yours, Peter. And we are really all ears and eyes to hear about how this area that you've worked on so much, this water crisis and its magnitude actually could potentially translate into implications for governance and regional security. So thank you again, Nargis. And it's certainly quite something to be doing this so soon after the death of Tony Allen, who was I mean, one of the tremendous sort of, I guess, sort of one of the most impressive characters and certainly someone who has perhaps contributed more to our understanding of the nature of water crises and issues in the Middle East region than almost anybody else. So I'm certainly grateful to be speaking to this particular crowd at this kind of time. A few quick comments before just launch into as sort of as concise a kind of summary of the situation as I can. This isn't a hopeful tale. I don't think anyone will be stunned to hear that not much good will come out of a water situation. However, as I've been frequently warned by my editors when submitting overly depressing stories over the years, it's vital to maintain an uplifting note of sorts. And in this sense, you don't really have to force it. Like there are some threads of optimism to cling to, which I'll get on towards the end. This is also a very, very big topic, both in terms of geography and in terms of subject matter. I mean, kind of covering everything from humanitarianism to security to kind of every form of science imaginable and much more. And so for the sake of presenting the situation in. I guess, as concise and coherent a fashion as I'm as I'm capable of, I'm going to simplify to what might seem like a sort of overly gratuitous extent in places. The Middle Eastern of Africa, a very, very big geographic area with significantly greater differences in topography, in landscapes and hence in water situations than is necessarily always understood. But again, for the sake of offering a big picture of you, I'm going to gloss over some of those distinctions just for the for the intents and purposes of this talk. And I'm happy to expand on any of this during the question and answer session that will follow. I also meant to put together a slideshow of relevant photos to try and illustrate some of what I'm talking about. It's always helpful, of course, to have a sort of a series of visual aids. But I'm afraid I had a very typically a bit of a tech disaster and I failed on that. Sorry. And so what is what is the situation? And I'm not going to give you a laundry list of statistics and data, but I do want to illustrate what the region is up against a little bit before I talk about consequences. And the region like pretty much sort of everywhere else derives most of its water needs from a combination of kind of direct rainfall, surface water resources like like rivers that are largely fed with rainfall and snowmelt and groundwater. And every single one of these resources is in an increasingly fragile state. And that groundwater, as Nargis alluded to in her introduction, has been massively overpumped across the likes of Yemen, Jordan, Iran and pretty much the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula. In Jordan, for example, they're having to in some places go down as far as a mile already, just to reach potable water. Now, kind of the wider implications of that aside, that's a tremendously expensive thing to do. And it's a cost that the state and some private operators are passing on to consumers. And bear in mind that in that many of these are non-renewable aquifers. And in Jordan's case, they're they're dropping by as much as 12 to 15 meters a year. Once you exhaust them, that's that you're left with next to nothing. Another example in 2016, Saudi Arabia spent much of the previous sort of three decades trying to at least a portion of its crops throw in the towel on that they had more or less exhausted many of aquifers since then they banned a good deal of crop cultivation because they just don't have the water to sustain it any longer. And just one more example to that effect, just an illustration of how this happens, even when you don't have kind of state sanctioned groundwater extraction on the scale. There might be up to sort of 10,000 illegal boreholes, illegal water wells around Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. You see at night kind of illegal oil well operators sort of working in in ours, in which they're much less likely to be caught by the authorities. And with that kind of unregulated or just extremely sort of poor enforcement of existing regulations, it's perhaps no wonder that groundwater is being tapped out at a pace in some places that we have yet to grasp. The second is the rainfall. Now, it's the I'll get to rainfall. It's the fact that rainfall in the Middle East as kind of in many other places is wavering, that's one of the things that contribute to over pumping of groundwater. Like a lot of farmers who had previously received at least some of their kind of irrigation needs from rainfall. As in, for example, the Ninnabar Governorate of Iraq are in quite a few instances, turning to groundwater as rainfall gets less reliable in order to kind of cover some of the some of the shortfall. Now, our climate projections in this region, as in kind of so many others, are are uncertain and it's perhaps when it comes to rainfall, that they're kind of they're absolutely most most uncertain. But by pretty much every available metric, we know that drought is becoming both more pronounced, sort of more more severe and more regular. Now, this is a this is a historic phenomenon and farmers and others had sort of developed coping mechanisms deep with these these sort of periodic kind of droughts that they that they ran up against. But as as drought comes kind of thicker and faster, a lot of those coping mechanisms, things like turning to tribal or extended family or state support networks are no longer sufficient. I mean, you can, as many farmers in Western Iraq would do, for example, you can save kind of about as much money as you feel you would need to kind of sustain you through a year of bad crops. But when kind of the the droughts just come so thick and so fast, you're just unable to to kind of put aside the rainy day fund of sufficient proportions. And when you're your neighbors and when you're wider, extended sort of tribal or family network is suffering as badly as you are. In many instances, there's simply nobody to help. But just one one statistic to illustrate this is I mean, some of the best climate rain. We have even concerned Jordan, which is already among the most water impoverished countries, not just in the region, but in in the world. And that suggests a drop of up to 30 percent of rainfall by the end of the century. And when one factors in the country doesn't receive that much in the way of rainfall to begin with, that's pretty potentially quite quite catastrophic. And at the same time, the rain that is falling is is coming within more concentrated periods. And that's a problem for two reasons. First of all, water isn't when it comes in in these massive sort of in nations, isn't seeping into the ground as much. So there's less aquifernule, which again adds to that groundwater crisis. And there's also more flooding. I mean, you might have noticed more and more reports of damaging floods from Iran to Iraq to Egypt to Morocco and well beyond. And you're not you're not imagining it. You're that combination kind of more intense amounts of rainfall, along with kind of badly designed sort of drainage system free, concrete, heavy infrastructure in cities is is leading to really, really grim results. Now, this production in an angle kind of more certainly more erratic to take is in itself. But unsurprisingly, it's also translating into kind of less reliable river flows and maybe the most in your face manifestation of this is that the increasingly maybe unimpressive snowpack that you're getting in the mountains of Turkey and parts of Iran and northern Iraq. And those are the kind of the snowy mountains that sustain the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers through the late spring and through the sort of super, super hot summers. And you can tell just by examining the state of the health of the snowpack in the amount of snow in late winter, how bad or not the summer will be water wise. In the case of Iraq, I've taken to calling friends or environmental contacts in various towns in Iraqi Kurdistan at various junctures throughout the winter, just to get a sense of how how much snow or not there is and as a consequence to get an idea of how much water the rivers are likely to to provide over the course of the following months and and disconcertingly on on that count. Iraq and parts of Syria are are likely in for a very, very grim summer this this year. There's almost no snow below about 3,000 meters in in many of the mountains in in Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey and Iran, and that that doesn't go well. And just if you want to get a sense of what this kind of sustained loss of river water can look like, coupled with sort of dam construction and diversion, which I'll get to a river diversion, which I'll get to a little bit later. The shuttle Arab, which is the kind of confluence of the the Tigris and Euphrates in southern Iraq, used to help water up to five kilometers out into the Persian Gulf. But the river flow, the combined flow of the Tigris and Euphrates in many years is so weak at this point that at times of drought, the Gulf can can barrel its way 70 kilometers upstream as opposed to sort of being being forced out by the the coming freshwater. And of course, that comes with enormous ramifications for for farmers who are just being inundated with what is seawater on a on a more sort of regular basis. So that's just a brief rundown, a brief snapshot of the ways in which water quantity is is ailing in in some ways. Then there's the problem of what happens to the water that Middle Eastern states do have at their disposal. And I'm going to talk maybe take maybe three minutes to talk about that because it's not just a shortfall in in in water, like an absolute shortage that that many communities are facing. It's a shortage in clean or usable water. There's a lot of different reasons why this is the case. Again, it's a very big reason, a very big region, every country has its own its own particular issues, its own particular situations. But for the intents and purposes of of this talk, there are two problems that I'll arrow in on right now. The first is states failures to kind of keep up with urban population growth and the kind of consequences of exceptionally rapid urbanization over the over the past few decades in cities like Baghdad, like Beirut, Cairo, like cartoon. There's a tremendous problem of freshwater infrastructure. I mean, Cairo neighborhoods up to 60 or possibly 70 percent of piped water might be lost to to leaky pipes. And it's just one of the most, I think, again, in your face, illustrations of the the nature of the problem that for people who are, I mean, if not quite going thirsty, having to spend kind of disposable income that they really, really cannot afford to buy in water, the fact that they just have large, large quantities of it seeping into the earth beneath them is is just one of the sort of most, I guess, inviolating sort of illustrations of the nature of the problem. At the same time, wastewater infrastructure and just hasn't kept up with with people's needs. And as is often the case in in many parts of the world, it's it's rivers and kind of other bodies of water that sort of bear the brunt of that inability to meet popular needs. They're kind of used as communal garbage cans by by maybe states and many individuals alike. It's kind of an out of sight, out of mind type belief. And as we saw in Basra and other parts of Southern Iraq in 2018, the consequences of doing so can be pretty extreme for for years, kind of. And any properties, along with industry and kind of meanest authorities in Iraq have, by design or intent, dumped much of their waste into the into the Tigris and Euphrates. And I mean, I've really been in any way sustainable. But kind of as the volume of pollution has increased, the volume of toxins being dumped into the river at the same time as the flow of the rivers has diminished, it has just sort of morphed into a situation that the people of Basra at the kind of far end of these rivers have struggled to contend with. And in 2018, it was about 118,000 people ended up in some kind of medical facility on account of of waterborne diseases, on account of of of pollution. And just to sort of emphasize quite how bad it was and how bad it will, fortunately, like people come again. The water that was flowing through the the shuttle Arab, the combined Tigris Euphrates flow at that point was so dirty that in some instances, and so saline, that it would rust cutery, one couldn't do your, your, your, your, your washing with it. And it was so filthy and so salty that the components in the kind of relatively few water treatment facilities in the area were eroding or corroding at an even faster pace and breaking down because of the sort of amount of filth that we're having to extract from from the water. And then the second thing that I'll, I'll just put in the context of kind of increasing or diminishing water quality is the kind of ways in which water facilities are getting kind of caught up more and more in in conflict in the region, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, in Gaza, more and more sort of water treatment and waste water treatment facilities are being, I mean, either explicitly targeted in, in many instances over the course of conflict or big with sort of little regard for, for the consequences. And I mean, this is, this is not a new phenomenon. I mean, the use of, of water as a weapon or the use for kind of water's kind of emergence as a, as a victim of war is, is something that dates back. I mean, this is long as we've been fighting one another. And but there's, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that the stigma that to some extent perhaps was attached to the targeting of water is eroding to a certain extent. And that comes with an awful lot of, of, of grim consequences for, for, for people. And I promise not to, to bombard you with statistics, but there is perhaps one thing I'll, I'll leave you with before talking a bit about consequences. And this is perhaps, I guess, the headline statistic when it comes to water in the Middle East. And the region is home to about 6% of the global population. And yet it has, by most accounts, about 1% ashwater. And that's an unfortunate mismatch could become even more glaring as, as kind of regional populations grow. And as some of those water resources get, get depleted. Can you repeat that? I think that that crucial moment, your line dropped. So 6% of the world population and how much consumption? There, yes, it's about 6% of the global population, and about 1.5% of global freshwater. And that, that mismatch sort of shows quite a few signs of just becoming more pronounced. And so that's a sort of a quick, I guess, a very, very pressing, but also very non exhaustive assessment of the situation. And let's talk a little bit about what this actually means for, for people now. And, and well, rural, rural livelihoods are collapsing in many instances. And that sounds melodramatic. But it's, it's, it's true, it's hard to capture quite how grim the situation is in, in pretty large stretches of the countryside throughout the Middle East and North Africa. And practically every rural profession is, is dependent on water, whether they be farmers or fishermen or pastoralists. And with water access getting more erratic, it's hammering communities to already among the poorest in the region, and who already receive less, often significantly less state support, even then, then kind of urban peers. So for farmers, what does this look like? Well, that kind of inability to access sufficient or, or sufficiently affordable water is contributing in many instances to drop in crop yields. And, and many of these farmers have like really razor thin profit margins can be, can be devastating and can have, I mean, ramifications that can extend many, many years into the future. I mean, if you have no harvest, or, or a poor harvest, that can mean you lack the means to buy the, the inputs, the seeds, the fertilizers that you need to plant up for the next season. And you can just get caught as many, many farmers in places like Iraq and Jordan and beyond have, you can get caught in this just vicious spiral of debt to, to relatives, to agricultural banks, to other institutions from which you really cannot sort of extricate yourself in, in most instances. And then also with, with limited water. And this is, I mean, a natural consequence of those increasing shortages in many places. But you farmers are also in quite a few instances having to turn away from some of the more, I guess, kind of cash spinning crops, cash crops, like fruits and vegetables, simply because they're more water intensive. And in many instances, it's, it's the cultivation of those cash crops. And that's one of the few things that's kind of keeping, keeping farmers above the bread line. And I mean, the grim, the really grim irony to all of this is that as heat increases, and this is not going to talk too much about extreme heat for the moment, but the more, the more peak there is, the more kind of insufferable the temperatures are for large periods of the year, the more water farmers need, as opposed to the less that they're, they're often receiving. And so for animal herders, this, this drop in, in rainfall, and on two counts, it's depriving them of the, the water that they need for their animals, but it's also contributing to severe shortages of the kind of vegetation, scrubland, the fodder that they kind of would feed their cattle or their sheep or their goats on. And as a consequence, a lot of these herders in, in places like Sudan, in, in Iran, and even Saudi Arabia are losing animals in pretty large numbers to sickness, to dehydration. And, and, or they've had to sort of spend money that they really don't have buying tankers of water, or, or fodder in the marketplace, as opposed to just sort of scavenging in, in, in the countryside as, as, as they always would have done in the past. And more and more often, these herders are having to sort of sell off their animals in order to buy water or fodder, or fodder. And in doing that, and in doing that, at a time when so many other animal herders are already suffering, they're getting the lowest possible prices imaginable. And so they're hurting themselves, as with the farmers in, in the long run, through no fault of their own. And with too few animals, their herds are often just too small to, to kind of generate to really be sustainable in the long run. I mean, average herd size, herd sizes in, in northern Sudan have fallen by at least a third in the last years. And the number of herders also appears to have fallen quite dramatically. People are giving up, even if they don't have an alternative, because, because just the numbers are not adding up in any conceivable way. And for both of these communities, that the consequences are much, much more than just financial. I've met quite a few farmers everywhere from, from Iraq to Sudan, who had to pull their kids from school, because they can't afford things as sort of meager as textbooks, or because they need their labor in the fields to make things grow as conditions get harsher. Many families have been going necessary medical care or for going medical care in, in farming communities until it's too late. Sometimes the transfer by hospitals is, is a little bit too much. And in some of these communities, as, as in many others, I mean, there's a change of diets to eat. cheaper, cheaper foods. And so it's just, it's a case, particularly with the animal, in many instances, just getting, getting poorer. And unsurprisingly, a lot of these people with farmers and herders are, are unwilling or unable to sort of tolerate this collapse in their living conditions, and they're, they're moving to cities. And, and that's, that's not a new phenomenon, of course, rural people moving to urban areas in search of a better life of better services with better job prospects is, is, is old news. But it, it's, it's unusual. And it's, it's, it's potentially problematic for it to happen at the pace at which it appears to be in quite a few countries in recent years. I mean, to the south of Baghdad, to the southwest of Cairo, to the, to the southern periphery of Amman, and around Alexandria, you've just got groups of, of recent arrivals from, from rural areas who are just arriving in what are basically unprecedented numbers. Now, this doesn't, again, have to be a bad thing in itself. But, but as discussed a few minutes ago, when you have people arriving in numbers that, that states cannot manage when you have people arriving quicker take and provide for, you're going to lead to, to kind of dissatisfaction among, among the original inhabitants and disaffection among new arrivals. And I mean, this is not just a problem for these kind of increasingly overwhelmed cities. It's a problem also for, for many of the sort of villages that are, that are left behind they're losing their best and brightest in many instances at an unsustainable pace. In some instances, they're losing the kind of critical mass of people that they need to sustain small businesses. And in some instances, they're they're losing, I guess, some of the most respected village elders, people who, who, who, who sort of advice and wisdom is needed more than ever as kind of conflict resolution mechanisms at a time when everything's kind of going wrong. And I mean, I'm talking, I'll talk in, in a minute or two about, about the security element, which is the bit that I, I focus on for the most part. But before that, there's, there's just two, two more perhaps immediate ramifications that I'd like to sort of touch on. And the first is the health fallout that both people in rural and urban parts of the Middle East and North Africa are, are facing. And you've got waterborne diseases that are arising sometimes because of the consumption of polluted water, but also because of the consumption in many instances of water that is just significantly more saline than is safe to drink. I was talking earlier about the kind of over pumping of, of groundwater. And I mean, as many of you likely know, the, the more you over pump water, the more likely you are to sort of draw up kind of more get deep aquifer. But for many people, I mean, the, the, the, there's just a willingness to sort of take chances drinking water that they know not to be fully potable, simply for, for lack of, of alternative options. I mean, in, in parts of the Jordan Valley, for example, in, in, in, in Northern or Central Jordan, up to half of visits to medical facilities seem to be at least in some way related to the consumption of, of overly salty water, like urinary tract infections, kidney stones, things, things like that. And then, and then one final, I guess immediate for, for moving on to the security picture and for want of a kind of better way of putting it. I perhaps describe it as kind of a loss of dignity. Now this, this can sound like, and perhaps is a pretty amorphous concept. But when you, when you dig, when you talk to sort of many interviewees and people who are, who are suffering from, from water shortages, this just comes up time and again, it's, it's with less water, people are often foregoing showers. They're, they're often understandably quite coy or quite embarrassed to talk about it. But you have plenty of people in, in, for example, outer or poor water-deprived districts of Oman who by their own account would shower about three times more than they do if only they had sufficient water. You've got more restricted menu choices, not just because certain kinds of food, like meat are now prohibitively expensive for them, but also because certain dishes require to, to, to cook than others. I mean, dolma is one that's come up time and time again as, as something that's a little bit more water-intensive than, than one might imagine as a cost when something that's just off the menu in, in, in some households. There's sometimes less water for, for cleaning. And in the region, as in, in many others, sort of ensuring that one's house is spotlessly clean is something that, that many people take intense pride in. And that's just sort of trickier than, than ever when you're rationing water to, to the most extraordinary extent. And then there's, I mean, there's entertaining. If you don't have enough water for your own family's use, how, how can you provide for fathers? And that's exactly how it's been put to me in a few occasions. How can we invite people around? How can we even serve them tea when, when that might mean that we ourselves will have even less to, to, to, to toy with? And that's some of what this means for people on a day-to-day basis in places like rural Iraq, rural Jordan, rural Egypt. But what does this mean for, for regional stability? And this is, this is, as I said, what I spend much of my time working on in, in as a journalist and as someone at a think tank. And there's been quite a lot of sensationalists, not necessarily useful analysis and reporting emerging out of this. I mean, there's the idea that, that sort of water wars are upon us, the idea that water wars are inevitable, that the region's next waters will be, next wars will be fought over, over water rather than oil. It's become a truism and certainly a somewhat problematic one. As kind of pretty much any hydrologist will, will tell you, transboundary water disputes in particular, they have much more likely throughout history, certainly in recent history to end up in resolution than, than, than by conflict. And that's, that's certainly, certainly true. But even if state-to-state conflict over water is, is very far from a given, very far from inevitability, particularly in the, in the short term, that doesn't mean that we won't see an awful lot more kind of water-related tensions, including in the states. Now, a lot of the most vivid or, or tangible recent tensions have been around dams, as you've kind of all likely, likely seen things like with Garrett in Ethiopia, Turkey, a number of dams in Iran have all kind of inspired tremendous unhappiness among, among downstream states. And in a way, that's, that's unsurprising. These are big, kind of tangible, easily understood structures, even by, by people and politicians who aren't necessarily particularly environmentally literate. And, and well, hydroelectricity generation or flood regulation, it does seem as if kind of states are hedging somewhat water-rich or somewhat water-rich countries like Turkey also appear to be sort of banking upon the possibility of holding back even more water than they already are. Were they to need to sort of sustain their own farmers at a time of drought? So that's a sort of a real, a real watch this space, even if the likelihood that water to conflict has, has perhaps been quite seriously overstated for the time being. And while it's certainly very premature to envisage state-to-state conflict over water, we are already seeing lots and lots of examples of low-level clashes that are at least partly related to, to water. Now, this has come in the form of, of, of kind of clashes on occasion between tribes and governments in, in Southern Iraq. Kurdish regional government and the federal government in Baghdad have come to blows as far too strong a term, but, but have certainly had water as a kind of a key bone of contention between them. I don't think it was any coincidence at all that when federal Iraqi forces moved to retake some of the disputed areas in 2017, that two of their absolute first goals were both the Mosul Dam and the barrage at Dibbas, which controls the irrigation network that irrigates large chunks of cure-cook government. It didn't seem like there was anything even slightly coincidental about the sort of rapidity with which they, they took back those facilities. And in Iran, we've had quite a few instances of, of farmers in, uh, provinces attacking water pipelines that were sending, uh, water to sort of even more partial provinces. Um, and I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that this sort of phenomenon will become more pronounced both within the region and, and elsewhere as it, as it already is. Um, but there are two forms of security risk that I'd really like to, to flag, um, the timing. And the first is the extent to which these, um, sort of evermore impoverished, um, evermore desperate farmers and herders are, in some instances, becoming kind of more and more vulnerable to the, to the entities of, of, of non-state armed groups. Um, I, I spent, uh, a lot of time between 2014 and 2018 working in, in areas that, um, had been retaken from, from ISIS in rural areas. And, and one of the main things I was working on was trying to work out the extent to which water had contributed to ISIS recruitment. Now, as we know, both within these countries and further afield, the, the sort of calculations that went into joining jihadi groups were intensely complicated. But I found, for example, um, that in villages, all of which had kind of similar, um, ethnic and sectarian and, and economic profiles, uh, a number of different water resources were much, much less likely to yield fighters to ISIS, to yield recruits to ISIS than villages that were reliant just on rainfall. Because as drought became more pronounced, it was the villages that lacked access to an irrigation canal, for example, um, that sank kind of much, much deeper into poverty than, than peers with whom they were previously on, on a kind of somewhat level economic playing field. Um, again, there's, there's a lot more to it than, than that, but it's just a complication that, that rural communities and, and governments can really, really do it out. Um, and the second, and this is the thing that, that I know, can tell you that, that some, um, American and European and other, uh, sort of military strategists and others are truly losing sleep over and it's, it's the ways in which more severe, um, water woes could contribute to kind of more state failure. Um, such is the, is the kind of, um, degree of free and frustration, um, uh, that many people feel across the region towards the rulers who they see as corrupt, as brutal, as incompetent, but this kind of even more profound inability to provide fresh water, to provide disposed of wastewater, to provide, um, affordable food and, and kind of rural, rural limits could, um, and in some part create the kinds of conditions that, and kinds of, of just fury that the governments are not necessarily able to, to withstand. Um, in addition to, to places like Yemen and Iraq and Syria, we're, we're seeing variations of this, like very, I mean, perhaps little sparks of how this could go. I mean, we've seen more and more protests in parts of the northern Nile Delta among, um, farming communities that are at the end of some of the canal networks, and that as the volume of water in the river waivers, there are occasions when water just doesn't extend to the, to the very end of these, of these canal networks, um, and, and while it's, it's certainly kind of far too early to, to, to, to kind of read too, too much into that, um, it's, it's pretty telling that even in a, in a state with, um, a, a severe security apparatus, as Egypt has, that those protests are just not dying, and just sort of gone on in, in, in various forms for, for several years now. And in, in Jordan too, I mean a country that, that really has, along with Yemen, about, about as deep a water crisis in the region as one could possibly have. You're just seeing this kind of growing anger among, uh, rural tribal communities, people who are traditionally the, the absolute bedrock of the monarchy's support. Um, and again there are, as ever, many, many causes for this, with the fact that so many of these people are dependent on farming and animal herding, and the fact that both of those professions are just becoming less and less viable as, as water access, um, just waivers more and more, um, is, is most certainly part of the, of the equation. Um, we could talk more, I mean possibly in the, in the question and answer session, about kind of major discontent in, in kind of the Syrian agricultural heartland ahead of, uh, to the oven, and, and perhaps the, the role of food prices in the run-up to the revolution in Egypt, but, but I'll leave it at that for, for the moment, and, and move on to, I mean I did promise you a, a little bit of, of good news, um, and, and there is some, but perhaps much of this is, is more hypothetical at the moment than, than a reflection of, of anything that's actually playing out, um, at, at the moment. Um, the, the first is that this is above all a function of governance. There's, there's nothing inevitable about water or environment related misery. Now this might not sound like good news because calling for improvements in governance is about as easy a thing as one can do and actually translating that into concrete results, of course, is, is a very different thing. Um, but, but the point is not, not all of these projections, I mean, as, as grim as a lot of these projections of a, of a kind of a, of a kind of low water future are, they, they are avoidable if only kind of regional policymakers can kind of devote the, the attention and the energy and the funding that the severity of these, of these issues warrant, and that's, it's a very big if and I get that that doesn't exactly encouraging, but I mean much of the region, most of the region isn't yet at a kind of a point of, of sort of water no return. If you, if you look at, um, Iraq, if you break it down to sort of water shares per capita, um, while the country wouldn't exactly be water rich and it certainly wouldn't be anything like as, as sort of a full of water as it was in the past, it need not be in the state of water crisis. Same with, with Lebanon. Again, it doesn't exactly, particularly encouraging given the extent of, of kind of improvements in governance that perhaps would be needed to sort of resolve some of these crises, but like for the most part they're, they're not kind of unresolvable. A few other points, points on this before, before wrapping up, um, water and, and sort of wider environmental issues aren't yet as, as sensitive, um, as, as many other fields. This is an area where regional policy makers have signaled a kind of a willingness to work with one another and, and external parties. Now, how long that will last is, is unclear and I didn't have too many problems covering water when I first started out, um, uh, back in sort of 2013, working on environmental issues in, in the region. Um, and that has kind of most certainly changed. It's a, it's a good deal more securitized the field than it was previously. Um, however this is an area where, where, where kind of politicians from, from Cairo to Baghdad and much beyond have made clear that there is an openness to, to, um, discussing potential solutions in, in a way that they might not welcome, um, kind of contributions in, in other areas. There's also new technology coming online. Now, I'm always wary about talking about this because I'm perhaps a little bit more on the skeptical side than, than some others. I mean, it's above all changes to consumption patterns that I and many others think will be at the absolute heart of, of any, um, any bid to, to sort of write this, this water situation. And, uh, desalination is perhaps at the heart of much of this skepticism. It remains too costly for most countries. And, and it seems unlikely that you never know given the, the extent to which costs are coming down. But it seems unlikely that it will ever be cheap enough for the kind of prolific usage beyond the Gulf States perhaps, but the prolific usage that, um, or the, in which it's, it's often discussed. But again, the costs are coming down and one can see how it could form a part of, of future water solutions for, for to kind of, um, but I mean, yeah, if you need any, um, illustration of, of, of, of the perils or the ways in which sort of technology doesn't kind of always live. But, um, you could perhaps look in, in, in Yemen where kind of with tremendous fanfare a lot of these like solar water pumps will roll the means of enabling farmers, um, uh, who, um, who lacked electricity, who lacked kind of sufficient money to buy, um, diesel powered generators, allow them to, to freed from the, the final, I guess financial break that comes with buying diesel. A lot of these farmers have just extracted a lot more water than they ought to have done and as a consequence they've just accelerated that, that depletion of groundwater. Um, and lastly on this before, before just sort of wrapping up, I mean we are seeing as a matter of necessity, like some of the changes that will, will need to happen in the field of agriculture. It's, um, it's, it's much, it's a kind of a small fraction of what will be necessary, but we are seeing a very slow rollback of, of the usage of some of the water-intensive crops like rice that have, um, proven so, so kind of, um, so, so costly in water terms in Egypt and Iraq and elsewhere. We are seeing a little bit more of a rollout of drip irrigation in, in a whole bundle of countries and we are seeing kind of more and more, um, uh, kind of campaigns, sort of looking to, to boost um, conservationism. So like the signs are there if, even if they're a little bit less conspicuous than one might, might hope. Um, so what's, what's next? I'm conscious that I'm maybe talking, um, a little bit more than, than I would have done. I'm happy to, um, turn over in, in a minute, but while projections for, for future rainfall and, and kind of other manifestations of climate change are, are not clear, um, everything we're seeing so far and every kind of projection that we have, however unclear it is, points in a pretty grim direction. Um, the, the middle, the less of, much of the Middle East is part, um, are warming at an even faster rate than, than much of the world. Um, the, there was a study that, that you might have seen that, that kind of a Cyprus Institute, Max Planck Institute collaboration, uh, that made waves when it came out a few years ago suggesting that, that parts of the region might be seeing for parts of the year, um, within, within 20 to 25 years. Um, what might they see? Again, we lost the parts of the region, might see. Sorry about that. Um, might, might see temperature of up to 60 Celsius for several months of the year, uh, in, in the not too distant future. Um, there's the, there's the, the population growth element. And, and I, like quite a lot of people, um, um, I mean, dubious isn't quite the right word, but I'm not quite as captivated by the idea that, that a lot of this boils to excessive population growth as it is, um, as opposed to a number of other factors. Um, and were water to be used more efficiently, um, a good number of regional states that have water problems, like Iraq, like Lebanon, wouldn't be in anything like the waterbind that they are in, despite intense, um, population growth pressures. But the reality is that for as long as water is used as inefficiently as it is in, in many regional states, then increasing demand, um, as one would have in, in many instances with, um, more, more mouths to feed will contribute to, to the problem. Um, I talked about how a lot of this is avoidable and certainly when it comes to sort of seeing off water-induced instability, I very much believe it is for the most part. But a lot of, a lot of suffering is, is locked in. Um, a lot of rural parts of the Middle East, no matter what's done, no matter how many kind of, uh, kind of temperature resistant seeds or sort of, uh, forms of assistance are rolled out will quite possibly not be salvageable. I mean, that combination of deteriorating water access, more extreme heat for longer periods of the year, crumbling soils, uh, along with, I guess, sort of enduring insufficient state support will, will probably prove too much. I mean, it sounds like we're kind of waving the white flag, but certainly for, for parts of, of farmland in, in countries like Iraq, some of the more marginal land on the kind of peripheries of, it's just going to have to be provision made for the people who live in these communities. Um, at the moment, it's a little bit of a, of a taboo topic almost, um, and something that neither authorities nor, nor, nor, nor AIDS, aid organizations are, uh, contending with. Um, but, uh, that's, that's something that, that, that needs to, to, to happen. A lot of change needs to, to happen in terms of attitudes, um, certainly at the top. I mean, water is rising up the political food chain, um, even if it's hardly related in many instances. Um, but, I mean, just to, to look at the extent to which environmental ministries remain toothless and the extent to which water ministries in pretty much every country continue to lack the clout that they require is sort of an illustration of just how much more needs to be done. Um, and it's, it's not just at the top. I mean, attitudes towards water need to change across the board, even if it's government and industry that's leading the way. Um, the reality is that, uh, previously bountiful kind of rivers, like, like the Nile and the Tigers and Euphrates, many states that, that are essentially desert states haven't necessarily had to behave like desert states. But as kind of that water access waivers, we're just going to have to go to an array of others to, to sort of adapt to this, this change, and that's an extremely difficult thing anywhere in the world. I mean, we're even in, in, in places with, uh, significantly greater support for, for farmers like the U.S. and, and elsewhere. Um, and I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrap up there. But I mean, these are absolutely massive challenges, but it's just the, the extent to which water issues are almost kind of, I mean, intimately wrapped up with like pretty much every arena, every problem, every issue in, in regional life, um, ought to be sort of an illustration of the kind of necessity of, of, of actually tackling them. Um, so that's, uh, what I, what I hope to see before too long. Fantastic. That's very good, quite a, um, um, you know, fast tour across so many of the issues. Peter, thank you so much for, um, you know, bringing so much into the short time that you had. Um, I have some questions that I'll pause. I just want, was thinking about, you know, the heavy industries that are very thirsty, whether, you know, steel industries and nuclear industries, et cetera, that some of the countries of the region are keen on. But, um, the several questions from our audience and do please type in your questions in the Q&A and I'll go through them in order of appearance. So, uh, uh, some questions were that, um, uh, what do you think about, which you just briefly touched upon it, about the, um, debates surrounding Ethiopia's dam and its ramifications for countries like Sudan and Egypt. I mean, is that we, as you said, suddenly there will be a, uh, a horror inducing news headline even in the West, but anything, is that an boiling point that will spread, spill over the dam, yeah, the dam between Egypt and Ethiopia? So, let me say, the Renaissance Dam is, as you and many others undoubtedly know, just been one of the, I guess, most kind of contentious of all water issues in, in both the Middle East and North and East Africa and further afield for, for quite a few years. I'll try to stay a little bit clear of it in part, um, because I think as a, by comparison, certainly of the other Asian Nile and the Nile Basin faces, it can seem as if the Renaissance Dam is a little bit of a, of a sideshow. Like, if one takes a long-term view and looks at the kind of extent to which pollution, uh, kind of increasing water demand, uh, and, and kind of potentially diminished flows, a consequence of the erratic rainfall in the Ethiopian highlands that provide much of the, of the river's water, um, uh, then, then this kind of dam can seem like a, like kind of small fry by, by comparison. Um, I will say that, because I did spend, uh, about three months traveling the, the, the length of the, of the Nile in 2015, and that was partly, an attempt to sort of get as good an understanding as possible of, of kind of attitudes towards the dam and other issues affecting the river in the three dominant Reperian states, Ethiopia, Sudan, and, and Egypt. And, um, as, as with Egypt's construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1970s, the construction of a number of Sudan's dams over the course of the 20th century, the Renaissance Dam has sort of taken on a, um, uh, a kind of a, a kind of a place in Ethiopian national pride that is perhaps even more outsized, uh, than its actual impact would, would warrant. Um, and I think that's partly related to something that I, that I, that I mentioned. It's that dams are big, they are tangible, there's something that, that people who can't necessarily get their heads around things like climate change can grasp. Um, and so that's a very, a very long-winded way of, of saying that, that the dam is, is complex and it's very easy to see why the Egyptians are, are still as, as furious as they are. Um, but when looking at kind of the Nile Basin, sort of long-term water and environmental crises, uh, it's I think a comparative footnote for that. Yeah, brilliant. Um, uh, there was a question that I think you refer to desalination, that it's not such a, um, magic wand. Uh, another question, uh, uh, from one of our audience members says that, uh, you know, you, you've not, uh, uh, touched upon a country that borders onto Jordan and Egypt, i.e. Israel, what about that? How are they managing the resources and what, what are your thoughts on that? So I was, I was going to briefly talk about, um, about the Jordan River as a relative success story. I mean, emphasis on relative in that, um, in large part because of the work of a, of a, a joint, uh, Palestinian Israeli, Jordanian organization called Ecopeace Middle East, the three countries have, to a certain extent, managed to, again, to a certain extent improve the fortunes of the Jordan River by releasing a little bit more water back into it than they had previously. Now, the river remains a pale shadow of what it once was. The Dead Sea is still dying, so, I mean, can't be sort of waving this laboratory banners too much. Um, maybe the reason why I didn't, I don't talk about the Jordan River too much is that even by, by regional riparian standards, it's a tiny, tiny waterway. I mean, many of you might have seen it. It's kind of often a tremendous, I mean, almost source of disappointment to people who, who visit, who imagine this like mighty Nile-like river and yet it, it almost seems like a stream and, and even before it's kind of depleted state as a consequence of, of, um, dramatic over extraction by, by all kind of four main riparian parties in the last four years, it wasn't a particularly impressive waterway. Um, I mean, Israel, by, by developing its own sort of desalination technology, Israel has, for strategic purposes, managed to, to a certain extent extract itself from the kind of wider water discussion in a similar way as many of the Gulf States have. Um, but, uh, no, I mean, I, I, I, perhaps have, have stayed away from it just because as a, compared to the, the Tigris, Euphrates and, and the Nile, it's not, it's nowhere near as whitey a waterway. Yeah, there are several questions about, you know, central governments, um, plans for this, you know, explosion of urban centers. And, uh, so for example, one question says that, you know, uh, with reference to Cairo, that this rapid expansion of residential compounds in suburbs of Cairo, which I think a city that, you know, well, and including the new capital, do you think the government considers, or they at all consider the environmental impact of these, uh, projects? And there are, you know, several things about, you know, uh, Syria as well, but Cairo in particular. Uh, in, in the case of Cairo, um, I, I, I don't think so. No, I mean, the, the environment ministry in Egypt is among the most powerless of all regional environment ministries. I mean, there was one instance, this was a, a story that I thought was apocryphal, but I've actually managed to get confirmation, which is like a real illustration of just how much of a kind of ministerial backwater of the environmental affairs agency there is, which is that two Egyptian diplomats who were perceived as having disgraced the foreign ministry were punished by, by being sent or transferred to the double edged environment, the Egyptian environmental affairs agency. I mean, environmental considerations are very, very, very slowly rising up the, the kind of political food chain in, in a few areas of Egypt. Um, but I, I don't really see how the, the construction of the new capital or, or some of these additional satellite cities would, would, would meet that. No, no, absolutely. Uh, there is a, a question that asks that, um, you know, will the COVID-19 pandemic and freshwater scarcity mark the end game for Iraq's and Syria's and Lebanon's and Algeria's mass popular uprising and its effect on public health? Um, and then it says, um, are each of Iraq's neighbouring, you know, you know, Syria or, or then Yemen, Libya's fragile, um, uh, be, you know, failing or failed states? Would you think a point where UN will have to get involved? And in fact, another question says, is there any appetite in the West or any long-term, you know, strategic policy in the West to think that they should step in, can they step in? What can they do? Whether it's United Nations or just a big, um, just, I mean, when it, when it comes to talking about the sort of the broader fallout from COVID in, in the region, I don't, I don't feel particularly well placed to, to comment. I'm not a public health expert. Um, and, and while domestic politics is certainly kind of intimately connected to much of the work I, I do, I don't, I don't profess to, to, to be kind of the only comment I perhaps would say is that I think it's, it's far too early for us to like fully grasp, uh, the, the kind of full extent of the ways in which COVID will kind of unravel in, in these countries in the long run. I think it's far too early for us to, to work out the impact it will have on our own societies in, in the West. I mean, thinking back a year, many of the projections suggested that in a country with kind of often, um, condensed living, or region with often condensed living conditions, a region in which as we discussed, so many people go without access to, uh, clean, um, potable kind of readily available water that COVID would just sort of blast a, a kind of a vicious farro. And, and while, I mean, it's, it's far too, too strong to say that the, the, the region has had a, a kind of soft experience of it, it hasn't been the, the horrible, horrible kind of blood bath that, that many people had, had projected. So, I mean, yeah, in terms of sort of looking at where COVID fits into the sort of regions wider matrix of problems, I, I, I, for, for lack of, of real expertise hold, hold off. Uh, there were a couple of questions which in fact you had referred, uh, you know, uh, obliquely to where one question was, um, the, the resourceless people, will they be more and more inclined to join, you know, the voiceless, the resourceless to join terrorist groups, which was actually quite interesting that when you said about the, uh, recruitment and ISIS and more, uh, uh, technical question that any thoughts on cloud seeding in the, uh, region, um, and would this have a cross-border implication if that was really a reality? Um, so I'm, I'm very, very much not an expert on, on geo engineering of which cloud seeding is part. I mean, all I can say is that there's an understanding of these sorts of unproven technologies in the same way that there's a tremendous skepticism of the kind of full potential impact of, of desalination. I mean, again, it hasn't been done enough for us to have a, a full handle on its, its possible impacts. Um, but kind of among the, the kind of instances in which it has been tried, there's a, a kind of a, certainly suggestions, uh, with, with some evidence that it's kind of distorted rainfall patterns elsewhere. Um, so yeah, were Gulf states or others in the region to sort of deploy cloud seeding with even greater frequency than they already have, um, it would be, it would be an exceptionally unfortunate thing were that to come at the expense of, of other countries that are sort of reeling from, from their own lack of grain. But I mean, the point is that in the region and in China and in the US and elsewhere, this is just the kind of, the kind of technology that needs considerably more research before it's, it's rolled out on the scale that, that people have suggested. Yeah, and I would imagine the costs of these for the, um, countries. Um, going off on a tangent, but an interesting one, um, one of our audience asks that as a researcher, as a, uh, writer, when you, uh, come face to face with the stories that you told about the decline in the standards of lives, the changes that these established in the tribal communities have to make all force with these water resources, how do you deal with this emotionally yourself? Does what effect does it have on you when you witness this and report on it and collect, uh, data on it? You know, it's, I mean, it can be very dispiriting. I mean, something that, that seems to happen in, in journalism as, perhaps in a number of other professions where you're, you're often, um, exposed to that sort of thing as, as one does become, I mean, in your, it is not, is not the right term, but I mean, just over the course of time, I guess one develops slightly thicker skin. Um, I mean, like, as, as a, somebody primarily works as a, as a journalist, the, the difficult thing is when you get asked right, I'm entrusting you with my story what good will become of it. Um, and the, the, the sort of grim reality is that I'm compelling an article or whatever as one might hope to write, there's absolutely no assurance that anything would, would come of it. I mean, if the article is not read, uh, or, or kind of by, by people in positions of authority within the country or by, kind of, organizations with the capacity to, to assist, um, then an interviewee may very well have, um, told you his or her story at tremendous emotional cost, um, with, with nothing good having emerged out of it for, for them. Um, and, uh, I mean, in, in those contexts, one has to be, I guess as, as honest as possible in saying, well, it's entirely possible that, that no good will come out of this, but I mean, unless, unless we at least try and tell the story, we'll, we'll never know for certain. For that, two questions about Iran. So one question, uh, refers to a report about, uh, 60, so months ago on BBC Persian website, apparently that, uh, there, there is a scheme, um, on the concentration to pump salt water from the Persian Gulf into the interior of the country and see its effect. Is, is that something that you have come across? Um, and then the other, again, staying with Iran, um, a questioner asked that what do you think are Iran's biggest challenges, um, uh, for, for, for actually the environmental movements or one movement in Iran at present? And, um, do you think that, um, uh, Iran will, uh, find a way to respond to this pressure from its population and from international, uh, pressure? So two things on Iran. So to the first question, I hadn't heard of that scheme to potentially pump salt water from the Gulf inland. I mean, that sounds very familiar to the, very similar to the red to dead scheme, which is a sort of a, a long mooted proposal to pipe water from the red sea to the dead sea, thereby reviving it as a tourist destination, while also ensuring that it's kind of, its collapse doesn't damage the kind of potash industry and, and infrastructure that, that depends on it. Um, and it's a sort of thing that, it's a scheme that just never seems to die because on a, on a certain level it, it sounds so commonsensical, kind of bringing salt water from one bountiful place and just putting it in another. Um, however, it does also to see one of these fancy enormous donor cash, um, uh, because it just looks so, so sort of gaudy and glorious when perhaps there's a whole bunch of sort of smaller, um, more viable schemes that are just not quite as, as sexy and hence not quite as enticing. Um, and while, again, I don't know anything about this, this sort of similar sounding Iranian proposal, um, I would be as skeptical about that as, as I am about the, the, the Israeli Palestinian Jordanian read-to-dead scheme. Um, to the, to the second one, um, I mean, I, I, I have a, as some of you might have seen, I mean, eight conservationists from a, a group called, um, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation have been in prison in Iran for the past three and a bit years. There were initially nine, one of them died in very suspicious circumstances soon after jailing. There's, I mean, very encouraging news suggests they may very well be, be released, um, in, in the coming month or two and massive fingers crossed that that comes true. But that, their plight, while extreme, is a, a pretty sort of unfortunate and grim illustration of the challenges that, um, conservationists and wildlife experts face in Iran. I mean, until relatively recently in Iran, as in quite a few other countries in the region, environmental defenders and people working in the environment of space were generally accorded a little bit more, um, space than many others or a little bit more freedom than, than activists working in, in other parts of civil society. The idea seemingly being that these folks were just sort of harmless tree huggers and as a consequence, what kind of harm could possibly come from, from them doing that thing. But it's actually seemingly a consequence of the kind more worrisome water situation across the region that has pushed some authorities in countries like Iran to take a much harder stance with their environmental communities. Um, here's, you've had a number of, of quite intense protests and protest movements that have been at least partly related in some instances to, to water. Um, and this, I mean, has sort of, yes, certainly browsed some governments, including seemingly Iran's, to the, I guess, destabilizing potential of environmental movements. It's a, it's a kind of a sort of typical authoritarian ploy out of the playbook, like shoot the messengers rather than actually tackling the, the root causes of the, of the problem. Yes, absolutely. Um, and, uh, interesting question. I've been starts by telling an account that it says in 1993, late Israeli president Perez suggested the regional mechanism entity to deal with the water issues across the region on the basis that water resources, water sources should be owned by all. Do you think this suggestion is at all practical and applicable? So, I mean, I, I, I knew, I briefly raised the, the example of, of Ecopeace Middle East, this, this joint Israeli Palestinian Jordanian organization has done absolutely terrific work, uh, in, in working across, across the three countries. The idea being, of course, that nature knows no boundaries, environment knows no boundaries. So, like, kind of politics aside, one simply has no choice but to, to sort of work across, across disputes, however complex and emotive they might be. And the, there's a kind of a nascent kind of concept called environmental peacebuilding. And the idea is that not only can need kind of need water notch and in other environmental problems lead to conflict, but then actually environment and water can be a source for boosting cooperation across the board, uh, by establishing trust in this one generally slightly less emotive field and then translating that into results elsewhere. And, and the Jordan River was originally, back in the 90s, sort of seen as a, as a sort of an early and possibly strong manifestation of how this could work. Um, but from the, from the perspective of the proponents of environmental peacebuilding, it hasn't, it hasn't panned out even though kind of the three countries and particularly success in kind of boosting environmental cooperation, such as the complexity and the emotiveness of the wider that it hasn't led to breakthroughs in, in kind of wider Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian relations. Um, and, and well, while that is perhaps about as a sort of complicated a case study is one can have in the region, it could be seen as a, yeah, an illustration of, of, of the limits of, of water as a, as a bridge builder. It can take you far, but only so far. For that, a question that asks about the incidents of clashes between forming communities and nomadic communities that, you know, across the world and fighting for, or looking for increasingly scarce water sources. I mean, do you see this in MENA region between the settled communities and nomadic communities? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, so within, within the Middle East, I mean, even though I, I, I did murders and they certainly are among the, the, the forest and most, um, uh, kind of, um, desperate of, of all people in the region, their numbers relative to the numbers of farmers certainly are, are quite small. Um, and so you don't necessarily have quite the same series of disputes and pressures within the Middle East as one does have in the Sahel where kind of livestock are significantly more, more numerous. That, that said, I mean, Sudan doesn't have anywhere near as much of a history of farmer, herder, clashes as, as countries to its east do, as, as we're seeing in Chad and Mali and Nigeria and a few other places. And yet, what's been happening is that as, uh, rainfall has wavered, a lot of kind of herders have altered their animal migration patterns and instead of going north-south in pursuit of kind of vegetation as they have done since time immemorial, instead they're going east-west and that's taking them into the Nile Valley where they're kind of running up against the settled farmers and you have been getting increasingly vicious clashes as, as a consequence. So, certainly in, in Sudan, like that could be a, an unfortunate illustration of, of some additional problems to come within the Middle East itself, I'm, I'm uncertain. I mean on a, on a, on a, some incidents here or there wouldn't surprise me but I, I don't think you've got quite the numbers for that to be as, as troublesome of a problem as it is elsewhere. And so maybe just have time for a couple more questions. So, uh, one question is focused on Turkey, uh, that with Turkey being the upstream riparian and undisputed regional power in the Tigris, Tigris Euphrates basin, is there any way, um, that Ankara can be persuaded to release more water downstream? Oh, I want to know who's the person who's going to do the persuading. Yes, carry on. Yeah, so from an Iraqi and a Syrian perspective, Turkey has been, um, playing hardball for decades when it comes to dam construction on the Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries. And while the extent to which the Turks have been playing hardball, to my mind, has been maybe somewhat overstated by, by downstream state, it's, it's, it's most certainly true that the, the volume of the two rivers has fallen pretty dramatically over the course of the last few years, the last decade or two and a key cause of that does indeed appear to be Turkey holding back significantly more water behind its many, many, many new dams. Now, the part of the problem is that because Iraq has been in various states of, of, of conflict and disorder since 2003 and well before 2003 and because Syria of course has, has not been keeping close track of its Euphrates valleys since 2011, that the data we have is much more limited than we might otherwise want to have. But the problem is that because Turkey is not a signatory to a lot of kind of water sharing treaties, Iraq and Syria have very little in the way of, of, of clout to, to pursue Turkey and it, it's just morphed in some ways into like a real sort of archetypal kind of might is right type situation. I mean you might have seen that the Iraq successfully pushed for the listing of the Mesopotamian marshes in Southern Iraq as the UNESCO World Heritage Site a number of years ago and well that was undoubtedly at least partly driven by kind of aesthetic and cultural consideration. It was also seemingly driven by the fact that the one Turkey is a signatory that Iraq and Syria could potentially hold it to is the Ramsar Treaty on International Wetlands. So the idea seemingly being that we're Iraq to demonstrably prove in an international court setting marshes were drying up on account of, of, of Turkey holding back excessive water and then they might have a point in their favor. But it's a, it's a just a messy complicated illustration of power politics. Yeah. I thought maybe finished by some of my own question that I think when one looks at the statistics and I think you refer to when you know the leaky pipes for example in Cairo that comparing for example the region men a region to some of the other parts of the world that they do indeed have hostile environments. I mean I was thinking of Australia or United States and it's astonishing how much better they're not perfect but there's so much better at avoiding these you know wastage of water and how is it do you pick up any concerns that you know for example the idea that might in the long term it costs less to repair these leaky water pipes or just the wastage or not to transfer water you know divert rivers when there is a 50 degree temperature outside and the beating sun do you is there a sense of trying to learn from those who are a little bit more ahead of the game how does Australia do it how does um United States do it China I don't know Central Asia I mean these are incredibly brutal natural settings are they better is there something that the region can learn and invest in I think I think the problem not sure the problem is that I mean with plenty of exceptions here or there the region has just been in a state of almost constant flux for for decades like whether it be conflict or economic crisis or political instability there's always been something going on and I think I think it just boils and this is exactly what I've been told by by environmental officials from from I mean a dozen or so more countries across the region which is that it's hard to focus on the severity of your environmental problems when it feels that you've got a whole bunch of other fires sort of raging in your face now to my mind and that of many others the severity of these environmental problems is already so severe that it's very much one of these like major fires burning in front of their face but when non-state armed groups raging across part of your country when you do have varying degrees of economic collapse or an array of other troubles I can understand how it can be sort of difficult to look at something that up until now appeared to be much more of a distant threat I mean the way it was often represented was that well Peter we're firefighters and you're asking us to sort of do long-term triage is true that because environment was for so long seen and up to a considerable extent still is seen as a soft topic and it wasn't and isn't taken seriously by the people within government who really matter where these sort of I don't know hard-nosed military men just to sort of play up to a stereotype for a moment you've got lots of exceptionally competent technical experts within a lot of the more societies but they're not the ones who are empowered they're not the Ministry of Interior they're not the Ministry of the Fence they're not the Finance Ministry and with that kind of lonely stature within their political systems it's just been impossible for them to sort of really get environment and water issues sort of as high up the the priority list as they really ought to be Well I think we'll have to have you back once a year to give us updates on those Peter amazing it's an issue that certainly for an institution like SARS that looks at those parts of the world that are in diastrates really in terms of natural resources and water probably on top of the list it's it's been very sobering to hear some of your first hand experiences of these and sometimes it seems that it's such a simple thing to resolve but obviously it's not as I know from Iran it's just you know personal experience of childhood it was always we're always pining for snow we like the snow because that meant you know a few days of school but certainly for older people it meant the more snow it would be the more tolerable summer so let's hope that happens thank you very much indeed Peter I know that you've been so valiant to put up with the rather unreliable internet connection it held at the crucial moment thank you so much and to our audience I strongly suggest that you visit Peter's web page with so many amazing articles there and good luck with all your future travels and the issues that you will cover and thank you very much to our audience do check our website so as website for upcoming talks this is the last of our Tuesday lectures but we will be back in the new term in October so wonderful to have you here and the talk will be recorded and will be on our YouTube channel as well as on Facebook thank I can't thank you enough Peter and we'll be an avid reader of your future article thank you so much and thank you to Aki my colleague to have kept us going throughout the term and for Dina who sends her apologies she had a PhD student she'd arranged to meet so she said goodbye thank you very much and look forward to seeing you all very soon bon voyage Peter with all your travel keep safe thank you very much thank you so much thanks and thank you Aki good night everyone bye