The Thirst For Power

Foreword

Ciarán Ó Cuinn

In over a decade working as the director of the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC), a water diplomacy organization born out of the Middle East Peace Process, I have found that the solutions to water insecurity lie not just in technology, but in politics. I must have chaired more than 50 multilateral meetings on transboundary water in which external international experts advised that new data-sharing mechanisms or pieces of technology would overcome solely political problems. Countless engineers have proposed a new nexus for approaching Gaza’s water challenges. European scientists have encouraged new kinds of groundwater modeling to conclude the final status issue of water between Israel and Palestine.

But effective policies and projects in this field are not just about dams and pipelines. They are also about culture and power. We at MEDRC have learned this lesson painfully throughout the years. Established as part of the Middle East Peace Process in 1996, MEDRC is an international organization that brings together 11 member states—including the core parties to the conflict, Israel and Palestine—as joint owners, guarantors, and co-equal partners in a broader effort defined only by a formal mandate “to assist the Middle East Peace Process.” Through its work on transboundary environmental issues like water and climate change, MEDRC provides a unique framework for negotiations, based on absolute equality between partners. But in delivering on our mandate to be a model organization for states seeking to use transboundary environmental issues in the service of a peace process, we have learned that a political economy analysis is a far more useful tool than any engineer’s diagram.

Indeed, ignoring politics can derail otherwise-worthy water management projects. It can blind us to the downsides of projects that, though sensible from a narrow engineering standpoint, have the potential to embed dependency, neocolonialism, or unfair power relations. In conflict zones, advancing a water-for-peace agenda without a clear political framework can do tremendous harm.

That is why this new volume, edited by Natasha Hall, is such a welcome and important contribution for governments and actors managing water resources and conflicts more broadly. Although the focus is on water, the lessons here can inform mediators, government officials, and aid agencies on policy responses to wide-ranging transboundary issues, from climate change and the water-energy-food nexus to international relations and conflict.

Through a series of case studies from across the Middle East, the authors featured in this volume underline the importance of addressing politics in tackling water management issues. All of the chapters highlight the need for more holistic, diverse, and multidisciplinary approaches to water and environmental management. Though the focus is on the Middle East and the case studies are localized, the themes are globally relevant and the issues raised can be found across all continents.

That said, there are no generalities, Western bias, or orientalism here. The case studies are comprehensive, detailed, and locally informed. A refreshing heterogeneity runs through the report, recognizing and reflecting the social, cultural, and economic diversity of the Middle East today. Though most countries in the region are considered water stressed or water scarce, the political economy of water is varied even within these countries. Water systems in parts of the Gulf, for instance, with plentiful energy resources to power reverse-osmosis seawater desalination, are very different from systems in parts of the Levant that primarily rely on scarce ground and surface waters and outdated water-sharing agreements with neighbors. The case studies underline how, in such a diverse and politically complex region, the failure to fully consider power structures and dynamics can cause projects to take significantly longer to be realized, or even fail entirely.

The centrality of good public administration also cuts across all chapters. The quality of interdepartmental coordination and diplomacy can be the difference between a bureaucratic veneer and an effective developmental action. For example, the importance of interagency cooperation is key, but siloed approaches are commonplace. Water mandates in the region tend to exist across multiple governmental ministries, including those covering water, environment, energy, and agriculture. But while these departments may work on the same projects, they tend to have very little engagement together, and the frameworks for them to do so are lacking. Encouraging donor and domestic investment in good public management is among the most catalytic steps a state can take to deliver effective environmental management policies and projects.

The case studies below also highlight a gap between what would logically or technically work and what works on the ground. This rational-reality gap has been a key theme from MEDRC’s work. For example, external donors and partners tend to drive agendas and policies that may seem like a good idea from a Western donor’s headquarters but may not reflect the reality on the ground. Jordan’s Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance pipeline, analyzed in Chapter 4, is an excellent example that will be studied for decades. This high-profile and well-funded project, while providing tangible benefits, would have created politically untenable dependency between Jordan and Israel and also side-stepped Palestinians’ need for water.

Finally, at a transboundary level, the report highlights the urgent need for new multilateral mechanisms to address water management and wider environmental issues. Many transboundary efforts today are constrained by narrow and dated treaties. The highly politicized nature of water in the Middle East means that cooperation is often confined to narrow bilateral agreements that limit the potential to evolve and expand cooperation in the future. Overcoming that zero-sum game may also require a more comprehensive model that incorporates issues beyond water where cooperation is needed in order to level the playing field for downstream actors.

In sum, ignoring politics is political. Doing so prevents a full analysis of the root causes and effects of water insecurity and hampers change. MEDRC’s work with the parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years has shown that the water crisis in Gaza, even before the current war, was a wholly political construct that cannot be understood or addressed outside that lens. In Jordan and Israel, the Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance pipeline failed because it did not address the real political fears, and the realities of the cold peace, between the two countries. In the Syrian civil war, the hand of politics has often been downplayed as a cause, in favor of broader explanations like climate change.

This edited volume makes it very clear: water and environmental policies, projects, and processes impose a broad spectrum of socioeconomic, cultural, and political impacts.

In our analyses and actions, we must appreciate and factor in this complexity in order to implement politically feasible solutions. Ignoring how the water policies of donors, mediators, and governments embed existing unequal power structures or create new ones can potentially cause harm to citizens, the environment, and international peace and security. The lessons of this volume can help us adhere to the to the first rule of peacebuilding and development: do no harm.

Introduction

Natasha Hall

The story of water scarcity and conflict in the Middle East is an old one. Since 2500 BCE, the vast majority of documented violent incidents related to water have been in the Middle East and North Africa—442 by the count of the Pacific Institute. From ancient aqueducts to modern water systems, technology has allowed communities to develop water resources despite aridity and intervals of drought. But for all of technology’s miracles, governance and politics play a crucial role. Today, the region has access to more advanced technology for discovering and exploiting water resources than ever before. Yet communities continue to face extreme water insecurity. Violence over water is increasing, and conflict is impeding the ability to reform.

Rapidly growing populations, along with failures to effectively manage water and waste, have brought many countries to a precipice. According to the Iraqi government, the average flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates Rivers has declined 70 percent over the past century. The great man-made lakes of central Iraq, al Habbaniyah and al Razzaza, have all but disappeared. The Khabur River in Syria has been reduced to a mere dribble of sewage. And the legendary Jordan River is little more than a trickle by the time it reaches its eponymous country. The water level of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan River discharges, has dropped the equivalent of a seven-story building since the year 2000.

▲ Figure 1: Satellite Images of Surface Water of Lake Habbaniyah, Iraq, August 2020 vs. August 2023

And that is just above ground. The reduction in groundwater has been at least as dramatic. As surface water declines due to man-made diversions and climate change, countries increasingly look to the water underneath them for relief. One study, prepared jointly by NASA and the University of California Irvine, showed a decrease of 144 cubic kilometers—nearly the volume of Lake Tahoe—in the volume of the region’s fresh water between 2003 and 2009 alone. It was one of the largest liquid freshwater losses on Earth during this six-year period. Most of those fresh water declines in the region have been due to groundwater reduction.

▲ Figure 2: Changes in Groundwater Storage in the Middle East and North Africa, 2002 vs. 2023

Climate change and population growth threaten to exacerbate these trends. The same study showed that 20 percent of freshwater losses were due to a decrease in snowmelt and soil moisture—both of which will continue to decline with climate change. While population growth appears to be leveling off in some places, the countries most vulnerable to climate change—like Iraq and Yemen—will continue to see sky-high increases. Both populations are expected to nearly double by 2050.

▲ Figure 3: Population Growth in Selected Countries, 1961–2050

States in the Middle East also struggle with cooperative and sustainable transboundary water management. Although 60 percent of surface waters are transboundary, and all countries share at least one aquifer, effective water-sharing agreements are few and far between. Rather than a driver of sustainable and equitable cooperation, water has been a source of major tension in the region. In the 1980s, Egyptian foreign minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali famously warned that the next war would be fought over the waters of the Nile. In the 1990s, peace agreements like the Oslo Accords pledged to deal with shared water resources, but many major promises were never implemented.

Major interstate wars did not come to pass, but in the following years governments became increasingly possessive of scarcer resources, with water becoming entangled in interstate hostilities and frictions. Responding to criticism regarding Turkey’s plans to build massive dams along the Euphrates, President Süleyman Demirel said in 1992 that “neither Syria or Iraq can lay claim to Turkey’s rivers any more than Ankara could claim their oil. This is a matter of sovereignty. We have a right to do anything we like. . . . They cannot say they share our water resources.” In turn, the Syrian government did not go to war over water, but for decades it did provide support and sanctuary to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) to conduct raids on Turkey in retaliation for the dam-building undertaken as part of Ankara’s Southeastern Anatolian Project.

States in the Middle East also struggle with cooperative and sustainable transboundary water management. Although 60 percent of surface waters are transboundary, and all countries share at least one aquifer, effective water-sharing agreements are few and far between.9 Rather than a driver of sustainable and equitable cooperation, water has been a source of major tension in the region. In the 1980s, Egyptian foreign minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali famously warned that the next war would be fought over the waters of the Nile.10 In the 1990s, peace agreements like the Oslo Accords pledged to deal with shared water resources, but many major promises were never implemented. Major interstate wars did not come to pass, but in the following years governments became increasingly possessive of scarcer resources, with water becoming entangled in interstate hostilities and frictions. Responding to criticism regarding Turkey’s plans to build massive dams along the Euphrates, President Süleyman Demirel said in 1992 that “neither Syria or Iraq can lay claim to Turkey’s rivers any more than Ankara could claim their oil. This is a matter of sovereignty. We have a right to do anything we like. . . . They cannot say they share our water resources.”11 In turn, the Syrian government did not go to war over water, but for decades it did provide support and sanctuary to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) to conduct raids on Turkey in retaliation for the dam-building undertaken as part of Ankara’s Southeastern Anatolian Project. Increasing water insecurity, and the reality that transboundary cooperation may not be forthcoming, has forced states to look inward at their water usage. Though most countries in the region are water insecure, water management policies have historically fostered a sense of abundance. Reversing course on decades of unsustainable water management practices has proven to be a monumental task, as those practices are intertwined with increasingly complex and dangerous political environments. For decades, governments across the region have heavily subsidized—if not freely provided—food, energy, and water in return for loyalty. In the minds of many government officials, curbing water usage by increasing costs or enforcing restrictions would be a threat to political stability. As a result, governments continued to delay the inevitable, failing to fully enact reforms and instead seeking to find new sources of water. Now, those sources, in turn, are running dry or becoming contaminated.

Then, two events violently shook the region: the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab Spring of 2011. Water reforms were put on hold for the foreseeable future. The ensuing conflicts, forced displacement, and wartime corruption continue to plague the region. Even where violent conflict has overturned established power structures in the past two decades, the historical hallmarks of governance in the region—patronage and predation—have reemerged in the wake of the Arab Spring and are now wreaking havoc on water security. In good times, governments or local authorities rely on patronage, including cheap or free basic services like water for loyalty and stability. In bad times, authorities become more predatory, as scarcity forces powerful stakeholders to restrict these widespread benefits in order to maintain their own lifestyles. As times get harder, the number of beneficiaries of patronage decreases and benefits that were previously enjoyed diminish. Water goes from being free or cheap to nonexistent or exorbitantly expensive. Authorities resort to harsher, more oppressive measures to maintain power.

Years of avoiding tough decisions on water usage—both at the national and transboundary levels—have now come to a head in the Middle East. Understanding how to overcome this challenge requires a more robust analysis not only of how this situation came to be, but of the stakeholders and vested interests that developed over time and the negotiations necessary to move forward. Injecting these considerations into this analysis of water reforms is not meant to further securitize the issue or encourage political instability. On the contrary, dealing with the politics of water could allow countries to prevent the full-blown crises that are occurring today.

Assessing the interests of various stakeholders allows governments, civil society organizations, and aid agencies to triage politically feasible steps to water security. This requires an in-depth analysis of each country case. Though many countries have similar histories of water usage—and though the technical and economic solutions for water insecurity are fairly clear—the political, cultural, and economic landscapes of these countries are dramatically different today. Protracted and internationalized conflicts throughout the region have further complicated matters.

Achieving water security is significantly more challenging in areas already affected by war, where people tend to be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. For this reason, all of the case studies in this volume are conflict-affected, but the recommendations for each are starkly different.

Countries that are heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, like Yemen and Syria, are unable to address the full scope of the problem due to legal, financial, and political issues. As a result, the humanitarian community—a sector that is growing alongside the protracted crises in the region—has been forced to expand its mandate in order to provide basic services for longer periods. Emergency aid, however, cannot address the political drivers of water insecurity. As such, long-term dependence on aid can have deleterious effects on water resources. Unable to overcome transboundary issues, war economies, and power imbalances, aid agencies resort to water trucking, drilling for groundwater, and handing out solar pumps. In the meantime, wastewater or sewage is often ejected into waterways without treatment.

Non-state actors with uncertain political futures and difficult relationships with the international community control northeastern Syria and the Yemeni highlands, the first two case studies covered in this volume. Efforts to work around these non-state armed groups to enhance water security have been inadequate. In these cases, the international community tends to wait for a peace agreement or shift in control. But it is unclear when either conflict will resolve, or if any peace agreement would improve water policies. Authors Dr. Mohammad Al-Saidi and Lyse Mauvais make recommendations for what can be done in the near term and how water could be built into longer-term negotiations for peace and stability.

The case study of Iraq, a country that has been affected by years of war and sanctions, is a tragic example of how, in the context of an imperfect peace, money does not buy water security. Accustomed to centuries of water abundance, many Iraqi farmers continue to practice traditional flood agriculture. Water is still nearly free, but times have changed, especially in the downstream Basra governorate. As upstream communities divert water and build dams, the flow of the mighty Tigris and Euphrates decreases, leaving southern Iraq with increasingly saline soil and cracked mud flats, rather than the abundant waters of the past. Meanwhile, remnants of conflict, in the form of endemic corruption and infrastructural neglect, have severely inhibited the country’s ability to withstand both climate change and reduced river flows from upstream neighbors. The challenges of systemic change in Iraq are so daunting that fellow authors, Dr. Hassan al Janabi and Maha Yassin, argue that the Basra governorate should prioritize rehabilitating drinking water networks and accommodating newly urbanized communities to improve health outcomes and avoid increasing societal tensions. While providing recommendations for agricultural water use and transboundary negotiations, the authors note that the political obstacles are significant, but that other steps can be taken now to address immediate and long-term needs.

Jordan, one of the most arid countries in the world, has a stable government but still struggles with constant external shocks to its water supplies, as refugees from neighboring countries have arrived in the hundreds of thousands for nearly a century. Unreliable transboundary neighbors have also strained Jordan’s resources and ability to manage dwindling water resources. Dr. Neda Zawahri makes the case for how the Jordanian government, in cooperation with civil society, can begin to implement reforms that have long been delayed. She also argues that given the country’s precarious position, Jordan and its benefactors need to build up the country’s own independent sources of water to make it more resilient to contentious regional dynamics.

Renowned scholars, engineers, and aid organizations have written innumerable reports on water insecurity in the Middle East. Many of them note the environmental and human consequences of the failure to adapt to scarcity, rehashing standard technical and policy solutions to water insecurity. But projects based solely on technical solutions have either failed altogether or even worsened sustainability and equity when confronted with political realities. Other experts and government officials have lamented those political realities and delayed taking measures to chip away at the problem.

This volume takes a different approach. The authors convincingly argue that waiting for a ripe moment to address water insecurity in the Middle East would simply allow the issue to become an existential threat—for many, it already is. Yet they do not shy away from the political challenges involved. Rather, those obstacles are woven into the potential solutions they offer. Their recommendations are not silver bullets, but they are politically feasible when pursued through the appropriate steps. Rather than circumvent conflict and power imbalances, stakeholders can take the steps recommended here to improve water security and equity. They can acknowledge those challenges and provide effective incentives to relevant parties to change behavior, linking water to other important issues such as trade and security.

A better understanding of the incentives, limitations, and influence of political and economic stakeholders in water security—from water companies and powerful farmers to donor states and local communities—will allow governments, civil society groups, and aid agencies to craft realistic policies to address this increasingly existential challenge. The pages that follow suggest what those policies could be.

Northeastern Syria’s Water Crisis and the Limits of Humanitarian Intervention

Lyse Mauvais

Introduction

In January 2023, poor neighborhoods in the Syrian city of Qamishli revived an old ritual commonly practiced in rural villages across northeastern Syria. They paraded “rain brides” made of scrap fabric through the streets, begging for rain to come and for a good harvest that would keep the price of bread, meat, and dairy within reach.

The northeastern Syrian countryside usually provides 60 percent of Syria’s wheat, but from the summer of 2021 to February 2023 it remained largely lifeless, stricken by drought. In many areas there was not a single shrub or tuft of wild grass in the fields. Vast expanses of parched baal (the local term for non-irrigated agricultural land) stretched to the horizon, broken here and there only by patches of irrigated wheat, islands of life in the desert.

In the summers of 2021 and 2022, the national wheat harvest plummeted to a quarter of the prewar average due to drought, limiting the availability of bread. Skyrocketing inflation has left meat and dairy increasingly out of reach for most families, who now rely on subsidized, state-baked bread as their lifeline. Farmers in northeastern Syria grew angry and increasingly desperate, while millions of other Syrians went hungry. As of April 2024, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimated that 12.9 million people in Syria were still food insecure, including 3.1 million who were severely food insecure.

In the countryside, many fields remained fallow as Arab and Kurdish farmers grumbled about the high cost of fertilizers, pesticides, and the fuel needed to operate the water pumps that irrigated their land. Farmers went into debt to cope with these rising costs, hoping to increase dwindling yields. To their dismay, water levels also dropped in riverbeds, dams, and irrigation wells due to the lack of rain. In some areas, the water table dropped so low that watering crops cost more than letting them die.

Pastoralists have been even worse off. Barley—a primarily rain-fed fodder crop—also failed in 2021 and 2022, and there was little straw left from other cereal harvests as an alternative. Market-sold barley became scarce, with prices soaring by over 40 percent in the summer of 2022. Even the wild plants that normally provide some pasture in winter withered away. Many herders were forced to sell their sheep at a discount, rather than letting them die of hunger. In northern Hasakah province, for instance, an extended family of 20 members, displaced from the Raqqa countryside in 2020, lost their entire herd of 500 sheep to hunger and disease over two years. To get by, they work in menial day jobs in nearby villages and farmed other peoples’ land.

But the most worrisome manifestation of this crisis has been the despair of agricultural engineers, NGO staff, and local officials, who have been all equally at a loss for solutions. “If the weather becomes permanently like this, we will need to start looking for alternatives. Probably an alternative country,” sighed a senior agricultural official in the Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), the de-facto government that controls most of the country’s northeast. His half-hearted humor highlights the existential threat of water insecurity for the region.

The dilemma for aid workers and local officials in northeastern Syria is that there is no apolitical roadmap for achieving water security. Syria’s water crisis was and remains inextricably linked to the 13-year-long war that followed the 2011 revolution, and to geopolitical tensions with neighboring Turkey.

In a bid to secure access to water and electricity, Ankara has built dozens of dams along the Euphrates River and its three main tributaries that flow into Syria, limiting the flow of water downstream. To make matters worse, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its civil branch, the AANES, are connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization and national security threat. To weaken the SDF, Turkey has not only restricted access to water but also systematically targeted oil infrastructure in northeastern Syria, severely exacerbating water and soil pollution while limiting farmers’ access to fuel for irrigation. Turkish-backed opposition factions controlling other areas in northeastern Syria also regularly deprive the roughly one million residents of Hasakah, one of the region’s biggest cities, of tap water through their control of water-related infrastructure.

As a result of drought, climate change, and Turkey’s actions, the Euphrates River has dropped to historic lows since 2020, crippling the supply of irrigation water and electricity from hydroelectric dams. The river is Syria’s lifeline, historically providing 85 percent of its renewable water. But what remains of it today is so polluted by sewage and agricultural runoff that cholera, a previously eradicated waterborne disease, re-emerged in the country during the war. So far, widespread thirst and famine have been averted by aggressive use of the area’s remaining groundwater resources and by the trucking of water to the worst-hit areas—but these solutions are hardly sustainable in the long run.

Meanwhile, the international community has lost interest in Syria’s intertwined water and humanitarian crises. In early 2024, humanitarian needs were only 37 percent funded, which led the UN World Food Programme in January 2024 to limit food assistance to cover just 5.6 million Syrians—a quarter of the prewar population covered.

However, there have been unprecedented changes since then. The Assad dynasty, which ruled Syria with an iron fist for over five decades, fell unlocking unprecedented hopes for peace and political change—but also deep anxieties about the future of the country. Future humanitarian trends are difficult to predict in this tumultuous context, but a steady stream of funding for the water sector is unlikely.

Northeastern Syria enjoys credible prospects of political stability and economic recovery, which could have positive effects on the rest of the country. But the future of this de-facto government, the AANES, is uncertain, seeing as Turkish-backed opposition factions hostile to the SDF control ever-greater swathes of northern Syria. Along with diminishing Western interest in the Middle East, this political instability threatens to allow the water crisis to spiral out of control—along with both Syria’s food security and regional security. The failure to manage this crisis highlights the central challenge in dealing with food and water security in Syria: how to foster water governance during a protracted conflict.

To explain how northeastern Syria got to this point, this chapter begins by providing background on Syria’s water usage and policies prior to the 2011 revolution and charting how the ongoing water crisis has intersected with the current conflict. The chapter’s second section explains how the current political landscape shapes local and international responses to the water crisis. It argues that although humanitarian assistance and remittances are keeping some Syrians afloat, the lack of coordination between the AANES, donor governments, and aid organizations hinders the implementation of comprehensive solutions to the region’s multifaceted water issues. Worse, current aid interventions are contributing to unsustainable outcomes, including the depletion of Syria’s groundwater resources.

The chapter concludes with a series of steps that those interested in the stability of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq could take to avert a major calamity—involving more political will, longer-term planning, and better coordination with local actors. As the breadbasket of the country, the future for millions of Syrians hangs precariously on the northeast’s ability to secure its water.

Northeastern Syria’s Complex Water Crisis

A HISTORY OF MISMANAGEMENT

The 2020–2023 drought has tested the resilience of Syrian farmers in unprecedented ways, but their ability to cope was jeopardized from the start by a legacy of public mismanagement. Long before the 2011 revolution, Syria’s water resources were already being squandered, largely due to the Syrian government’s agricultural policies. Historically, the semi-arid ecosystems of northeastern Syria supported livelihoods centered on mobile pastoralism and rain-fed farming, not the large-scale intensive agriculture of today. This agricultural transition, which started under the French Mandate in the 1920s, sharply accelerated from the 1960s to the 1980s under the leadership of the Ba‘ath party.

Eyeing food sovereignty, the Syrian government supported modern agriculture on a large scale, centralized the distribution of seeds and inputs, and encouraged massive investments in infrastructure and irrigation via loans to farmers. Government subsidies allocated support to farmers based on the surface area of irrigated land they farmed, thereby encouraging them to switch from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation, even in areas with no access to surface water. As a result, the drilling of private wells grew exponentially. The initial goal of the subsidies was to enhance Syria’s food security through increased wheat production and to support the country’s cotton-based textile industry, but it perversely led farmers to abandon local drought-resistant seeds and become increasingly dependent on irrigation, a trend that has accelerated in recent years.

These policies allowed Syria to become a net exporter of wheat while simultaneously increasing the production of cash crops like tobacco and cotton. But they also made farmers reliant on modern varieties of wheat designed to thrive under irrigated conditions and with chemical inputs. As a result, irrigated agricultural surfaces expanded eightfold from 1990 to 2000, eventually reaching around 360,000 hectares in Hasakah province before the war. Agricultural irrigation is the top source of water usage in Syria today, representing around 85 percent of national consumption.

▲ Figure 4: Increase in Irrigated Land, 1961–2021

The shift to large-scale irrigation was neither profitable for the government—which heavily subsidized agriculture—nor sustainable. In the early 2000s, the springs feeding the Khabur River, a key tributary of the Euphrates, went partially dry due to overpumping in the transboundary aquifer between Syria and Turkey. Consequences were dire for Assyrian, Arab, and Kurdish farming communities in this crucial basin. Then, between 2006 and 2009, a drought hit, exposing the vulnerabilities created by the government’s water and agricultural policies. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave northeastern Syria, and most received little to no assistance.

Today, conflict, droughts, and displacement have exacerbated the crisis. Groundwater wells became essential survival tools as the Khabur dried and the flow of the Euphrates decreased. Many AANES officials see the Khabur as a cautionary tale, fearing that other river basins will suffer a similar fate as groundwater pumping intensifies across the region, both for agriculture and drinking water.

THE WATER CRISIS COLLIDES WITH THE CONFLICT

Syria’s water crisis captured media attention in late 2020, when low and erratic rainfall, along with higher-than-average temperatures, began to devastate agricultural production in northeastern Syria. By 2021, rainfall plummeted to 50–70 percent below Syria’s historical average. The following winter rainfall decreased to 75–92 percent below average in the northeast. This had a devastating and immediate impact on wheat production, 50 percent of which is rain-fed across Syria—a proportion that rises to 70 percent in the northeast, and up to 85 percent in Hasakah province. In 2021 and 2022, wheat yields reached historic lows of around 1 million tons—just a quarter of the prewar average. These numbers were also well below the amount of wheat—3.2 million tons—needed to feed the 15 million Syrians living in government-held areas, let alone the 2.6 million living in AANES regions and the 4.4 million in opposition-held territory.

Though the rains returned in 2023, a healthy season is likely to become the exception rather than the rule. Recent studies predict that droughts are 25 times more likely to occur in Syria today due to global temperature increases linked to climate change.

At the same time, irrigation and drinking water are under threat for other reasons. Turkey’s upstream damming has caused drastic reductions in the flow of the Euphrates River and its tributaries, which have long been a lifeline for agricultural communities in northeastern Syria. Based on transboundary water-sharing agreements, Ankara must release 500 cubic meters of water per second to Syria, yet that volume has dropped to under 200 cubic meters according to Syrian dam authorities. Although over five million people in Syria directly depend on the Euphrates for drinking water (alongside millions more in downstream Iraq), Turkey shows no sign of loosening its stranglehold on the river. Adding to these challenges, Turkish-backed factions have, over the past four years, repeatedly interrupted the operations of Alouk water station, which supplies drinking water to around a million people in Hasakah province.

WATER GOVERNANCE IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA TODAY

Over the past 12 years of war, Syria gradually split into three main zones: Syrian government-controlled territory in the south and central areas of the country, opposition-controlled areas in the northwest, and AANES-controlled areas in the northeast. This territorial division persisted for several years until the beginning of December 2024, when a rebel offensive that initiated in the northwestern province of Idlib toppled the Syrian government over the course of a few days. Among the galaxy of opposition groups that remained active in Syria throughout the war are also several Turkish-backed opposition groups, who were contained during most of the war along the northern border with Turkey. In December 2024, these groups markedly expanded east into AANES-controlled territory, prompting new waves of displacement toward AANES-controlled northeastern Syria.

Throughout the war, the internationally recognized government headquartered in Damascus and the main governing authority in northwestern Idlib province were subject to sanctions by the United States and its Western partners; while the AANES, which is the local partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, enjoyed steadier access to stabilization and early recovery funding. As of December 2024, the leading rebel faction now in control of Damascus remains sanctioned internationally.

However, sandwiched between Turkey and the Syrian army for around a decade, the AANES has historically been heavily dependent on the military presence of the United States to ensure its survival. It is also not an internationally recognized government, a fact that limits its capacity to engage with foreign partners. It does not have the ability to openly sell oil internationally. Most aid funding is channeled through NGOs rather than to the AANES directly. Many donors also have strict red lines that prevent their partners from transferring funds or equipment to the AANES or working face-to-face with its departments, fearing this would aggravate Ankara and constitute a violation of Damascus’s sovereignty. However, those red lines are also not entirely coherent, which has confused and frustrated NGOs, local authorities, and beneficiaries. Some donor governments, for example, ask their partners to work only with nominally independent agricultural cooperatives rather than AANES agricultural departments. Others are amenable to some degree of collaboration and capacity building with AANES, as long as material transfers are avoided.

These policies are partially a result of ongoing uncertainty about the political future of the area. As U.S. leaders renew promises to disengage from Syria over the long term, donor governments and Turkey have no reason to invest politically in the current status quo. But as they wait to see how governance will evolve in the coming years, the situation grows more precarious. In the meantime, a constellation of stabilization and humanitarian actors, local authorities, and international donors operates in a splintered policy landscape that is not conducive to improving water security.

THE AANES: WALKING A TIGHTROPE

The main water management stakeholder in northeastern Syria before the fall of the Assad regime was the AANES: the most recent iteration of a governing coalition of Kurdish, Assyrian, and Arab parties established during the campaign to defeat the Islamic State in northeastern and eastern Syria.

Despite its non-state status, AANES agricultural institutions essentially mimic the highly centralized bureaucracies of the former Syrian regime. Agricultural and irrigation departments closely oversee the distribution of water from canals and issue yearly “agricultural plans” to farmers. These contain detailed breakdowns of wheat and other crops that each farmer is requested to plant. Based on this, agricultural departments then allocate subsidized seeds, fertilizers, and fuel to each farmer. Rationing the fuel used to operate private wells, water pumps, and tractors allows the AANES to control both agricultural production and water usage.

But donor governments and NGOs see this deeply ingrained centralization of agriculture as an obstacle to promoting new, more sustainable practices among farmers. The AANES wields tremendous influence over not only farmers’ habits, but also their appetite for change. “Farmers are used to this system where they receive what they need and sell what they produce [to the state],” one donor said. This hinders efforts to promote alternative crops or irrigation methods. Many farmers prefer sticking to crops that the AANES subsidizes and promotes because doing so gives them guaranteed access to cheaper inputs and a sale price set each year by the AANES. Experimenting with new crops means taking on financial risk.

The AANES has been understandably wary of changing the model. Because farmers have been socialized to expect a high degree of support from the state (now, the AANES), their resentment is quick to grow against perceived shortcomings of political elites. “Agriculture is a losing business,” said a Kurdish investor cultivating several rain-fed and irrigated cereal fields in Hasakah. “Farmers can only benefit with state support.” Even in Kurdish areas of rural Hasakah, which suffered the most under the Assad regime, farmers occasionally express nostalgia for its agricultural institutions, which are often idealized (now that they are gone) as better at defending their interests.

Given the political tightrope that the AANES walks with the local population and regional opponents, the administration is unlikely to change its agricultural policies without backing from international benefactors like the United States—backing that is more uncertain than ever before. Thus, the AANES lacks the political will to regulate farmers’ water use, even though most aid actors see this as a priority. Agricultural wells are not metered, and AANES officials do not enforce existing regulations out of fear of political pushback in rural areas. “For now, we tell farmers to use the pumps for 12 hours per day maximum, and we give them just enough subsidized fuel to do that. But we cannot enforce it. It’s only an instruction,” one official from Hasakah’s agriculture department admitted. In the fall of 2022, the AANES issued a ban on drilling new irrigation boreholes in order to protect groundwater at the height of the drought. But it could not actually enforce this rule, and wells continued to be drilled in the open. In such a weak regulatory landscape, the impact of aid is limited.

The AANES also lacks the technical capacity to repair water infrastructure and monitor water quality and quantity. Of the roughly 80 wells that are used exclusively to monitor groundwater levels and quality in AANES-controlled areas, all but six were out of order in 2023, according to Hasakah’s water department. Those six were rehabilitated only in 2022 by an international NGO planning to carry out northeastern Syria’s first hydrological baseline assessment since the early 2000s. But even this assessment may be of little immediate use to AANES staff, most of whom are not trained to use the devices and lack the transportation and fuel needed to visit the field.

A CHAOTIC AID POLICY LANDSCAPE

Since 2020, a plethora of foreign aid actors have been paying increasing attention to early recovery and development needs by funding water-wise irrigation techniques, fodder production, seed distribution, and the solarization of wells.

But while beneficiaries welcome the projects, these interventions have done little to transform the systemic causes of water insecurity. “There is low awareness overall in the aid sector on what is needed to respond to this crisis,” said one official working at an organization that helps NGOs coordinate their efforts. “Many NGOs prefer to support farmers with immediate solutions rather than wait and invest in long-term solutions. And anyway, there are very few long-term options open to us due to the very nature of humanitarian funding cycles.”

The NGO projects are uncoordinated because “people don’t talk to each other,” as one donor put it. “Even if there are coordination mechanisms in place, NGOs often have restrictions from their donors, and there is competition between actors in the field—so information is withheld for various reasons.” To make matters worse, there is no coordinated strategy to monitor the water used across humanitarian interventions, which means NGOs and donors are running simultaneous projects to drill or repair boreholes without a clear picture of the state of groundwater resources.

The aid sector has, to its credit, tried to maintain aging and damaged infrastructure. NGOs run many projects to rehabilitate irrigation infrastructure and water canals—particularly in Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor—that were destroyed in the war against the Islamic State. Yet many of these networks are becoming less useful to farmers as the flow of water in nearby rivers decreases.

Some NGOs now focus on retrofitting water pump stations, adapting them to lower water levels in riverbeds. They also encourage individuals and communities to save water through modern irrigation methods, as opposed to the ancestral practice of flooding fields periodically. But while these interventions can help certain communities cope with reduced access to water, they have a limited impact. Donors recognize that Syria’s prewar irrigation networks are too large and interconnected to be rehabilitated by NGOs alone.

Meanwhile, there are other overlooked dimensions of the water crisis that require longer-term interventions and coordination with the AANES. Little has been done, for example, to address rampant water pollution through improved waste management or wastewater treatment, or to build the AANES’s capacity to regulate imports of pesticides and fertilizer. Yet the pollution of surface and groundwater resources is a major threat hovering over Syria, as contaminated aquifers may become unsuitable for drinking.

THE LIMITS OF THE CURRENT RESPONSE

As both climate change and Turkish politics are out of the hands of the AANES, aid actors, and the government in Damascus, their responses to the water crisis have focused on immediate solutions to increase the availability of drinking water and irrigation in the short run.

But this supply-driven strategy is now reaching its limits. Wells drilled haphazardly in recent years to supply communities with drinking water were often dug improperly, created too close together and with no technical oversight from local authorities. In Hasakah city, residents have even started drilling wells in their gardens and backyards to make up for municipal water shortages. “When they saw that the drought was continuing for a third year in 2023, more people started drilling,” said one cereal farmer in the countryside of Hasakah. “We’ve had several droughts in the past,” he added, “but we always managed to cope by irrigating and using extra fertilizers.”

Yet groundwater abstraction is not a magic solution to the current crisis. In many places, the intensification of well-drilling threatens groundwater resources. When boreholes are drilled too closely together, their proximity creates imbalances in water-table pressure, disrupting the distribution of water in the aquifer. In some cases, the boreholes stop producing water. This is due not to a natural drop in the water table but to interferences from nearby boreholes that prevent the water from rising up as it normally should. Haphazard well-drilling also increases the risk of groundwater pollution: every new borehole is another avenue through which aquifers can be contaminated. Practitioners and experts acknowledge that these practices must be urgently regulated.

Despite growing concerns about groundwater abstraction, the AANES has quelled farmers’ discontent by maintaining historical fuel subsidies that enable them to pump water from licensed wells. In parallel, many NGOs are now providing solar panels to assist the pumping of water from community-owned wells. These solarization projects, meant to help communities and farmers access water at a lower cost and with less pollution, raise concerns among some AANES officials that expanding access to solar energy will drive over-pumping, since subsidized fuel is currently the AANES’s only means of controlling how much water farmers can pump. Within the aid sector, many experienced local staff share these doubts. And although the private sector supplies many of these solar panels, NGOs’ solarization projects still have an impact on both water use and the long-term management of discarded panels.

Another downside of current humanitarian projects is that they still focus primarily on farmers using irrigation—via support for seeds, farming techniques, alternative crops, fuel distributions, and irrigation—but they have little to offer livestock herders or farmers using rain-fed agriculture, who are most vulnerable to drought. “Our preferred beneficiaries are irrigated farmers, and the ones who need our interventions the most are non-irrigated ones,” a senior staff member at an NGO coordination platform summarized.

Many NGOs have understandable difficulties designing projects suited for rain-fed farmers. Such projects could include insurance schemes in case of harvest failures, which would ensure these farmers continue to plant rainfed crops, an essential source of animal feed. To help pastoralists, the aid sector could improve and expand distributions of veterinary medicine and feed, which often come too little, too late, according to these communities. Aid donors could also pursue longer-term projects to replant wild shrubs, restore wild rangelands—vast swathes of which are overgrazed—and rehabilitate boreholes in rangelands that once served nomadic herders.

Overall, aid actors and AANES officials are aware that many of their interventions have been inadequate at best, and unsustainable at worst. But with a lack of a longer-term vision that confronts the structural causes of the water crisis, NGOs continue to implement these small-scale projects. “We can’t work directly with local authorities, and we cannot engage with the big actors like Turkey, the AANES, and the Assad regime to effectively ensure a bigger supply of water,” a Western government donor said. “So our focus is on . . . localized interventions that don’t need coordination with the AANES.” But most stakeholders, from farmers to aid actors, know that these are temporary solutions that will be unable to prevent a full-blown crisis.

Rethinking Approaches to Water in Northeastern Syria

Without a new strategy, Syria’s water crisis seems doomed to spiral further out of control. Even if abundant rainfall in coming years alleviates some pressure on water resources, the current situation suggests a grim future for water in Syria. The good news is that there are options to reform the current approach to the water crisis—options that would provide adequate incentives for behavioral change among actors.

LESSONS OF THE PAST COULD HERALD A BRIGHTER FUTURE

As the region’s de-facto government—equipped with institutions, good agricultural extension services, and a strong interest in bolstering the region’s economic and social stability—the AANES has been the actor most likely to have an impact on water use and users. However, any governing body will have to tackle the same challenges that the AANES faced. The AANES experience provides valuable lessons. The fall of Assad and the subsequent potential to open up the country to investment create new much-needed possibilities as well. However, if aid actors continue to follow a short-term aid approach, the next crisis could quickly spiral out of control for this fragile and food-insecure country.

As discussed above, the AANES has avoided directly regulating water use (through measures like metering systems and taxes) due to fear of popular backlash, much like other governments mentioned in this volume. But with stronger financial incentives, offered through agricultural loans and subsidies, a government could expand water-wise irrigation methods and shift away from the water-intensive monoculture that is detrimental to pastoral ecosystems and soil quality. In coordination, the international donor community could also support staff in efforts to monitor the quality and quantity of water resources, particularly groundwater. This support could be particularly targeted to heavily water-stressed areas.

AANES officials have shown great eagerness—to the point of desperation—for new solutions to the water crisis. Any future government is likely to do the same. Scaling up NGO interventions such as agricultural loans, which donors could partly fund, would be a welcome intervention. Donors and future investors will also need to support efforts to monitor groundwater levels and quality, as well as tackle water pollution from sources like pesticides and fertilizers, oil extraction and refining, and the unregulated dumping of solid waste. The AANES is still fighting wars on all fronts and uncertain of its political future. Its Board of Environment says these issues “are not priorities” in the current context. That is unlikely to change, as the Kurdish dominated government faces a more uncertain future than ever before. However, any government will need to stabilize the situation and ensure equity for all stakeholders in order to keep the peace.

A mix of financial and technical supports are the key entry points through which donors can influence Syrian water policies. Such assistance could start with capacity building and technical support for water and agricultural departments. These efforts could also be directed toward limiting the import and use of low-quality agricultural inputs, which have replaced the state-issued fertilizers produced in Homs before the war. “Chinese companies have flooded the market with products we don’t know, and there is no one to monitor their effects,” a cereal farmer in rural Hasakah said in 2023. Many other farmers and agricultural unions echoed these complaints. “Before, these things were provided by and certified by the state, and we didn’t have to worry about their quality.” Many farmers, agricultural union members, and AANES officials believe testing labs are needed to monitor the quality of imports now sold on the market. Such labs could allow aid actors and government officials to regulate, or at least raise awareness about, low-quality products that pose the most direct risks to health and the environment.

With the fall of Assad, there is also a chance for sanctions to be lifted or lightened, encouraging much-needed investment in the sector. Even more positively, there is a greater possibility of the Syrian economy once again becoming connected. With support to rehabilitate refineries and an agreement to equitably share oil revenues, Syria’s makeshift oil drilling and refining could also be a thing of the past, allowing the ground that farmers depend on to finally be cleared of toxic pollution.

THE ROLE OF DONORS

Western donors have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars over the years into stabilization and early recovery projects in northern and eastern Syria. In 2023, under the umbrella of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) started mobilizing $42 million to support agriculture in non-regime-controlled areas of Syria, $28 million for livelihood projects, and $50 million for governance, infrastructure, economic recovery, and civil society projects. The United States and its partners spent billions more in the last decade.

However, Syria’s Western donors have also been losing interest in the region, making future funding uncertain and long-term programming impossible. The short span of humanitarian and stabilization funding—two years at most—drives NGOs to pursue short-term interventions based on donors’ current whims and geographic priorities, rather than thought-out strategies. While they may satisfy donors’ priorities, these projects largely fail to address the root causes of the water crisis and may even make things worse by contributing to unmonitored pumping from Syria’s depleted groundwater reserves.

Donor governments have a big role to play in redesigning current aid and stabilization programs in ways that factor in the impacts of both climate change and Turkey’s damming. Large donors could work jointly to ensure that NGOs abide by strict principles to do no harm to water supplies. This may mean investing more resources in hydrological assessments and in the rehabilitation of monitoring wells. Large donors could also push for better coordination among the stakeholders they fund, to ensure that data on all existing water resources (especially groundwater) is shared among implementing partners.

Doing no harm also means improving waste management across all aid programming. After 13 years of war, virtually no attention has been paid to the management of solid waste from camps hosting internally displaced persons (IDPs), which is dumped in open-air informal landfills that are sometimes located close to potable water wells or drain into springs and river beds. At the very least, NGOs responsible for waste management should ensure that waste is disposed of in areas far from riverbeds and important groundwater reservoirs.

PRIORITIZING DIPLOMACY

Given Turkey’s outsized role in Syria’s water woes, donor engagement on technical fixes must go hand-in-hand with attempts by Western states to engage Ankara on transboundary water sharing. Restoring—or at least increasing—some of the Euphrates’ flow is the most immediate and effective way to alleviate Syria’s water crisis and lift pressure on groundwater resources, which should remain the country’s best-guarded asset.

But exerting any influence over Turkey’s policy is difficult. Local NGOs have called for establishing “an impartial and independent monitoring mechanism for transboundary water resources shared by Syria, Türkiye, and Iraq to oversee the three States’ compliance with signed agreements,” supporting dialogue between the three countries. Such a mechanism is unlikely to exert any significant influence on Turkey, but its findings may at least serve as a basis for donor governments—fellow NATO members—to advocate for better water sharing with Ankara.

In the long run, donors, potential investors, and local stakeholders will not be incentivized to invest in better management of Syria’s water resources if Turkey or any other warring party continues to systemically target the country’s energy and water infrastructure. Turkey has attacked this infrastructure multiple times over the years. In January 2024, Turkish airstrikes damaged northeastern Syria’s only gas plant and key energy hub, the Suwaydiyah plant, putting nearly 100 boreholes out of service and depriving over one million residents of electricity, gas, and fuel. These strikes often target oil fields, causing direct air, soil, and water pollution. By destabilizing electricity grids, Turkish attacks also drive short-term reliance on generators; by destroying oil infrastructure, they upend efforts to regulate pollution from the oil sector. Any effort to manage pollution—while entirely necessary to protect remaining water resources—will be a drop in the ocean if such infrastructure continues to be targeted.

Conclusion

For nearly a decade, donors have invested heavily—in blood and treasure—to recover this territory from the Islamic State and stabilize the area. Yet these efforts will be wasted if there is no political will to address the structural causes of Syria’s water crisis, which is highly consequential not just for Syria but also for the wider region. The fall of Assad has not made the country’s water insecurity, which preceded the conflict go away.

Agriculture in northeastern Syria feeds millions around the country, but the area is now critically threatened by rising input costs and declining access to water. As this chapter has highlighted, failed harvests have already pushed farmers and herders to the brink, bringing cascading impacts to the food supply and prices of staple foods. To cope, many farmers rely on remittances from relatives abroad to stay afloat. Others are abandoning the land or leasing their fields to pastoralists. Those who can no longer afford to feed their herds or sow their fields have few options apart from moving to bigger cities to work as day laborers—or leaving the country, if they can. On a large scale, rural exodus and the loss of agricultural livelihoods directly impact Syria’s prospects for security. As remote rural areas empty, armed groups fill the void, offering paths out of misery for remaining local youth. This is true not just in Syria but also in neighboring Iraq. As water levels drop in the Euphrates, many of Syria’s agricultural woes are spreading to communities downstream.

Northeastern Syria must be understood as central to the stability of Syria and Iraq. Despite its importance, Western donors have long been losing interest in the region and emphasize that they will not remain forever. This tenuousness creates a vicious cycle in which regional stakeholders are simply waiting out U.S. presence, and therefore, not investing in the future. This is a strategic mistake, especially for the United States.

Northeastern Syria is one of the few places in the Middle East where U.S. policy still has a role to play that is clearly constructive. Rather than simply treating symptoms through security assistance and limited humanitarian aid, the United States could be preventing a larger crisis by devoting more attention to northeastern Syria. At a time when Washington’s responses to crises in Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza have been ineffective and seemingly limited to precision airstrikes and regional policing, northeastern Syria is a place where the United States and its allies can provide a stabilizing influence.

From a security perspective, the United States and its allies have little to gain by letting the region slip back into chaos. On the other hand, Western donors are almost certain to lose the hard-earned benefits of their stabilization efforts if the northeast’s agricultural production collapses due to the water crisis. Addressing issues like the flow of the Euphrates River would also have a transboundary halo effect, helping to ease tensions between Syria and Iraq that have arisen from the two countries’ water shortages.

There is no miracle solution, but there are many policies that can help northeastern Syria and any future government in Damascus navigate this crisis. Donors and their partners could immediately implement some of these short-term, pragmatic interventions at marginal cost to correct the unsustainable trajectory of existing aid interventions. Such policies, as outlined above, include experimenting with ways to support rain-fed farmers and pastoralists, greater coordination among aid actors and with local authorities when planning groundwater extraction projects, and stronger commitments to do no harm by planning boreholes more wisely, investing in groundwater monitoring, and improving waste disposal.

Other solutions, while entirely feasible, will require a scale-up of donors’ financial and political commitments. The absolute priority is to improve waste and wastewater management, a lack of which has greatly harmed soils, surface water, and groundwater. Here, again, there is a wide spectrum of potential interventions, including the regulation of imports, usage of pesticides and fertilizers, relocation of informal landfills away from potable water aquifers and riverbeds, and multimillion-dollar projects to build engineered landfills and wastewater treatment plants. While significant, these investments could also have positive effects further downstream, in Iraq.

On the political side, donors should lift NGO barriers to cooperation with the AANES and any future local governing body. These barriers are primarily political but retaining such barriers for NGOs make little sense for long-term stability. For too long, NGOs have been caught in a delicate balancing act of trying to reform the agricultural sector’s water-intensive practices without working with the main actor in charge of regulating them. Thus, many opportunities to support the water sector have been squandered due to red tape.

Finally, Western states and Arab allies need to prioritize diplomacy with Turkey and should urge it to release more water from the Euphrates River for both Iraq and Syria. This remains the most effective way to alleviate immediate pressure on Syria’s water resources. Strengthened regional diplomacy could also ensure that Turkey is not damaging a downstream ally, Iraq, through its punishment of Syria. Diplomacy would also help secure any future investments and existing food and water supplies from Turkish attacks, which threaten Syria’s environment—and thus its stability—over the long term. Now, perhaps more than at any previous time during the conflict, there is a need to finalize a peace agreement between Turkey and the leaders of the AANES and formalize the AANES’s relations with the central government. The United States will be instrumental in mitigating violence and inequity that could further hinder efforts to better manage water: this essential and increasingly scarce resource in Syria. The fall of the Assad regime provides a historic window of opportunity to improve conditions in Syria. But if it is not seized with longer-term diplomatic and financial investment, it could lead to further crisis.

Until significant steps are taken to address the water crisis, villages will continue to empty as Syria’s breadbasket turns into a hollow shell, creating a vacuum that is only likely to strengthen extremist groups’ hold in the region and lead more Syrians to leave the country. “If there was no war and no drought, this village would have a hundred young men. But only 15 are left because everyone is gone to northern Iraq, Turkey, or Europe,” said one rain-fed farmer in the countryside of Derik, near the border with Iraq. Facing the worst drought he can remember, he has gradually sent all his children away—some to bigger cities in Syria, and one to Germany. “Most families in this village have a relative in Europe. Without them, the people here wouldn’t survive.”

Towards a Unified Donor Approach for Saving the Sana’a Basin

Mohammad Al-Saidi

Introduction

In 2011, Tahrir Square in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, was inundated with thousands of people protesting the 30-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The protests eventually led to a war that shook the foundations of the country and led to Saleh’s removal. Thirteen years later, Tahrir—Sana’a’s most iconic square—was inundated with water. Heavy rains and years of neglected infrastructure led to massive floods, submerging cars and homes and turning the square into a small lake.

It was not the first time. From April to August 2020, heavy rains and floods affected hundreds of thousands of families across Yemen, including in the Sana’a region. The 2020 heavy rains converged on the city from all directions, flowing over the brims of dams such as the Shahik and flooding the old city of Sana’a, a UNESCO world heritage site. Years of war and neglect rendered the city ill-prepared for the intense rains. The floods swept solid waste that had accumulated in storm drainage canals through Al Sayla, in the heart of Sana’a. The waters also entered sewage pipelines, causing them to overflow. The impact was particularly devastating due to the years of war that had forced thousands of people from around the country into Sana’a, driving the spread of unregulated construction projects and increasing waste.

While destructive flooding gives the impression of plentiful water, Sana’a is also, counterintuitively, severely water scarce. In fact, many of the dams around Sana’a were dry in the years before the 2020 rainstorms. During periods of heavy rainfall, there is no time for water to seep into the earth and to recharge depleted underground aquifers; instead, floodwaters run into the desert and evaporate. Floods have become a serious climate risk in Yemen: the United Nations estimates that over half a million people were severely affected by the unprecedented floods of August 2024, with many tens of thousands living without shelter in the Sana’a area during an associated cholera outbreak.

Water insecurity is now shaking the foundations of Yemen and could prevent a sustainable peace. Conflict over water resources—and the conflict’s impact on water resources—would further destabilize the country and lead to outward migration. But despite the urgency of the situation, confronting water insecurity has been challenging for governing authorities and donors. In addition to the insecurity bred by the war itself, aid access constraints, vested interests, and donor regulations have hindered the ability of NGOs and UN agencies to confront the problem. Many Western and Gulf governments consider the Houthis, the armed group that took control of Sana’a during the war, a terrorist organization. And the Houthis themselves have made aid work difficult. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Houthis have also launched attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea in support of Palestinians during Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. This has done even more harm to the Houthis’ efforts to ingratiate themselves with the international community to support peace talks and greater investment and aid.

While governance is part of Sana’a’s water insecurity problem, climate change and the city’s location also make it particularly vulnerable. With or without war, water insecurity is expected to worsen. Though there is limited data available, extreme weather events in Yemen—such as storms, droughts, and flash floods—appear to be growing more severe and frequent, with devastating effects. These extreme weather events wipe out houses and farmland, upend livelihoods, displace families, and kill people. More severe storms have also destroyed deteriorating dams that Yemenis have depended on to control and exploit water. Projections suggest there will be further changes to rainfall patterns and temperatures, bringing increased drought and desertification, which are being exacerbated in turn by the overextraction of groundwater for irrigation.

armed group that took control of Sana’a during the war, a terrorist organization. And the Houthis themselves have made aid work difficult. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Houthis have also launched attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea in support of Palestinians during Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. This has done even more harm to the Houthis’ efforts to ingratiate themselves with the international community to support peace talks and greater investment and aid. While governance is part of Sana’a’s water insecurity problem, climate change and the city’s location also make it particularly vulnerable. With or without war, water insecurity is expected to worsen. Though there is limited data available, extreme weather events in Yemen—such as storms, droughts, and flash floods—appear to be growing more severe and frequent, with devastating effects. These extreme weather events wipe out houses and farmland, upend livelihoods, displace families, and kill people. More severe storms have also destroyed deteriorating dams that Yemenis have depended on to control and exploit water. Projections suggest there will be further changes to rainfall patterns and temperatures, bringing increased drought and desertification, which are being exacerbated in turn by the overextraction of groundwater for irrigation. Yemen’s water insecurity significantly aggravates its already tenuous situation; it is the second-most fragile out of 179 countries surveyed worldwide. These issues highlight both the challenge and the necessity of finding ways to confront Sana’a’s water insecurity even in times of war. Sana’a sits atop one of the major groundwater basins in Yemen, which spans around 3,200 square kilometers. The Sana’a region is also one of Yemen’s largest agricultural regions, representing 11–13 percent of total crop area. The basin is the source of water and agriculture for millions of Yemenis, including three million in the rapidly growing capital.

Despite the basin’s historical and socioeconomic importance, and the intense environmental and anthropogenic pressures on it, donors, aid agencies, and technocrats are struggling to develop solutions to the water crisis as the war drags on. Groundwater overuse, pollution, and climate variability have overwhelmed the capacities of current governmental water institutions. Many interlocutors have said that greater assistance will be delayed until the war ends or a different government takes power in the capital.

Yet the severe degradation of the Sana’a basin cannot wait for an imperfect peace deal. In any case, the Houthi armed group that controls Sana’a and other parts of northern Yemen may remain in power after a peace agreement, which is unlikely to address water issues. Even when peace negotiations were active in early 2023, they did not include water governance or support. And Sana’a’s future as a capital will depend on the ability to provide affordable water.

Through a united approach, regional and international donor governments could press for vital water reforms and support water infrastructure development in Sana’a. Currently, there is no clear strategy or coordination among donors supporting Yemen. However, starting with elemental steps toward water security, donors—together with local stakeholders—could build the trust needed to set the framework for broader reforms in the future. That framework would both lead to a more sustainable peace when an agreement comes and have positive effects on health, food security, and livelihoods.

This chapter explains how and why a partnership between a coalition of donors could embed water solutions within a broader strategy for economic development in the region. It highlights politically feasible reforms and solutions that could be implemented using the combined leverage of the traditional donor government community, in concert with Arab Gulf donors who seek an end to instability in Yemen. Through politically feasible projects, a strategy for future water policies and investments can emerge. In the short run, projects can build on past reforms and improve water cooperation in the Sana’a basin through capacity building.

For a long-term impact, the government—with the support of donors—needs to expand reforms beyond the purview of the core technical experts who are still employed within various ministries in Sana’a. By reaching out to local stakeholders and decisionmakers within the government who may lack the technical knowledge to approve projects, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and donors could develop programs with the right mix of carrots and sticks to bring Sana’a back from the brink. Future reforms could then address agriculture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of water usage in the country. Supporting more sustainable rural livelihoods will slow the rapid depletion of groundwater in the Sana’a basin. For this, donors can build coalitions with political and traditional elites in Yemen, as well as in water sector institutions. While these solutions are not a silver bullet, they can put sustainable water management in the Sana’a region on the right track.

This chapter starts by providing a background on Sana’a’s water governance and insecurity before and during the war. It then assesses donors’ roles in the water sector and their current reticence to get involved, given Sana’a’s difficult governing authorities and ongoing instability. The chapter will argue, however, that starting with Sana’a’s water and sanitation sectors is important and feasible. The chapter will conclude by suggesting a series of short- and long-term steps toward greater water security through the combined leverage of regional and international donors.

Background

The people of Sana’a have long had to fight water insecurity, in part due to geography. At 2,300 meters above sea level, Sana’a abuts some of the highest mountains on the Arabian Peninsula and is surrounded by smaller ranges. Since ancient times, Yemenis have built dams to collect water for agriculture and for the protection of Sana’a, which lies in the valley of the mountains. Some of these dams date back to pre-Islamic civilizations, such as the Shahik, which sits in Jabal al Lawz at an astonishing 3,344 meters above sea level. In the decades before the war, donors—including USAID and the Arab Fund in Kuwait—supported the development of channels for draining flood water in Sana’a. They also supported the rehabilitation and construction of dams as well as improved irrigation around them.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Yemen also expanded irrigated agriculture, which caused the country to become increasingly water scarce. Starting in the 1970s, many Yemenis from the countryside migrated to the Gulf, reducing the workforce for traditional agriculture. At the same time, the remittances sent by the Yemeni guest workers funded the modernization of agriculture, through mechanization and expanded irrigation. As traditional agricultural methods and water-saving techniques like rainwater harvesting fell out of fashion, Yemen’s lack of rivers often led irrigators to draw out groundwater. But it was soon clear that high levels of groundwater abstraction were not sustainable and that the government needed a more coherent approach to water management. This scarcity was further aggravated by the need to support a rapidly growing population.

Before the outbreak of the most recent war in 2014, many observers saw the complete depletion of the Sana’a basin as imminent. Experts warned that the city in particular could be the world’s first modern capital to run out of water. The groundwater depletion rate is now very high in zones across Yemen; the hardest-hit area is the highlands, where scientists have recorded annual water table declines of between two and six meters per year in the Sa’dah, Rada’a, Taiz, Amram, and Sana’a basins.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several water institutions were established with the help of donors and based on the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM). IWRM regards water problems as a reflection of fragmented responsibilities and a lack of laws and strategies. The IWRM reform process led to the creation of a separate Water and Environment Ministry (MWE), a National Water Resources Authority (NWRA), a National Water Law, and an ambitious national five-year strategy (2005–2009) with a $1.5 billion investment program designed mainly to support the municipal water sector and decentralized water utilities.

▲ Figure 5: Increase in Irrigated Land in Yemen, 1961–2021

The Sana’a Basin Committee, established in 2003 as part of the NWRA Sana’a branch, was a particularly important partner. Supported by donors like the World Bank, the basin committee was assigned to establish a binding plan to quantify existing water resources and develop future water-regulation investments and strategies for the Sana’a basin, accomplishing this through negotiation among all water users and relevant civil society actors. But the war and successive natural disasters disrupted these reforms as well as more recent donor efforts like the World Bank’s Integrated Urban Services Emergency Project, which is aimed at restoring basic urban services.

Yet in 2015, after years of unrest, the Houthis expelled the recognized government from the capital. The Houthis themselves originate from Sa’dah, a region that had been facing severe water scarcity, which might have played a role in the militia’s expansion southwards. Today, the Houthis (an Iran-backed group, known among members as Ansar Allah) control a large proportion of the mountainous and densely populated areas in the northern and central parts of the country. These areas of control include some of Yemen’s water-stressed regions, such as Sana’a, Sa’dah, and Rada’a. Yemen’s second-largest city, Taiz, which is controlled in part by the Houthis and in part by the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG), also experiences frequent water shortages. The IRG, backed by a Saudi and Emirati-led coalition of Arab nations, also controls the southern governorates and has a presence in the governorates of al-Jawf, Hajjah, and Marib. In April 2022, a truce was announced, essentially freezing these lines of control but not opening the door to greater investment in Sana’a.

Active fighting has complicated water security, but so has the Houthis’ reputation among donor governments. The United States designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group in 2021. That designation was reversed in 2022, in part to facilitate aid and commerce to the region, but the Houthis were newly classified in 2024 as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group”—a different categorization with different consequences—after they began attacking shipping vessels in the Red Sea. The Trump administration re-designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group in January 2025. Now, the prospects for imminent peace seem even less realistic.

As a result of these developments, promising water sector reforms were cut short by the direct and indirect effects of war. Many of the water institutions (e.g., the MWE and NWRA) have existed for less than 20 years, a period largely overshadowed by war and political turmoil. The current war has interrupted institutional build-up in the Yemeni water sector, which had been improving the performance of utilities and overall water governance. Other reforms related to the creation of water laws, strategies, and new institutions had little chance of being implemented during the war. The centralized governance style of the Houthis also largely sidelined the Sana’a Basin Committee, whose model was based on collective decisionmaking. However, the committee has continued to function as a hub for knowledge and data on the water basin.

While dependence on agriculture—Yemen’s most water-intensive sector—has decreased due to war and water insecurity, water consumption has not. Only a third of the Yemeni population is employed in agriculture, down from over 50 percent prior to the war. In the Sana’a region, livelihoods that depend on agriculture have also decreased due to the high urbanization rate of the region.

But despite decreased food production and support for livelihoods, unsustainable and water-intensive cropping patterns have increased since 2015—including the cultivation of qat, which was responsible for 25–43 percent of agricultural water abstraction in the basin in 2018, up from 15–30 percent in 2007. Qat is a plant that Yemenis regularly chew as a mild stimulant; it is water intensive mainly because it is planted and harvested year-round. As a result of these trends, agriculture’s contribution to GDP has risen once again to a third of Yemen’s current weakened economic output, up from around 10 percent in 2011, despite contributing less to livelihoods and food security.

In such an environment, weakened water institutions have been unable to confront the overabstraction of precious groundwater. As a result, residents in most urban areas are living with extreme water scarcity. At the best of times, daily municipal water withdrawals are capped at 50 liters per capita per day, but this figure does not account for network losses of up to and over 50 percent. In 2020, those living in Sana’a city were receiving between 15–20 liters of water per day and sometimes as low as 3 liters, well below the World Health Organization’s threshold of 15 liters per day in emergency situations.

All of these factors have increased inequity in water provision, augmenting social tensions and straining livelihoods and health. Urban water and wastewater services have deteriorated markedly, increasing reliance on expensive water from private tanks, with prices up to $4 per cubic meter in Sana’a. The heavy reliance on trucked water and the degradation of sanitation services has also made outbreaks of cholera more frequent and predictable. In 2017 and 2019, respectively, Yemen accounted for 84 percent and 93 percent of all cholera cases worldwide. As humanitarian aid dwindles, especially for Sana’a, health-focused NGOs are seeing cholera cases emerging in multiple provinces. In the meantime, elites in Sana’a drill ever-deeper wells to reach depleted groundwater, while others subsist on rations and are forced to leave their farms.

As water disappears, the likelihood of a larger confrontation over it becomes more likely. Warring parties have already weaponized water, cutting off various segments of the population from access to it. Tribal feuds over water are reportedly increasing. Despite the urgency of water scarcity in these areas, more effective water management and reforms have been put on hold during the most recent conflict. However, the war in Yemen has now entered a stage of stagnation, with occasional bursts of violence that might recur for some time; in the meantime, and the Sana’a basin risks complete collapse.

The desperate water situation in Sana’a and the surrounding rural areas has increased political pressure on the Houthis to act. Influential tribal forces in the region are beginning to voice discontent. This opposition force, originating among tribes around Sana’a, was allied with Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government but switched to an opportunistic alliance with the Houthis after the latter killed Saleh in 2017. A part of Saleh’s political party, Al-Motamar, even decided to remain in Sana’a and work with the Houthis against the Saudi-led coalition. But now the party in Sana’a has been publicly demanding that the Houthis invest in the workforce and pay civil servants’ salaries. In September 2023, there were rare large protests against the Houthis’ undermining of the state’s institutions. In this context, capacity building and small-scale infrastructure rehabilitation projects would likely receive wide support from the Sana’a region’s powerful tribes, which the Houthis depend on for support.

While withdrawing from Houthi-controlled areas and focusing on IRG-controlled areas may be more politically palatable for donors, it will not be sufficient to curb instability in the country. Fixing the degradation of water infrastructure in the Sana’a region is a project that cannot wait any longer, and donors have leverage to act now through humanitarian and development aid.

Building a Coalition for Water Aid in Yemen

Both regional and international stakeholders, as well as Yemen’s major donors, understand the importance of aid in stabilizing the country. Most of the oil-rich Gulf donor governments, along with European countries and the United States, seek to counteract Iran’s influence and curb emigration and the rebirth of transnational terrorist groups. As such, these donors have given generously to Yemen in the past. However, disparate aid efforts have struggled to gain the political concessions that would make the sum total of these efforts most effective. Regional and international donors could work together to provide more cost-effective assistance to the water sector in the Sana’a region in a way that could be mutually beneficial. Given the amount of support provided to Yemen over the years, the impact of more coordinated assistance would be substantial and would make future peace more possible. In the case of a rapprochement with the Houthis, regional donors might have the financial leverage to offer aid in return for better water governance in Sana’a.

Aid provision has been substantial. In 2022, Yemen was among the top 20 recipients of official development assistance. Alongside sizeable humanitarian aid, Gulf donors are involved in development aid to Yemen’s water sector, primarily in IRG-controlled areas. After the formation of the Presidential Leadership Council (a new IRG executive body) in 2022, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pledged $3.6 billion, including hundreds of millions in development aid, to cities in IRG-held areas. From 2015 to 2020, the UAE provided more than $6 billion in aid to Yemen, mostly to support public services. In the water sector, the UAE is supporting the construction of a small desalination plant in Aden—Yemen’s interim capital—that will produce around 10,000 cubic meters per day; the UAE has also promised to develop a clean energy project to enhance the use of water resources.

While Saudi Arabia and the UAE have focused on IRG-held areas, Qatar—which is officially neutral in the armed conflict—has supported humanitarian projects in contested areas such as Taiz. In 2023, Qatar also announced a $15 million donation to UNICEF to improve water and sanitation services in several cities across Yemen.

The United States and European countries have provided a great deal of support to Yemen even prior to the current conflict. They made the overwhelming majority of pledges in the Yemen High-Level Pledging (HLP) conferences of 2022 and 2023, which brought in $1.3 and $1.2 billion, respectively. While the HLP is related to humanitarian rather than development aid, these vast sums show that donors can still mobilize funds for Yemen.

Despite generous past donations, recent aid cuts, particularly in northern Yemen, now threaten to further destabilize the country. In December 2023, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it would pause the distribution of food aid to needy families living under Houthi control. Though this aid was partially resumed in mid-2024, President Donald Trump’s decision to temporarily freeze foreign assistance in 2025 can reverse these gains for the most vulnerable communities. Aid, totaling approximately $0.8 billion in 2023, went to humanitarian sectors, such as emergency food assistance dispersed through the WFP. Yemen is now competing for aid with numerous other countries in crisis, which has forced Yemenis and aid agencies to do more with less support. At the same time, the Houthis’ terrorism designation and lack of international recognition has also created obstacles. In September 2024, the United Nations decided to cut back some of its activities in Yemen after the Houthis cracked down on humanitarian and developmental workers, accusing them of spying for the United States and Israel.

In light of this, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait could become the most significant contributors to Yemen’s future stability. These countries have the direct political motivation to stabilize their neighbor, as well as the capacity to do so. Gulf countries have become important new donors on the international scene, with improved development cooperation and infrastructure financing. Some rich Gulf countries give more official development assistance, as a percentage of their economies, than more established Western donors. They also have strong experience in delivering water infrastructure projects to other countries, as shown in billions of dollars of Saudi and Emirati investments in Egypt’s ongoing water infrastructure projects. In late 2023, Saudi Arabia also announced the establishment of the Global Water Organization, which aims to integrate with global aid efforts to address water sustainability. Saudi Arabia already allocated $6 billion to various development projects in the water and sanitation sectors.

European donors, namely the Dutch and German development agencies, also have extensive experience providing significant technical and financial assistance to the water sector in Yemen, which received the second-largest share of aid before the political turmoil of 2011. Between 2002 and 2009, water sector assistance to Yemen increased from $36 million to $52 million, with Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan, the UAE, and others contributing.

Using the combined leverage and expertise of regional and international donors, it is possible to mobilize funds for water development in Yemen and lower the risk of failed projects. Regional donors can play an important role, since they are already carrying some of the financial cost of the military conflict and the ensuing humanitarian crisis. Together with traditional Western donors, they can start designing capacity-building projects and setting the stage for broader water economy reforms in the region. Today, many aid projects in Yemen are single-donor funded and lack coordination. The lack of a strategy tying these aid efforts together diminishes the potential for synergies across their activities, and thus decreases their impact. This siloed approach also makes it easier for political elites to hinder or manipulate aid to suit their needs rather than the public good. For example, the Houthis have been accused of treating aid projects as cash cows by imposing taxes and transport fees, and even selling aid or demanding compensation for granting humanitarian access.

Through a coordinated approach around water and sanitation support for the Sana’a region, donors can implement more conditionality and design a multisector approach by focusing on capacity building and infrastructure aid in both urban and rural areas. Lately, new platforms have emerged for improving coordination among donors and for linking humanitarian and development aid. As a step in this direction, the World Bank and the European Union recently established the Yemen Partner Group to coordinate the efforts of development actors through the creation of technical teams covering water and food. However, the work of such mechanisms has not been visible yet, and more coordination with Gulf donors is necessary. This kind of cooperation can withstand political forces in Yemen to a degree that is difficult for any single government to achieve alone.

Why Sana’a?

While assistance has dwindled in recent years, most of stakeholders and donor governments share an interest in a stable Yemen that is not a source of mass emigration or terrorism. Achieving that necessitates prioritizing water resources in the Sana’a basin as well as in IRG-controlled areas. Otherwise, the water crisis in northern Yemen could eventually engulf the whole country as different regions compete for access to resources. There are also numerous other reasons to prioritize water management in the Sana’a region.

Enhancing capacity building and water cooperation in the Sana’a region could have positive spillover effects on stability and environmental sustainability. Sana’a’s economic significance has arguably increased along with war-driven migration to the capital city, both from the conflict-affected areas in the south and from the now-affluent tribes affiliated with the Houthis. In 2004, Sana’a’s population numbered 2 million people; by 2024, that figure had reached 3.4 million. This number may be even higher, as displaced people have continued to arrive.

Sana’a is also home to a generation of water professionals, often educated abroad, who have worked for many years in Yemen’s ministries and think tanks. It is also the heart of water education institutions like Sana’a University’s Water and Environment Center (WEC). Today, such centers still offer courses on water issues, but they are not equipped to perform as national hubs for water research.

The capital is also where most of the data and the technocrats of the former government reside. Water institutions like the Sana’a branch of NWRA and the Sana’a Water Supply and Sanitation Corporation (SWSLC)—the latter established during the reform process to decentralize and privatize the water sector—are also located in the capital.

Sana’a has been the political center of Yemen for centuries, and regional powers still compete for influence over its elites and its powerful regional tribes who once formed the backbone of President Saleh’s coalition. As such, the Sana’a region needs to be included in any future peace, which will be sustainable only if water security is provided to the millions of people in the region.

Where to Start

It is clear that Yemenis, and those with an interest in stabilizing Yemen, need to deal with the dire water and sanitation situation in the Sana’a region. However, they will also need to acknowledge the political hurdles of doing so in Houthi-controlled areas during an ongoing war. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping vessels in 2023 and 2024 have further isolated Sana’a. The Houthis have also been notorious for putting conditions on UN humanitarian agencies and being difficult in access negotiations.

While major reforms in such an environment will be challenging, there are steps that Yemenis, the local authorities, and donors can take to begin to put the region on the right path and prevent or delay a major water crisis. In the short term, building up capacity for water research and cooperation in Sana’a is feasible, in part because of the groundwork laid by numerous donors to build water expertise in the capital. And because the area is essentially controlled by one governing actor, it may even be more feasible to implement this and other steps in the Sana’a region than in the south, for instance, where the presence of numerous warlords make governance, security, and aid access even more complicated.

Capacity and Trust Building

Aid designed to rehabilitate technical capacities (e.g., data collection and water utility monitoring) is a good first step to revitalize the water sector. Some of the professionals who participated in past reforms have fled the capital city or emigrated, but the key water institutions of Yemen, and many associated water experts, remain in Sana’a. Donor-led projects can capitalize on the presence of these experts by enhancing cooperation between local Yemenis and international experts and education centers. These local experts could begin to collectively gather data on the Sana’a basin that could inform future water policies.

These types of projects could also support the ongoing efforts of water management institutions (e.g., NWRA) to design basin-wide plans. Donors can also support the Sana’a Water Basin Committee to study the future plan for the basin and to act as a platform for water cooperation and dialogue. The committee’s work can also create leverage for donors, environmentalists, and water sector institutions—both local water utilities and national water agencies like the NWRA and MWE—to demand better water management from decisionmakers in government. Building up alliances between sustainability-minded actors could push the water agenda forward and create support for related interventions. Through such alliances, technocrats, researchers, and trained citizen scientists could complement remote monitoring of irrigation water with fieldwork to measure groundwater levels and quality. Such data would provide water institutions and donors with a baseline to assess priorities.

Technocrats, small rural farmers, urban communities, and development organizations also share an interest in countering the powers of the large area farmers. By strengthening the ties between these stakeholders, donors would also empower the Basin Committee, the NWRA, and local councils, thus mitigating conflicts. Many of these bodies, like the local councils, have historically acted as arbitrators of water conflicts. As such, development professionals have argued that empowering environmental institutions and supporting community-level environmental projects could help to resolve conflicts in a more sustainable way.

These negotiations could speak to the Houthis’ desire to appear to be an actor that can better provide security and services to the Yemeni people. The Houthis have argued that, in areas under their control, people enjoy the absence of competing militias as well as a better economic situation, as the local currency value was three to four times that of the currency in IRG areas in 2024. In Aden, which was declared a temporary capital after the Houthis took over Sana’a, residents complain about insecurity and the lack of basic services like electricity. Still, the reform of water institutions in Houthi areas has been undermined by the lack of funds, as well as by political interference.

As is the case with other government bodies in Houthis-controlled areas, the work of water institutions has been closely supervised by Houthi-appointed moshrefeen, or supervisors. But supporters of capacity building can engage with the Houthis, who are not indigenous to Sana’a and are not finding it easy to convince the capital’s diverse constituents of their governance capabilities. In order to maintain their reputation, local Houthi authorities have an interest, above all, in tackling water insecurity. And their ability to govern affects their broader security interests. In part to counter protests and regain their legitimacy, the Houthis have focused on external enemies: Israel and the United States. The Israeli government’s actions in Gaza since October 7 have allowed the Houthis—who were once losing popularity—to recruit new fighters in droves and distract the population from their own mismanagement.

Urban Water Supply

Given recent cholera outbreaks and the abysmally low water consumption per capita in Yemen’s cities, improving the urban water supply in Sana’a should be prioritized as well. In the capital, a diverse group of private water tankers were delivering water to the majority of households even before the war—around 60 percent pre-conflict and 70 percent in 2017. But this practice is not well regulated. The World Bank has recommended improving collaboration between water institutions and private tankers to test and register water operations while gradually rehabilitating the municipal water network.

The local authorities, as intransigent as they have been on certain issues, have an interest in allowing for progress on water and sanitation. Since the 2022 ceasefire, the local population has been demanding improved services—especially clean water, which has become exorbitantly expensive and even dangerous, as unregulated private water tankers capture the market. More support and engagement with the SWSLC and the MWE, as well as its subordinate Environmental Protection Agency, could have immediate positive impacts on the urban water supply.

These institutions, however, lack the technical capacity and funds to regulate the private tanker markets alone. NGOs and donors could improve the situation by matching grants for replacing old tanks, creating an association of regulated private tankers, establishing a directory of regulated providers, and providing chlorine and water quality tests. The Houthis are accused of benefiting from the dysfunctional water supply in Sana’a by profiting off of the water tanker industry. However, the suggested measures will benefit both the water tankers and the consumers by improving the quality of the private water supply. With many water tankers present, consumers have the power to choose. If tankers are registered and certified, consumers will likely choose regulated ones, thus incentivizing more tankers to cooperate with authorities.

Agriculture

While improving the drinking supply would be a life-saving intervention, dealing with the agricultural sector’s water consumption is vital as well. Agricultural groundwater abstraction drives the largest percentage of water use in the Sana’a region; failing to curb its excesses has and will continue to cut into drinking water for millions. Although the Sana’a region’s population is largely urban, agriculture in the area still consumed 0.8–1.0 billion cubic meters in 2018, declining from 1.2–1.5 billion in 2007. This decline was largely linked to water scarcity and agricultural abandonment. Despite this trend, the agricultural sector still accounts for almost half of water demand in the Sana’a region. Failure to effectively manage agricultural water use could also further exacerbate food insecurity and poverty in a country that has already suffered from acute hunger for years.

In addition, certain crops contribute to water scarcity without improving food security. Qat, for example, is a significant drain on water supplies and does not improve Yemen’s food security. However, curbing qat production is a complex issue. Because it provides high revenues year-round, it typically wins out over alternative crops. During the conflict, warring parties have also benefitted from qat production. The Houthis and their allies have increased taxes on qat, which can be sold within the country for hard currency—something that is difficult to obtain in Houthi-controlled areas, which have become increasingly isolated from international markets during the war. However, this same interest may force the Houthis into a more sustainable and cooperative approach toward improving water efficiency on farms.

A 2022 UN Development Programme report posited that the overexploitation of groundwater will only stop if it is completely depleted, or if drilling deeper wells and maintaining water quality become cost-prohibitive. This may be true, but that would be disastrous for Sana’a and the rest of the region as citizens and armed actors seek out water and better pastures elsewhere. Rescuing the basin after its collapse would be nearly impossible. Local authorities, however, could slow the trend toward basin closure and help communities adapt to a future with no or little groundwater resources.

Resolving the groundwater issue will require local authorities, communities, and donors to deal with over-abstraction in the agricultural sector—which means dealing with powerful agricultural interests. Directly regulating overconsumption may not be feasible in today’s Yemen. Due to the socioeconomic importance of agriculture and the political difficulties of limiting related water consumption, it will be important to improve efficiency through the provision of precision irrigation systems. Conserving water is particularly important for qat farmers, whose share of agricultural water in the Sana’a region has increased during the war.

With time, it may even be possible to enforce regulations and policy reforms that have been difficult to implement. In this case, the heavy-handed and centralized control of the Houthis may be an asset. The government—including the ministries and the local councils—might be more willing than Saleh’s regime to enforce water consumption limitations. Saleh doled out favors to powerful tribal elites to maintain power, and this lenient position toward tribes limited the power of water institutions to regulate the tribes’ excessive water consumption. The Houthis, by contrast, have demonstrated that they are willing to impose regulations on tribes if they see the need.

In addition to practicing more sustainable farming techniques and accepting regulations, the rural population can also be oriented toward more sustainable livelihoods over the long term. Previous donor projects have incentivized climate-resilient agriculture or alternative livelihoods in sectors such as heritage and tourism. However, donors and local authorities have never had a coordinated strategy to orient the market away from water-intensive crops.

Regional donors are also in a position to develop market-oriented approaches to water security. The Gulf can put its trade relations with Yemen—and its millions of Yemeni workers—to use. Yemen has traditionally exported coffee and fruits from the Sana’a region to neighboring countries. Gulf countries can incentivize less water-intensive agriculture through guarantees for environmentally friendly crop sales to the Gulf and certification programs that could help commercialize sustainable products like coffee.

Humanitarian and development actors should also make their interventions more sustainable. Some reports have noted that providing solar energy for pumping groundwater has become a moral hazard by encouraging excessive use of the resource. While some aid agencies saw solar power as a lifeline for communities that could not afford diesel pumping, the subsequent depletion of groundwater has also shown why solar energy use must be closely monitored and conditioned on water conservation. Successful cases from India demonstrate that linking support for solar energy to the installation of micro-irrigation systems can address the goals of water conservation and energy access in agriculture. Agricultural extension services can also provide community trainings on the use of these efficient technologies in small-scale farming.

Decreasing Vulnerability Through Small-Scale Projects

Developing methods to conserve and distribute storm or drainage water can also alleviate some of the competition over Yemen’s dwindling resources and mitigate the destructive impact of floods. For example, there are four watersheds in the Sana’a region that flow into wadis or into the capital city, causing destructive floods during heavy rains. Prior to the war, donors supported the construction of small dams for agriculture, aquifer recharge, and water flow control. Building on this work to rehabilitate the drainage canals in the Sana’a region could enhance water resources and alleviate flooding and health concerns. In particular, donors and local actors could prioritize the rehabilitation of the Al Sayla, a vital outlet in the heart of Old Sana’a, which has caused concern lately due to recurrent floods and a lack of waste collection.

Investing in small dams and ponds that capture additional water flows could give communities more independence from expensive private water sources and alleviate pressures on groundwater, which accounted for 27 percent of irrigation in 2018. There are extensive water harvesting systems in the Sana’a region through open ponds, or birak, but the government has neglected them, contributing to groundwater depletion.

In agricultural parts of the Sana’a region (e.g., the Bani al-Harith and Bani Hushaysh), farmers are increasingly unable to till their fields due to lack of water. Given the evidence of increasing scarcity and related conflict, local farmers and tribal actors are likely to support the rehabilitation of their traditional water harvesting systems. Many of these tribal communities around Sana’a have depended for centuries on rainwater-collection infrastructure for agriculture, non-drinking domestic purposes, and their livestock. These traditional methods fell out of favor with increased water pumping. However, during the war, rainwater harvesting was repopularized by necessity—a trend that local authorities and donors could capitalize on.

Eventually, the Sana’a region will need larger infrastructure investments to develop new sources of water and improve the circular water economy through the reuse of municipal and agricultural wastewater. Yemen could benefit from advancements in the Arab world, either in wastewater reusage or, as in Egypt, drainage for the reuse of agricultural water. For now, such large investments seem like a distant dream—but incorporating them into larger governance and peacebuilding efforts may be necessary to save the Sana’a region.

Conclusion

Considering the desperate water situation and the protracted nature of the conflict, Sana’a cannot wait for the uncertain prospects of a political compromise. Instead of postponing water reforms until a peace treaty is reached, regional and international donors can begin to lay the groundwork for a lasting stability by reducing the vulnerability of the population to climate change and water supply shortages. While large-scale developmental reforms may not be feasible now, donors can invest in small-scale water infrastructure in urban and rural areas, in coordination with strengthened local and basin-wide water institutions. These incentives could ease negotiations with local decisionmakers and communities on regulations of water quality and usage.

Building a water-secure future for the Sana’a region will be a gradual endeavor that begins by forming alliances with water stakeholders, building trust among these stakeholders, and increasing the participation of state institutions. Donor cooperation also creates the leverage needed to improve water governance in Sana’a. Such efforts will, in turn, improve security in Yemen and the region. When a peace deal arrives, having tackled the water issue will make that peace more lasting and environmentally sustainable.

The recent political turmoil has shown the importance of water issues in peace. As highlighted in 2023 and 2024, insecurity in Yemen has the potential to shift international markets and destabilize the world and neighboring states with strong trade, migration, and security linkages to Yemen. Tackling the roots of this instability necessitates tackling water insecurity in the country.

International and Gulf donors have the financial means to alleviate water issues in Sana’a, the political and cultural center of one of the region’s most populous countries. Harmonizing Western donor strategies with those of Gulf countries can cement long-standing partnerships with the Arabian Peninsula at a time of international competition for influence over this vital region for world trade and international security.

Navigating Water Insecurity in Southern Iraq

Hassan Janabi, Maha Yassin, and Natasha Hall

For millennia, legendary civilizations rose through their ability to control and exploit the mighty Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The people of southern Iraq, in particular, became wedded to the water, literally floating on top of seemingly endless marshlands covering an area nearly the size of Jordan.

Communities not only survived but flourished in this Fertile Crescent by learning to adapt to the floods every spring. As the snow on the highlands melted and increased the flows of the Euphrates and Tigris, communities downstream made use of the water and built their lives around it. But in just a few generations, everything has changed. The threat of water scarcity has now become existential for Iraq.

Many internal and external factors are contributing to the scarcity, pollution, and salinization of Iraq’s ground and surface water. The rivers on which southern Iraq depends have been diverted and heavily polluted within and outside the country. While Iraq was the first to control the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, its upstream neighbors—Turkey and Iran—have since superseded Iraq, diverting and storing the waters within their borders, reducing downstream water supply to Iraq. At the same time, Iraq—accustomed to centuries of abundance—is still using flood agriculture and failing to preserve the quality of its diminishing waters.

Despite the growing urgency for reform, conflicts, internal and external political disputes, and corruption have strained the government’s capacity to improve water resource management as well as its ability to adapt to climate change. If oil prices drop, Iraqi government revenues—which are 90 percent dependent on oil sales—will be unable to provide basic services like water and sanitation or absorb newly unemployed farmers in the public sector. Even with high oil prices, Iraq has stagnated at 0.67 on the Human Development Index, positioning the country at 134 out of 204 ranked countries and territories.

In a land with as much familiarity with political violence as Iraq, the potential for explosive consequences in the near-term are very real. In some parts of the country, conflicts are already manifesting, whereas in others, people are still struggling to get by. In southern Iraq, the situation is particularly acute and potentially volatile.

While all of Iraq is struggling, Basra, Iraq’s southernmost governorate, has become the poster child of Iraq’s water insecurity. The marshes and agricultural lands that once made the region famous are now desiccated. And the tensions between the haves (e.g., oil companies, urbanites) and the have-nots (e.g., smallholder farmers, marsh dwellers, and city newcomers) is growing. However, the stability of this governorate is also essential to the future of Iraq, as it is the source of over 70 percent of the country’s oil revenues and the host of Iraq’s major ports. Basra’s response to its water crisis serves as a poignant example of political action prompted by imminent threats, resulting in tangible progress. But while there have been some positive developments, the water situation is deteriorating faster than these modest improvements can keep up with.

To address the magnitude of the challenge, this chapter will first lay out how Iraq abruptly moved from conditions of water abundance to water scarcity, and why this history makes it particularly challenging to shift water usage behaviors and management practices. The second section will delve into the consequences of water insecurity for communities and explain some of the governance challenges behind the failure to tackle problems. The chapter will conclude with some of the government’s recent successes in Basra and what more could feasibly be done in the near term to mitigate a larger crisis.

This paper argues that, at the very least, the government can improve its municipal water supply and prepare for greater urbanization. That focus is a grim acknowledgement of the political obstacles to broader reforms in Iraq, but the chapter still highlights important and feasible steps toward safeguarding the resource most essential to life—drinking water.

From Abundance to Water Scarcity

In just a few decades, the population of southern Iraq has gone from floating on water to eking out a living on ever-larger sections of parched earth. Water availability in Iraq dropped from nearly 5,000 cubic meters of renewable fresh water per capita in 1960 to 827 cubic meters in 2020—the definition of water scarcity. Iraq’s rapidly growing population, which is expected to nearly double by 2050, threatens to exacerbate that scarcity.

One of the drivers of the frequent and prolonged drought conditions in southern Iraq is climate change: scientists estimate that, because of climate change, the likelihood of drought in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin has increased from a 1-in-250-year event to a 1-in-10-year occurrence. Climate change is also expected to reduce the rivers’ flows, further affecting Basra. A 2017 climate modelling study sponsored by the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (UNESCWA) determined that there is considerable uncertainty regarding future inflows to the basin due to climate change; some scientists have predicted that, by 2100, the flows of the Euphrates and Tigris will decrease by 30 and 60 percent, respectively. According to another study, just a one-degree Celsius increase would reduce water resources for nearly one-third of the irrigated land in Iraq by 2050, leading to a 17 percent drop in the demand for unskilled labor in a country already facing 16 percent unemployment. However, while climate change is a significant factor in increased temperatures and water scarcity, much of southern Iraq’s water insecurity is due to upstream water management and domestic water mismanagement.

Iraq depends on the Tigris and Euphrates, and their tributaries, for 98 percent of its water. For centuries, the flow of these rivers remained uninterrupted as they made their way to the Shatt al-Arab, passing through thousands of square kilometers of marshlands in southern Iraq that naturally filtered out toxins through reeds.

Early in the second half of the twentieth century, to control the often-dangerous flows of the rivers, Iraq began artificially taming the water well ahead of its transboundary upstream neighbors. The Iraqi government constructed the Hindya Barrage in 1913 on the Euphrates, near the holy city of Karbala, and the Kut Barrage in the 1930s, on the southern reaches of the Tigris. Numerous other dams and barrages were built in the 1950s, forming artificial lakes. But these methods of control were relatively minor compared to what was to come.

In the past few decades, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq have designed water management strategies to serve their individual, rather than collective, interests. Today, apart from the Greater Zab, a tributary to the Tigris River, all rivers and tributaries are dammed. Iraq struggles to fairly manage water even within its borders. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has planned for the construction of dozens of barrages and dams in northern Iraq without the consent of the central government. And with every commissioning of a new dam, dyke, or barrage, less water becomes available in southern Iraq. Still, damming and surface diversions of surface water are one some of the only ways the country has managed water. Even the 2014 Strategy for Water and Land Resources in Iraq (SWLRI), sponsored by the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR), clearly stated that Iraq did not need major dams and proposed the construction of about 20 smaller dams in the country, most of which were for water-harvesting purposes.

The most egregious example of politics driving southern Iraq’s water crisis is former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain the marshes. Still, despite millions of dollars spent to rehabilitate the marshes, they are so battered that they can no longer handle the surge in southward-running waste. As rainfall becomes more erratic and populations grow in the most water-stressed region in the world, riparian countries are increasingly focused on maximizing their capacities for storing and diverting water. While some experts have given up on the marshes of southern Iraq, this unique ecosystem remains a symbol of deeper dysfunction and points to the critical need to address transboundary water sharing and internal management immediately.

Iraq’s Marshes.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Saddam Hussein diverted water away from the wetlands to prepare the battlefield for war with Iran and to expose rebels hiding in the marsh reeds. Ninety percent of the marshes disappeared. The United Nations called the draining of Iraq’s wetlands “one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters.” It also led to mass displacement: hundreds of thousands of people lived in the marshes prior to Hussein’s campaign, but only 20,000 to 40,000 remained by 2006. Millions more in the southern governorates were also affected in some way, since 60 percent of those governates’ market fish and more than 40 percent of these regions’ dairy products came from the marshes.

A program to restore the marshes after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein was reasonably successful until recently, when those gains were reversed by the reduction of water allocations for Iraq by neighboring riparian countries and by internal water mismanagement. However, the incredible initial comeback of the marshes just after 2003 showed that Iraq could battle catastrophic degradation if doing so was prioritized.

Iraq’s solution to water insecurity during its centuries of water abundance—the erection of dams and dikes—is unlikely to save the country now. Dams and diversions in times of scarcity tend to increase tensions and inequity, with marginalized communities—especially small farm-holders and the marsh Arabs—suffering the most. Experts also point to the hundreds of illegal water diversions toward land owned by powerful and influential people, who use the water for fish farms or irrigation. But even when dikes are built to help farming and marsh communities, civil society questions the long-term impacts on the environment. In 2010, the MoWR agreed to erect a small earth dike across the Euphrates River near the city of Mdayna, north of Basra, to maintain a minimum water level in the river and its adjacent central marshes. While the dike was necessary to support the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers along the southern part of the Euphrates, including marsh-dwelling families, some activists and locals also argued that because the water quality arriving in Basra was already poor, a dike would only concentrate the river’s pollutants.

Despite decreasing flows of water and increasing concentrations of pollutants, Iraq continues to manage water as if its resources were infinite. Iraq doubled its irrigated land between 1990 and 2020, using the same water-intensive flood irrigation employed in ancient Sumer. While the former abundance of water diluted salts, sewage, and contaminants, decreased water levels have concentrated these pollutants, making the remaining water unusable for humans, animals, and crops. Still, there are few, if any, wastewater plants that treat sewage even to a secondary level (i.e., doing more than simply filtering solid matter). Now, as surface fresh water becomes increasingly scarce, communities and farmers farther from the main rivers and tributaries are increasingly relying on groundwater and expensive water trucking. In parts of Najaf, the water table has dropped between 12 and 15 meters in a single season.

Historical water abundance is now part of the challenge. The Iraqi government will have to push a society accustomed to plentiful water and flood agriculture for thousands of years to become one that overcomes water scarcity, especially in hard-hit southern Iraq.

The Consequences of the Water Crisis in Southern Iraq

The water crisis has devastated communities in southern Iraq. Many farming families have gone from temporarily adapting to dry years by farming less land and killing off their livestock to permanently moving away, breaking apart social networks that have already endured decades of socio-economic traumas ranging from near-constant war to government collapses.

The South Basra Environmental Directorate reported that water degradation in the governorate cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees, and crops in 2018 alone. The diminishing water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as well as seawater intrusion from the south toward al-Qurna in northern Basra, have dramatically increased soil salinity. In 2022, the United Nations reported that this resulted in the destruction of more than 60,000 acres of agricultural land and the loss of 30,000 trees. The head of the Agricultural Engineers Syndicate reported in 2018 that salinity and water scarcity had eliminated 87 percent of Basra governorate’s 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 sq. miles) of arable land.

The consequences have been particularly acute for Iraq’s marshes. According to the MoWR’s Center for Restoration of the Iraqi Marshes and Wetlands, nearly 70 percent of the marshlands’ water has dried up, making the salinization even worse. In Al Chibayish marsh in northwest Basra, for example, salinity levels ranged between 2,300 to 3,000 ppm in July 2021; by July 2023, the salinity doubled, surpassing 6,000 ppm.

Water scarcity, salinity, and pollution have significantly decreased local fish and buffalo numbers. Tens of thousands of fish in southern Iraq are killed during the summer months as water fails to reach the south or becomes too saline for the fish to survive. Buffalo farmers are increasingly finding their herds stuck in the mud of dissipating streams and sickening from lack of fresh water. Some estimate that Iraq has lost 80 percent of its original buffalo population. Inhabitants of the Hawizeh marsh in southeast Iraq have struggled to secure even basic water supplies for domestic use. While there are numerous reasons for the decrease in water levels, including a major Iran-built dam on the Al Karkheh River in 2009, frustrated residents have threatened to march on nearby oil companies to shut down their operations and demand that government take action to curb the companies’ water usage, which involved pumping up to three barrels of water into the ground for every barrel of oil produced.

More often than not, however, these communities are unable to confront powerful economic and political players. Most people cope in any way they can. To sustain their crops and livestock, some have resorted to purchasing expensive water from tanker trucks. Many families have been forced to sell off surviving livestock, losing a lifetime of assets in the process. More and more families who depend on fishing and animal husbandry have either moved to the north, toward Baghdad (on the Tigris) or Najaf (on the Euphrates); some have gone farther south to Basra, with the hope that conditions will be more conducive to their livelihoods.

Between January 2016 and October 2022, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), water insecurity and environmental degradation displaced more than 55,000 people in central and southern Iraq. This figure represents approximately 15 percent of the previous population of these areas. Notably, the governorates of Thi-Qar, Missan, and Qadissiya, which host large farming communities, witnessed the highest displacement rates.

The lack of a proper governmental response to the crisis has led to increased displacement and conflict over water, resources, and services. As men, and then entire households, move to urban centers for better labor opportunities, they face another set of challenges. The lack of planning and assistance for both host communities and the displaced has exacerbated instability. Farmers, accustomed to rural life, find themselves living in smaller, crowded spaces, socially marginalized, and facing discrimination in housing and education. In lieu of adequate housing for these newcomers, informal neighborhoods have rapidly expanded. The government typically underserves these communities, and many urbanites regard them as hubs for criminality. Even environmental activists from Basra and Amara have attributed the escalating drug trade in border regions to drought and a lack of job opportunities for displaced families.

Iraq has been unable to accommodate its growing urban population. In 2011, housing shortages affected less than 10 percent of Iraqis. By 2024, the housing shortage was estimated to be in excess of 3 million units—a number thought to affect a quarter of the Iraqi population. To address the housing and services shortages, the current Iraqi government has been keen to allow private contractors to invest in the construction of residential complexes. However, the unprecedented support for these efforts—in the form of cheap land acquisitions and lavish loans to certain investors and developers—has been marred by corruption, making most new housing unaffordable for the average family. For example, well-connected individuals can take property deeds to banks and deposit them as security for loans totaling three to five times the property’s value, and then use the cash for new acquisitions. In November 2022, the current government’s Council of Ministers approved decision No. 320, which allowed for development of buildings on agricultural land. However, this changing of land-use patterns comes at the cost of fertile areas and further disturbs the country’s fragile food market. These actions are unlikely to close the gaps in housing supply and basic services and may even cause further environmental damage.

The social and political tensions over water scarcity have now reached a dangerous pitch in Iraq, which is still fragile from decades of war and entrenched mistrust, both between internal communities and with neighboring countries. Increased tensions have occasionally led to conflict, particularly among tribes in Maysan and north Basra. In 2017, tribes in the southern governorate of Al-Muthanna threatened war with others in Diwaniya governorate who had exceeded their fair share of water; in 2021, one official in Dhi Qar warned that local authorities feared tribal conflict could break out at any time. Rather than levelling the playing field, however, this competition often comes at the expense of impoverished farmers who have lost their access to water—and their farms and livelihoods along with it.

The central government, municipal governments, and communities also trade accusations of who is responsible for water scarcity. Rice farmers in the central governorates of Najaf and Diwaniyah, for example, accuse the central authorities of diverting their water to sustain the southern marshes, while marsh inhabitants accuse rice growers in these middle Euphrates governorates of consuming large quantities of water, preventing the rivers from flowing into the marshes.

Water scarcity has also led to tensions between rural communities and between farmers and oil companies, which need water for non-drinking purposes. Tribal leaders and influential locals frequently dig trenches or establish illegal wells to tap into shared resources when water levels get low. Local government officials are often powerless to stop them but also fear the outbreak of larger conflict as powerful individuals secure their own water at others’ expense.

If the Iraqi government does not reform water management to respond to scarcity while oil prices are high, the country may be heading for collapse, with underdevelopment and rising societal violence between armed tribesmen and militias in the years ahead. However, the governance challenges are very real. Understanding governance obstacles may allow Iraq to triage feasible and high-impact policies to address this critical moment.

If the Iraqi government does not reform water management to respond to scarcity while oil prices are high, the country may be heading for collapse, with underdevelopment and rising societal violence between armed tribesmen and militias in the years ahead.

Governance Challenges Contributing to Water Insecurity

Iraqi politics and governance, especially in the past three decades, have become the biggest impediments to water security. Even transboundary issues can, in part, be tied to Iraq’s governance challenges. While Iraq was embroiled in conflict or suffering under economic sanctions, the surrounding riparian countries strengthened their control over shared rivers and tributaries. During these years, a struggling Iraqi government had more immediate priorities than securing fair and binding international agreements with Turkey and Iran. A fragile and fractured Iraq also could not prioritize long-term water and sanitation needs or improve water management practices.

The main impediment to prioritizing water is simple. Water is cheap, if not free, across Iraq, even though water and sanitation infrastructure is expensive and requires constant maintenance. As such, the management of water and sanitation tends to fall low on the government’s priority list. Wastewater treatment is a particularly egregious example of this political problem. Such treatment is socially and economically beneficial, protecting people’s health and the environment they depend on, but presents no immediate benefit for politicians seeking flashy, popularity-boosting projects that will get them reelected. As such, Iraq spends less than it should on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). WASH spending ranged from 0.47 percent of the government’s total operational expenditures in 2018 to just 0.72 percent of total expenditures in 2021. The government would need to spend approximately 4 percent of its usual expenditure to achieve universal access to safely managed WASH services by 2030. Taking population growth into consideration, the financing gap between available resources for public WASH services and the resources needed to achieve universal access to such facilities will more than double between 2022 and 2030.

In addition to the low levels of spending on basic services, there have been significant delays in allocating the minimal resources available. Iraqi politicians have regularly delayed the implementation of reforms and infrastructure investments in order to safeguard their political gains and interests. Tensions between the central government, the KRG, and other local authorities, in addition to disagreements between political factions, have significantly delayed budget provisions for water services. In 2021, due to political skirmishes, the national budget was not approved. In 2023, the budget was not approved until June because of a disagreement over the sale and distribution of oil and gas revenues. This delay resulted in many projects not coming to fruition.

In addition to broader government dysfunction, Iraq’s water sector is fragmented. It encompasses many stakeholders, including the MoWR; the Ministry of Construction, Municipalities and Public Works; the Baghdad Mayoralty; the Ministry of Agriculture; the KRG; and local authorities at the governorate levels. The functions of all these entities overlap and often work at cross-purposes, making it difficult for southern governorates, or any one entity, to take control of and responsibility for a project from planning to operation. This leads to significant delays and lack of accountability. For example, when contaminated drinking water sent 118,000 people to hospitals in Basra in 2018, the Water Directorate and local politicians tried to shift the blame to the MoWR, which is responsible for water supply but not for the maintenance of the distribution system, which was the source of the problem.

Tensions also rise when the governorates’ Water Directorates demand more water allocation than the MoWR is able to give, or when local authorities demand more autonomy over infrastructure projects. The disconnect between the needs of the governorates and the central administration’s authority to dole out funds is partially a remnant of the post-conflict reconstruction that followed the U.S. government overthrow of the Ba’athist government. After the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation, the Iraqi government was decentralized under the tutelage of the United States. The de-Ba’athification process created a vacuum when Ba’athist bureaucrats and technocrats were essentially thrown out of government. A country that used to be centrally controlled was suddenly transformed into a decentralized apparatus, leaving sizable gray areas between the entrenched central authority and the burgeoning, capacity-deficient local authorities.

Donors and the government have since tried to reform the bureaucracy and bridge local and central actors in various ways. In the water sector, this effort has centered on the creation of a National Water Council (NWC). The NWC was supposed to be responsible for devising and leading strategic water reforms, implementing climate change adaptation measures, financing major desalination projects, and introducing water-saving technologies. In 2005, the final proposal for the NWC’s mandate was presented to the Iraqi government for approval.

However, the proposed NWC remains shelved for various reasons, including politicians’ watering down of the initial concept in subsequent negotiations. Rather than creating water management plans for the country, supervising the implementation of those plans, and allocating funds for strategic projects to ensure water sustainability, politicians attempted to turn the NWC into yet another bureaucratic body. As a result, the NWC would have implemented narrow projects instead of taking on a more holistic and influential role in determining the direction of the development of Iraq’s water resources, improving overall water management sustainability, and helping the country adapt to climate change. There were also no guarantees that the new NWC would be able to hire qualified, competent, and independent technocrats and experts, since politicians proposed filling its ranks with high-level government employees at the deputy minister and general director levels—excluding, or at least narrowing, the chances for independent experts to come in from outside the prevailing bureaucracy.

As a result of these challenges, instead of focusing on strategic and long-term solutions to water and sanitation, the country has found itself dealing with water issues in an ad hoc fashion, sometimes too late. The drinking water sector in southern Iraq is a casualty of this crisis-management approach. Despite acknowledgment of the need for desalination plants to supply Basra after the destruction of the city and the Shatt Al-Arab during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the Iraqi government did not diversify water sources. Basra’s drinking water still comes from two sources: the Shatt Al-Arab and the Sweet Water Canal (SWC), known locally as Bad’a Canal. The SWC is a 238-km-long open canal built in 1997 to convey fresh water from the Al-Gharaf River, north of the city of Nasiriyah, to the north of Basra. However, the government estimated that the SWC would only be serviceable for five years, during which time the administration was supposed to build major desalination plants. But the SWC, despite its fragility, is still in operation nearly three decades later. In the last few years, the MoWR has pushed to replace the open canal with expensive ductile pipes. The government spent millions of dollars to purchase the pipes, but the project has been delayed and the National Commission of Integrity has raised suspicions of corruption. A number of public servants within MoWR are currently under investigation.

The Iraqi government is beginning to understand and grapple with these issues as a threat to its hold on political power. Prime Minister Sudani ran on a platform in 2022 of delivering better services and fostering collaboration with local governments. The administration in Basra, for example, has succeeded in scaling up project implementation after feeling public pressure to provide better water and sanitation services after the city’s 2018 water contamination crisis. Politicians have begun to realize that improving water security is in their interests if they wish to survive. As such, there has been growing momentum for long-delayed projects, but much more needs to be done to systemically manage the vested interests that continue to plague Iraq’s water governance.

A Bright Future for Basra

While the situation in Iraq seems dire, the country has a major advantage compared to many others in the region that suffer from even more pronounced scarcity. Iraq has plentiful oil revenues to deal with the challenge. If it spends those revenues in the service of preserving fresh water, protecting its environment, introducing technologies to develop nonconventional water resources, and shifting the economy away from water-intensive sectors, Basra could survive growing scarcity and eventually prosper.

Financially and geographically, the city is the best-suited governorate to handle the challenges of providing water and sanitation services. It produces over 70 percent of Iraq’s oil and has six commercial ports and two land border crossings. In theory, Basra has ample extra-budgetary financial allocation from so-called “petrodollar” provisions designed to compensate the oil-producing governorate. Petrodollar funds and regional development allocations for Basra amounted to nearly $1.3 billion in 2023. This puts Basra in a better position to demand more budget allocations for infrastructure development. Politicians know that a stable, oil-rich Basra serves their political interests. And a stable Basra is one in which its most urgent problem, water, is addressed.

Basra can do little about the broader government paralysis or the water-intensive agricultural sector, which would take massive funding and political courage to change. Without broader investment, agriculture—particularly on the banks of Shatt Al-Arab—will remain unprofitable due to soil salinization. As a downstream province, there is also little that Basra can do to stop upstream communities from diverting and polluting the waters. Since the central government must negotiate transboundary issues, local authorities focus on improving the quality of the only waters that they have access to: the Shatt Al-Arab and the area’s groundwater, both of which are saline and heavily polluted.

Eventually, the country will need to drive a shift away from water-intensive agricultural practices and, in some places, away from traditional agriculture altogether. But in the meantime, ensuring clean water for all citizens, as well as adequate housing and jobs for those displaced by the water crisis, will be paramount. It may also be the most politically feasible path to walk today.

MUNICIPAL WATER

Water supply management is one of the few areas where the local government in Basra has had some recent wins. Recognizing that a stable Basra—the principal source of Iraq’s oil—is essential, Prime Minister Sudani’s government transferred the responsibility for implementing a major water initiative, the Great Basra Water Project, from the Ministry of Housing, Construction, Municipalities and Public Works to the local government of Basra. The Great Basra Water Project, funded by a $3 billion Japanese loan and launched in 2014, is aimed at supplying clean water for domestic use in Basra. While the project previously faced challenges such as delays in releasing funds, tribal conflicts, and political interference, it is now functioning at almost full capacity, supplying purified and desalinated water to northern and central Basra.

A plant with a capacity to desalinate 72,000 m³ (about 19 million gallons) of water per day from Shatt al Arab for the Abu Al Khaseeb district has now been operational since February 2022, and a desalination project for groundwater is under construction in Um Qasar, with a 1,000 m³/h capacity. Other proposed plans include the transference of water 80 km from Qurna District to the Shatt Al Arab and rehabilitating pipelines. These projects will decrease water losses from older pipelines that were fragile, outdated, and easily broken, all contributing factors to health issues and water wastage.

Recently, after years of delays, the central government has also handed over responsibility to the Basra authority for the construction of one of the largest seawater desalination plants in the world. A plant producing one mcm of water per day will be constructed at Fao, south of Basra. If implemented successfully, it will be the largest reverse osmosis (RO) purified water desalination plant in the world. There is finally progress on the project now, after years of delays due to corruption-related scandals. The Basra governorate awarded the multi-billion-dollar megaproject to a joint-venture of PowerChina, a Chinese company, and al-Ridha, a local company in 2024. The project is not cost-effective, since water will have to be pumped a long way to reach urban residents further north, but it is still welcome for many residents and politicians who have been waiting years for a boost to Iraq’s drinking water supply. In the future, since the central and local governments lack capacity to run large desalination and wastewater treatment plants, new potential projects should seek reputable contractors to construct plants based on a build-operate-transfer model to avoid potential financial and technical deficiencies and to train the next generation on the job.

While desalination projects alone cannot tackle all drivers of water insecurity, Basra authorities believe the only way they can address the crisis is by improving the quality of what they receive from the northern provinces and increasing supply through desalination. However, it will be equally important to convey potable water from treatment plants to distant city neighborhoods through a network of well-designed and -implemented transmission pipes. Therefore, investing in renovating both transmission pipelines and the overall distribution network will be essential to providing potable water from the yet-to-be-constructed desalination plants or from the existing conventional water treatment plants in the city. This may also reduce tensions between communities.

If the government invests in a split system, where potable desalinated water is delivered via a new but smaller distribution network that functions parallel to the existing one, clean tap water could be provided to every kitchen and linked to a meter that would charge households accordingly. This could overcome three major obstacles to providing affordable and safe drinking water: vested interests, inefficient transmission networks, and cost. Currently, private water companies selling RO purified water have established a monopoly over this essential good and are charging exorbitant prices as a result. For example, some households in Basra pay between $60 and $148 a month on drinking and cooking water. In a country where the average monthly take-home pay is just $549, the cost is crippling.

Even though the government is now spending large sums to produce desalinated water, it still cannot guarantee the safe and efficient delivery of this resource because of outdated or damaged transmission and distribution networks. With this split system, prices would be far lower than bottled water yet would still encourage water-saving behavior through a metered system. The government could also encourage RO businesses to invest in the plan, co-opting those that may sabotage it. Most importantly, this strategy enables politicians to provide safe and cost-effective water services more efficiently, scoring them political points on a heated issue.

AGRICULTURE

There has been little progress made on a holistic plan to reform the agricultural sector in Iraq. Since around 75 percent of Iraq’s water is used in agriculture, this stagnation significantly impedes efforts to improve water security. The agricultural sector also has the potential to spark conflict between local authorities and the central government, as well as between communities.

Constitutionally, the provision of water for agricultural purposes remains within the purview of the MoWR and the central government of Iraq. Local authorities in Basra, therefore, argue that they do not have the capacity or mandate to tackle the issue. Officials from the Directorate of Agriculture in Basra and the governorate’s parliamentary representatives complain that the Ministry of Agriculture does not provide sufficient financial backing for the provision of modern irrigation systems or equipment to Basra farmers.

However, the Basra government has also largely neglected the agricultural sector. The administration turns a blind eye to the illicit sale of agricultural land—such as in areas like Abu Al Khaseeb—which is then repurposed for housing or commercial ventures. This lack of oversight is partly due to the government’s emphasis on economic growth and job creation for youth, who typically do not see agricultural work as appealing. It is possible that the government also does not regard farmers as crucial to the city’s stability. After all, it was urban residents who led the 2018 protests related to water contamination and the subsequent hospitalization of tens of thousands.

Yet both the national government and Basra have made modest efforts to assist farmers. The MoWR allocated $300 million for the construction of the 128-km-long Basra Irrigation Canal, completed in 2017, to carry higher-quality water from the northern part of the Shatt Al-Arab to the south, aiming to irrigate about 100,000 dunums (around 39 square miles) on both sides of the river. The Basra government also established the Department of Plant Tissue Culture to spearhead the in-vitro propagation of date palms and other plant species capable of withstanding drought, heat, and salinization. While the department has successfully developed certain vegetables (e.g., tomatoes) as well as tree species (e.g., bananas), its outreach and impact have been underwhelming. According to a senior engineer at the department, a limited budget has constrained the department’s capacity and resources to expand production, market its products, and support farmers throughout the governorate.

Greater budget allocations from the central government could rehabilitate existing distribution networks, transmission pipes, and drainage infrastructure, as well as shift farmers to less water-intensive crops and irrigation methods. However, reforming the agricultural sector will take more than one-off infrastructure projects. Saving agriculture in Basra for small- and medium-sized farms is a monumental task that would require a systemic shift in crop selection, irrigation methods, and trade. These changes would require more fundamental changes to Iraq’s economy. The government would need to subsidize the planting of less water-intensive crops, protect drought-resistant crops with import tariffs, and encourage the import of water-intensive products. This could improve the situation for farmers more generally. Many of the goods produced in Iraq are already uncompetitive with regional imports due to high production costs, severe power shortages, and an open border through which uncontrolled and untaxed imports are regularly dumped on the country. Regulating trade could partially protect Iraqi markets and promote the import of virtual water (i.e., the amount of water used to produce goods and services throughout their value chain). But better-regulated trade in an age of endemic corruption will be challenging in the near term, as will efforts to systemically change agricultural practices that have existed in Iraq for millennia.

In the meantime, the local government will need to create social safety nets and support a larger ecosystem of job growth and urban development. Basra needs to explore tangible solutions for assisting farmers who have been forced to abandon agriculture and animal husbandry either temporarily or permanently. This could involve initiatives such as vocational training programs, increases in job compensation, and effective emergency interventions to sustain drought-stricken communities.

To accommodate urbanization, the central and local governments should accelerate the development of urban areas to ensure that newcomers receive decent low-income housing and services, rather than criminalizing those forced to move to cities. The government will also need to protect remaining fertile areas and encourage the development of low-income housing in cities, rather than selling arable land to developers for considerable profit.

While a number of housing compounds cater to low- and medium-income households, these mainly host government employees whose regular salaries allow them to afford monthly mortgage payments. For others, acquiring a government home loan is fraught. Bank transactions are still paper-based, which makes the sector convoluted for most Iraqis and susceptible to corruption. Iraq’s land and property registration processes are also paper-based, and data is not shared between government agencies. This dysfunctional system creates advantages for savvy businesspeople but does not serve ordinary Iraqis. Internet banking would increase transparency, alleviate the burden on understaffed banks, and open home ownership to more Iraqis. These latter two points could incentivize private developers to build low-income housing.

To alleviate the stress on water supplies and rural communities in drought years, local authorities, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the MoWR have compensated farmers to reduce the agricultural areas they cultivated. These initiatives have provided some relief to communities and may help to curb displacement and potential instability. However, land-use regulations and compensation typically do not apply to all farmers, especially smallholders. More powerful landowners tend to circumvent restrictions, diminishing the positive impact of austerity measures. Still, providing more of a social safety net, accompanied by longer-term assistance—through either alternative housing and jobs or the provision of drought-resistant seeds and irrigation systems—could ease the pain of scarce years.

TRANSBOUNDARY NEGOTIATIONS

While transboundary relations are outside the purview of the southern governorates, improving water-sharing remains the most impactful way to improve water quality and quantity in Basra. To address external factors contributing to the water crisis, Iraq can leverage trade and other shared interests with Iran and Turkey to advocate for greater regional environmental cooperation.

The central government could leverage trade and security agreements to turn transboundary negotiations from a zero-sum game to one in which Iraq, as a downstream country, is on more equal footing. The value of exports from Turkey to Iraq in 2022 was $13.8 billion, and in 2023, Iraq was Turkey’s third-largest trading partner. The recent Development Road Project, one of the 26 memorandums of understanding signed during Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Iraq in 2024, is another opportunity to expand negotiations over shared interests, including water resources. The project aims to establish a trade route connecting Basra to Turkey and eventually to Europe. Exploring how water could be incorporated into such agreements could further enhance economic cooperation, in addition to enhancing peace and stability. Turkey has also conducted military operations on Iraqi soil, targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara considers to be a terrorist group. As much as possible, such cooperation or acquiescence by Iraq should be tied to greater water cooperation. This security relationship, as well as direct official Iraqi government requests, have already encouraged Ankara to release more water to Iraq during scarce years—but these are typically ad hoc arrangements. Agreements on transboundary water need to be adaptable medium- and long-term arrangements for equitable and reasonable water sharing.

Recent wins with Iran on transboundary waters have also been tied to non-water-related issues. Water quality deterioration in the Shatt Al-Arab have largely been a result of Iran diverting the waters of the Karun and Karkheh rivers from Iraq, causing a sharp increase in water salinity due to sea water flowing into the Shatt al-Arab. In the summer of 2023, Iran released the Karun River to boost its alliance with Baghdad’s new regime, the Coordination Framework government, which was battling popular anger in Basra resulting from, among other issues, the deterioration of the Shatt Al-Arab. Typically, however, Iran refuses to communicate with Iraq over water issues. Connecting water to Iraq’s stability and to bilateral trade may convince Iran to be more consistently cooperative—but that seems unlikely, given Tehran’s extensive economic, military, and political influence over Iraq.

Obligations under various other international conventions could also serve as a basis for negotiated arrangements on shared waters. In 2023, Iraq became the first Arab country to sign the 1992 UN Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (known as the UN Water Convention), highlighting its increased interest in water insecurity. While upstream countries are not party to the convention, they are parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. The states that are members of these conventions take on certain obligations that, if implemented in Iraq, would benefit the country. Annual international conferences of parties could also provide platforms for promoting Iraqi positions and securing international diplomatic and technical support from Iraq’s upstream neighbors.

The MoWR holds key responsibilities in maintaining Iraq’s fair water shares with upstream neighbors and within the country itself. Better internal coordination between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MoWR could also enhance Iraq’s negotiating position in international conferences and boost water security as a national priority.

Conclusion

As the downstream part of a downstream country, southern Iraq is a manifestation of catastrophic change. Water scarcity and environmental degradation are already leading to increased violence and tension both within farming communities and between newly displaced families and urban populations. Taking steps to tackle this overwhelming problem is a must, but the reasons for Basra’s water insecurity are complex and intertwined with both Iraq’s ancient and recent history.

Over millennia, the people of southern Iraq adapted to water abundance. More than just surviving, communities prospered by learning to work around the floods every spring. The environmental benefits of these waters, particularly in the marshlands, made the region habitable. The waters moderated extreme summer heat, preserved the biodiversity that communities depended on, and provided livelihoods, food, and transportation.

Now, that former abundance has become a curse. Generations of floods entrenched social, cultural, and economic behaviors in Iraq that are difficult to shake in this era of scarcity, and in the shadow of near-constant war and sanctions. Renewed urgency has led to greater advocacy on the international stage and the completion of some long-delayed infrastructure projects. But to avoid further instability, Iraq—a country that has suffered from years of violence and sanctions—will need to finally prioritize water.

Regionally, the government will need to strengthen its economic and diplomatic position to better negotiate for transboundary waters. However, Iraq must also prepare for such diplomacy to not bear fruit. Political promises and water-sharing agreements among riparian countries have been falling apart. Turkey now regularly slashes its allocations of the Euphrates River to Syria—per a 1987 agreement—by half, and this affects Iraq further downstream. In a warming world, states’ water-sharing parsimony is likely to worsen. Moreover, there is little a city like Basra can do about transboundary partners or even other upstream users within the country, as the primary responsibility for negotiating water shares with other governorates and transboundary countries lies with the MoWR and the central government.

A systemic shift in Iraq’s domestic water management is a must. The Ministry of Agriculture can promote modern irrigation technologies, regulate water-intensive crop cultivation, and introduce alternative crops for local consumption or export. These steps will gradually contribute to sustainable water management and agricultural practices in Iraq. Water management reforms could also improve Iraq’s negotiating posture with transboundary neighbors and with international donors and lenders. However, shifting agriculture away from water-intensive crops and irrigation methods will require the central government’s commitment to reorient the economy and tackle powerful vested interests and corruption. Without the ability to truly enforce regulations on water use, crops, and trade, the Iraqi government will struggle to see immediate benefits from such reforms. Worse, inconsistently enforcing these regulations could lead to increased societal tensions. In the near term, Iraq will need to find a path for reform that allows the government to circumvent or co-opt vested interests.

Improving municipal waters and services is a good place to start. With water issues in southern Iraq reaching crisis levels in recent years, politicians have an interest in investing in water security for their political survival. It is vitally important for the government to provide basic services, such as water and electricity, at affordable prices. It is a major task, but one that is politically feasible.

The case of Basra illustrates how instability and threats to political power—in the form of water protests in 2018—can compel both central and local governments to address water issues. Investing in renewed distribution systems, as well as water and wastewater treatment plants, will mitigate future health crises. By developing a new drinking water transmission system, the government will also be able to provide affordable potable water to its citizens while collecting revenue. Handing over project implementation to local authorities, with significant monitoring by loan providers, could also hasten more responsible project implementation. Constituents will be able to see the immediate benefits, making such reforms beneficial for politicians focused on their survival.

The future may look different than the past, but it will be more sustainable for Iraqis, as it will curb instability and violence. Addressing the water crisis will also help the government rebuild trust with communities that have already endured too much.

The Political Economy of Water Insecurity in Jordan

Neda Zawahri

Jordan is in an unenviable position when it comes to water. It is a naturally arid country, downstream from unreliable transboundary neighbors. On top of these natural and geographic obstacles, it has struggled to tackle water management within its borders because of a number of regional and domestic political challenges. Despite the obstacles, Jordan will need to overcome its water insecurity to remain a viable state.

Jordan’s water scarcity has threatened the state’s security for decades. Due in part to a growing population and an increase in irrigated agriculture between 1950 and 1990, the government has been operating on a significant domestic water deficit since the 1990s. Current domestic water demand is 1.1 billion m3 per year, whereas the country’s available renewable water resources are just 977 mcm per year. Climate change, natural population growth, influxes of refugees, and the mismanagement of existing water resources threaten to exacerbate the water crisis. For now, Jordan covers the deficit of 151 mcm per year by buying additional water from Israel, mining near-depleted aquifers, and rationing water, but all of these strategies are precarious.

Jordan overextracts from and, effectively, mines 10 of its 12 groundwater aquifers, by double the safe yields of some. This has contributed to a deterioration in water quality and increased salination. The Azraq and Amman-Zarqa aquifers, for example, are declining by one meter per year because of overextraction, which has increased the water’s salinity and nitrate concentration, making it unusable and even toxic in some areas. Parts of northern Jordan now receive piped household water just once a month, while the residents in the capital receive water once a week. This strategy for surviving water deficits is unsustainable and unreliable for meeting its present and future needs. Jordan’s ability to buy water from Israel has also been put under significant political strain in recent years.

Providing the population with access to safe and sufficient water will be integral to Jordan’s political stability and social and economic development, but the country faces numerous political, economic, and demographic challenges to achieving water security. The often-competing interests of domestic and international stakeholders, the political unreliability of multilateral water projects, and Jordan’s vulnerability to upstream consumption of transboundary rivers have all compromised the country’s efforts to secure a sustainable supply of water.

To confront this challenge, the Jordanian government needs to prioritize water security domestically. The country must reduce internal water demand and augment its internal water supplies to make itself more resilient to climate change and geopolitical shocks. Its allies—the United States, Germany, and France, who invest heavily in Jordan’s stability and viability as a state—should also support such a path to achieving water security within its borders.

To demonstrate this argument, this chapter will first provide background on Jordan’s natural limitations and the regional challenges it faces in securing water. It will lay out how and why Jordan’s persistent efforts toward transboundary cooperation have often fallen short, leaving it less resilient and in a constant state of crisis management. The chapter will then assess Jordan’s domestic water management challenges, analyzing the diverging interests of government institutions, local stakeholders, and the international donors upon whom Jordan heavily depends. It will then analyze why decades of prioritizing stability over sustainability have delayed necessary domestic reforms and brought the nation to multiple points of crisis.

The conclusion of the chapter suggests how the Jordanian government could follow through with long-delayed reforms with a more transparent process that provides ample carrots before sticks. And finally, while Jordan should continue to pursue multilateral efforts that can augment its water supply and build regional peace, the challenges of these efforts indicate that doing so within the country’s own boundaries may be the key to increasing its resilience to seemingly inevitable regional shocks. In building internal water resiliency, Jordan would be following the path of other regional states like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Background: Inhospitable Nature and Neighborhood

By some measures, Jordan is the second-most water-scarce country in the world. Over 80 percent of its land is an arid desert—badia in Arabic—receiving less than 200 mm of rainfall per year. In 2021, it had about 61 m3 of renewable water available per capita per year, well below the 500 m3 per capita per year threshold marking absolute water scarcity for countries. Due to climate change, the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation, along with independent studies, anticipate that the country’s available freshwater will decline 15 percent further by 2040 and 50 percent further by century’s end, causing knock-on effects for food security and the economy. According to the World Bank, the reduction of water supply and climate change’s impacts on agriculture will cause a 6.8 percent decline in Jordan’s GDP by 2050.

Regional politics also affect Jordan’s water security in numerous ways. While Jordan is not itself embroiled in conflict, it has hosted multiple waves of refugees from conflict-affected neighboring countries. In addition to Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes in what is today Israel and the West Bank in 1948 and 1967, Jordan has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the past two decades. In fact, 13 percent of Jordan’s population are now Syrian refugees, and more than half of all Jordanians claim Palestinian descent. The influx of refugees has placed even more pressure on the country’s limited water supplies and its wastewater treatment facilities. Syrian refugees in northern Jordan, for example, have increased the region’s water demand by 40 percent. These influxes highlight the importance of Jordan’s ability to develop a reliable water supply.

As shocking as these population surges have been to Jordan’s water budget, perhaps few other issues affect the country’s water security like its transboundary relations with Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Jordan is a downstream riparian country that sits along the transboundary Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers and the Disi aquifer, which together provide 25 percent of the country’s domestic water supply. However, this supply has become unreliable because of increased upstream consumption and regional tensions. Even when Jordan has negotiated bilateral treaties governing these transboundary water supplies, its military weakness relative to neighboring riparian countries and the general instability within the region have made it difficult to secure a fair share in practice.

Jordan’s northern neighbor presents an example of this challenge. The influx of a million Syrian refugees since 2011 has been one factor challenging Jordan’s water security, but even prior to the fall of Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024, Jordan has long struggled to obtain an adequate share of the Yarmouk River, which flows from Syria. Between 1953 and 2001, Syria and Jordan signed multiple bilateral agreements to share the Yarmouk and allow Jordan to construct the Wahda, or “Unity,” Dam. However, contrary to the spirit of its name, the transboundary relations between the Assad family and the Hashemite rulers of Jordan surrounding the dam were disappointing. With each consecutive treaty, the dam’s size has decreased, and Syria has secured its right to fill more of its own upstream dams prior to allowing the Wahda to fill. Due to this upstream consumption, the Wahda has never reached its full capacity of 110 mcm since it became operational in 2006. In 2013, as Syria’s stability was breaking down, the dam’s water reached 68 mcm for the first time. In 2018, the dam reached its highest capacity, at 88 mcm; but in 2022, as Assad’s regime increased its authority over the country, the water fell to just 28 mcm.

Soon after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel invaded southwestern Syria and took control of both the Yarmouk River and the Wahda dam within Syrian territory. The lack of political stability in Syria and Israeli control of this water supply could affect Jordan’s water security. While the Wahda dam only provides around 10 percent of the country’s water needs in good years, these events point to the precariousness of Jordan’s transboundary situation. It is also a significant water and fishing source for southern Syria. At the time of writing, it is unclear what Israel’s long-term strategy is in terms of controlling this hydro-strategic territory and what impact this could have downstream.

On the flip side, the fall of Assad is an opportunity for Jordan to amend its transboundary water-sharing agreement with its northern neighbor. The outdated agreement, which lacks details and effective enforcement mechanisms, is in dire need of an update. Given the new Syrian transitional government’s overt desire to have good relations with its neighbors, Jordan could take the opportunity to improve the distribution of basic services across boundaries—including water and electricity.

To the southeast, relations are slightly more equitable with Jordan’s neighbor, Saudi Arabia, but still precarious. The Disi aquifer, which contains non-renewable, 30,000-year-old fossil water, traverses Jordan’s southeastern border. Since the 1980s, Saudi Arabia has extracted an unknown quantity of this groundwater to support agriculture. In Jordan, about 80 mcm per year is used for farming in the region around the Disi and for municipal water supply to nearby cities like Aqaba. But in 2013, desperate to provide water to its major cities in the northwest, where 94 percent of its population is concentrated, Jordan began transporting 100 mcm per year of Disi water 325 km north.

In 2015, Jordan and Saudi Arabia signed a treaty to govern their shared aquifer, agreeing to use the water in a protected area of the aquifer only for domestic uses. But the lack of quantitative allocation between the two states may lead to unsustainable depletion of the aquifer, complicating the treaty’s attempt at transparent cooperation and coordination. Many in Jordan, seeing the green farms over the border, believe that Saudi Arabia is still using the aquifer for agriculture. Remote-sensing analysis estimates that Saudi Arabia extracts 984 mcm per year from the aquifer in the city of Tabuk, near the border with Jordan, resulting in a precipitous decline of the water table within both states. Even in a best-case scenario, analysts estimate that the aquifer will be exhausted in 50 to 60 years.

As if transboundary agreements could not be trickier, Jordan’s relations with its western neighbor, Israel, have become increasingly contentious. With more than half of Jordanians having ancestry from Palestine and much of the population sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, the Jordanian government has had to tread carefully in negotiations with Israel. To ease these tensions, the United States has expended enormous economic and political capital to promote cooperative transboundary water management of the Jordan River since the 1950s.

However, it was not until 1994 that Israel and Jordan signed an official peace treaty, normalizing relations and laying out guidelines for water cooperation. Annex II of the treaty allocates shares of the Yarmouk River’s water and commits to the construction of joint water projects between the states. However, aspects of the treaty disadvantaged Jordan or were never carried out, and so Jordan was expected to gain much more water than it actually has. For example, according to the treaty, the signatory states share the Yarmouk River with Israel, which diverts a fixed allocation of the waters from the river before it reaches Jordan. Using a fixed allocation effectively secured a predictable water supply for Israel but left Jordan’s share vulnerable to droughts.

To secure some of Jordan’s share of water from the lower Jordan River, the treaty called for the construction of storage facilities to capture flood waters. But after years of negotiations, the storage facilities to capture 20 mcm of flood water were never constructed. As a result, Jordan effectively lost its share of the lower Jordan River. Israel diverts 97 percent of the upper Jordan River through its 1964 National Water Carrier, after which the river connects to the Yarmouk to form the lower Jordan.

The treaty also called for the construction of a desalination plant. But due to ambiguities in the agreement over the source of water to be desalinated and the source of funding for the project, the desalination plant—meant to give Jordan 50 mcm per year of water—was never constructed, which resulted in Jordan losing 25 mcm per year of high-quality water. Instead, Israel committed to allocate 25 mcm per year to Jordan from Lake Tiberias, where the water quality is much worse. The combination of ambiguities brought about by a rushed treaty and the failure to implement treaty provisions has meant that Jordanian negotiators and the Jordanian public believe they have received far less than promised. This perception has only deepened as Jordan’s water deficit has increased due to population growth and climate change.

To help meet it domestic deficits, Jordan periodically purchases additional water from Israel outside of the parameters of the 1994 peace treaty. But Jordan’s ability to purchase water from Israel has increasingly become hostage to bilateral relations between the states. Relations deteriorated so significantly in 2021—a time when Jordan was particularly water-stressed—that U.S. president Joe Biden had to intervene to persuade Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sell 3 mcm to Jordan. When Naftali Bennett became Israel’s prime minister in the summer of 2021, he approved the sale of 50 mcm of water, but this agreement expired in May 2024, once again putting Jordan’s water in jeopardy. Media reports indicated that Israel would withhold the water until Jordan restrained its criticism of the war in Gaza and allowed for the exchange of ambassadors. However, in April, after Jordan assisted in shooting down Iranian drones headed to Israel, Netanyahu agreed to a six-month extension of the 50 mcm sale of water as a reward for Jordan’s assistance.

Strained bilateral relations have periodically challenged Jordan’s ability not only to purchase additional water from Israel but also to build multilateral projects, such as the Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance (RSDSC) system and the energy-for-water exchange known as Project Prosperity, both of which could augment domestic water supplies for Jordan.

In 2002, Jordan and Israel approached the World Bank for help with constructing the RSDSC. The project was to provide Jordan and southern Israel with desalinated water, save the declining Dead Sea by discharging brine via a desalination plant in Aqaba, and encourage peace between the signatory states. A 2013 agreement stipulated that 200 mcm per year would be extracted from the Red Sea, for the production of 80–100 mcm per year of potable water. But in 2021, Jordan nixed the highly touted joint venture due to Israel’s decreased interest in the project, pressures from environmentalists, and increasing bilateral tensions between Prime Minister Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Jordan.

Despite decades of fruitless negotiations over the RSDSC, that agreement was not the last proposition for transboundary water projects. In 2022, Israel, Jordan, and the UAE signed a memorandum of understanding to undertake an energy-for-water exchange whereby Jordan would build a solar power facility and sell 600 megawatts (MW) of its generated electricity to Israel. In return, Israel would build a desalination plant to sell 200 mcm per year of water to Jordan. The UAE committed to providing funding and technology for the solar power plant through its government-owned company, Masdar.

The project was widely unpopular with the Jordanian public because it left out Palestinians and made Jordan’s water security even more dependent on Israel. While the deal would cover 20 percent of Jordan’s water budget, it would cover only 2 percent of electricity consumption for Israel, a country already rich in natural gas.

The project seemed set to move ahead. But in November 2023, Jordan refused to proceed with it due to deteriorating bilateral relations over what Jordan’s leadership and population felt was a disproportionate Israeli military offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

It is unclear what will happen to the deal in the long run. But what has become evident is that these transboundary projects, whether with Israel or Syria, are highly vulnerable to regional and bilateral politics, climate change, and the upstream consumption of water. While Jordan expected to gain a total of 310 mcm per year from the aforementioned transboundary water agreements, the country ended up receiving only 120 mcm per year, including Jordan’s purchase of 50 mcm per year of water from Israel. As such, the Jordanian government has doubled down on investing in a National Conveyance project, which involves the construction of a solar-operated desalination plant to generate 300 mcm per year of water from the Red Sea port of Aqaba, then transport the water via an energy-intensive 450 km pipeline to population centers located at higher elevations in the north. The project would help Jordan meet its water needs and minimize the impact of regional tensions on its plans for water security.

While policymakers and peacemakers should remain hopeful for better days in the future, these examples demonstrate that water cooperation can fall prey to bilateral relations and regional politics. For a country as water-insecure as Jordan, entrenching such vulnerability could push the situation over the edge during another crisis.

Jordan’s Domestic Challenges

Compounding the effects of these exogenous forces are numerous domestic challenges to improving water management. The diverging interests of government institutions, local stakeholders, and international donors have often slowed, weakened, or halted necessary reforms and regulations.

A WEAK WATER SECTOR

While governance of water is highly centralized in Jordan, many of the institutions responsible for improving water security are not empowered to affect change. Jordan’s hiring practices also tend not to incentivize high performance or innovation among public sector workers.

In order to absorb new entrants to the workforce, the government often doles out public sector jobs, especially to those with influential tribal family connections. This makes it difficult to hire competent staff with relevant skills or to lay off unproductive civil servants. Moreover, due to meager pay in the public sector, government institutions—including the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI)—tend to lose those with technical skills to the very donors and private sector actors that they work with. While the MWI has a corps of competent engineers, decisionmaking and innovation is not common beyond this cohort of engineers. Rather, the ministry is bloated and overstaffed with unqualified and unmotivated employees.

In addition to this broader issue with the public sector, there are institutional challenges unique to the water sector. Jordan has many different institutions responsible for various aspects of water use, each with separate goals and mandates. As a result, as with the Ministry of Water Resources in Iraq, the MWI lacks the authority to systemically tackle water insecurity. For example, only the Jordanian cabinet can change the price of municipal or agricultural water, not the MWI. Consequently, the minister in charge of MWI depends on a group of political elites who have little interest in changing the status quo, even to make decisions that directly affect the country’s financial capacity and economic efficiency.

Along with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment, and the MWI, domestic water resources are also governed by two autonomous bodies, the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ) and the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA). The JVA is responsible for water management in the agriculturally important Jordan Valley, while WAJ is responsible for municipal and industrial water supply and wastewater treatment. The MWI develops the national water strategy, but it depends on all the aforementioned institutions for implementation. The MWI itself does not have the power or resources to implement its own strategy. When competing interests from agencies such as the Ministries of Agriculture and Interior—which are not incentivized to curb overpumping of water—fail to implement parts of the strategy, there is little the MWI can do.

While the MWI is in a difficult position, the reality is that in all of these institutions, bureaucrats are more focused on political stability than on efficiency, economic recovery, or conservation. This mindset affects their ability to rein in elite farmers’ unsustainable water consumption in the water-poor highlands, the Jordan Valley, and in the southern desert. Raising the price of irrigation water would upset the monarchy’s powerful tribal base. Regulating water consumption has proven equally difficult. In the words of one water expert in 2023, “People would go crazy if you cut off their water here. You can’t do that.”

Balancing the interests of different institutions and constituencies makes it difficult for local authorities to curb not only overconsumption driven by ongoing water subsidies but also leakage and outright theft. Jordan loses 50 percent of its produced water—so-called non-revenue water—due to leaks, thefts, and inaccurate metering. Experts estimate that this could amount to 100–150 mcm per year. USAID estimates that the Jordanian government loses $500 million annually from non-revenue water.

Since the institutions governing the country’s water supply lack the political power to enforce sensitive policies, curbing water theft has become especially challenging. Individuals seeking to resell stolen water face fines of 5,000 Jordanian dinars and jail terms of up to three years. But prosecution typically does not extend to those with powerful connections. Even when punishment is enforced, it does not appear to deter repeat offenders, as reselling stolen water to the municipal and agricultural sectors is very lucrative. In this environment, water thieves have become organized mafias. They attack the pipelines and disrupt a neighborhood’s water supply. After stealing the water, they resell it to the neighborhood at inflated prices via water tankers.

As a result, despite several government campaigns to snuff out water theft, it is still ubiquitous. In 2022, Jordanian government officials identified 10,000 cases of water theft across the country and hundreds of illegal wells. That year, they estimated that about 10 mcm of water was lost to theft.

The government has had more success curbing water consumption indirectly. For example, in comparison with the rest of the region, Jordan is doing fairly well in wastewater treatment and reuse. Much of this success is due to the expansion of Jordan’s largest wastewater treatment plant, completed in 2015. The As-Samra wastewater treatment plant handles 65 percent of Jordan’s urban wastewater and runs almost entirely on hydropower and biogas. Getting farmers to agree to use treated wastewater was initially challenging. However, when the government simply began channeling the treated effluent from As-Samra to the King Abdullah Canal, upon which lower Jordan Valley cultivators depend, the farmers were effectively made to use the treated wastewater—mixed with surface and rainwater—to irrigate their crops.

Still, there is room for improvement. The government incurs high energy costs to pump wastewater to As-Samra, and a significant share of the country’s wastewater remains untreated. To address these issues, experts note that the government needs to expand and decentralize wastewater treatment.

Most rural areas continue to lack access to wastewater treatment facilities, contributing to the deteriorating quality of Jordan’s already-scarce fresh water. In a country as water-stressed as Jordan, resolving these issues would not just be a boon to water quality but a necessity in confronting an even drier future. However, for many Jordanians, having a wastewater treatment facility near one’s home or land is still shunned. Farmers using treated wastewater, and those living near such facilities, fear that their crops or land will be devalued. To move forward, Jordan will need to educate these communities on the benefits of wastewater treatment and reuse.

The Role of Donors: A Mismatch Between Hopes and Realities

Unlike the oil-rich Gulf States and Israel, which can use their financial resources to construct desalination and wastewater treatment plants to significantly augment domestic water supply, Jordan’s limited financial capacity makes it heavily reliant on the international donor community. It depends on external funding for the construction, operation, and maintenance of its hydrological infrastructure, as well as to cover the large budget deficits of its water institutions.

International financial aid, consisting of both grants and loans to the water and agricultural sectors, represents a significant portion of Jordan’s already generous package of loans and assistance. In 2022, Jordan received $4.4 billion in aid, of which 14.4 percent went to the water and sanitation sector and 13.2 percent went to food security and agriculture. As such, Jordan must balance the interests of donors and its population.

The World Bank, USAID, and others have all pressured Jordan to raise its water tariffs, cut subsidies, trim bloated bureaucracies, and cut non-revenue water. At times, donors have advised Jordan to undertake all these policy modifications simultaneously. However, when the Jordanian government hesitates or when protests are predicted, donors tend to pull back, leaving nothing resolved. In some cases, projects to bridge the gaps between donor and local stakeholder interests mean that projects become unsustainable or are never completed.

There are many examples of this clash between Jordan’s political realities and donors’ plans. One example is the effort of the German aid agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to fund the creation of water user associations (WUAs) in 2001. The goal was to improve the efficiency of farmers’ water use in the Jordan Valley, manage operational and maintenance problems in the delivery of water, improve cost recovery of irrigation water for the Jordan Valley Authority, and develop a system of participatory management for irrigation water. The WUAs led to some positive outcomes. It allowed farmers to monitor water thefts and manipulation of water meters, as well as to carry out minor maintenance. But in the end, the WUAs simply became extensions of a powerful tribal network that used the associations to resist the enforcement of water conservation policies—including those to reduce theft and use treated wastewater in the northern Jordan Valley. The presidents of the WUAs—typically tribal leaders— often hired workers with connections, rather than technical skills, to monitor pipes and open taps. The WUAs also allowed smaller farmers to resist government policies as they rode on the coattails of powerful farmers’ lobbying through the associations. While that solidarity decreased theft between farmers, it may have enabled more theft from the Jordanian state’s water resources, like the King Abdullah Canal. The positive impact on Jordan’s water deficit and water management have remained minimal.

Multiple studies of WUAs reveal that their effectiveness depends on understanding the socioeconomic, political, and cultural context in which they operate. In this case, donors failed to account for the divergent interests of stakeholders, which limited the WUAs’ effectiveness. Farmers saw membership in a WUA as a means of securing water and a path to patronage, while employees at the Jordan Valley Authority sought to protect their institutional power and feared the devolution of authority to a WUA. Had donors understood the sociopolitical context in the basin, then efforts by powerful tribes to capture resources could have been managed more effectively.

The Highland Water Forum (HWF) provides another example of donors attempting to implement participatory water management without fully appreciating the sociopolitical context. The MWI, the French government, and GIZ established the forum in 2010 to enhance the efficiency of irrigation water use, reduce groundwater abstraction of the overexploited Azraq aquifer and wetland, and improve the participatory decision-making process. The project brought together 60 stakeholders—including farmers, government institutions, research centers, and NGOs—to develop ideas to protect the aquifer’s dwindling water. In 2013, an action plan was presented to the MWI’s minister, with policy recommendations that included revising bylaws and well regulations, establishing a rainwater harvesting program, and improving the collection and dissemination of data on irrigation water-use efficiency. But once GIZ funding ended, more financial support did not materialize. When the project ended with little follow-through on the recommendations, farmers who took part in the process, expecting financial gains and greater access to water, were dissatisfied. Without the sustained support to provide these benefits, MWI had no way of using the forum as a way of mediating its reforms—its priority with the project. And while donor governments saw the forum as a way of enforcing the 2002 groundwater abstraction law, they failed to support the elements of the program that may have won farmers’ support—or at least their acquiescence.

Like so many initiatives, without sustainable financial support and with frequent changes in both the leadership of the MWI and the representatives of Jordan’s donors, the Highland Water Forum fizzled out. The next MWI strategic plan did not even mention it. In this case, even when there was good faith from farmers to participate in a process like the forum, there was no follow-up or understanding of incentives. This breaks trust on all sides: farmers become less inclined to participate in the next process, while donors and the MWI trust the farmers less. No one’s motivations were adequately responded to, and incentives were not built into the process to accompany requisite sticks.

However, with slight modifications and longer-term support, many projects could be more successful. For example, the agricultural component of one such project to connect private sector suppliers of water-conserving technologies to farms proved to be enormously cost-effective. The Water Innovations Technologies (WIT) project, active from 2017 to 2022, was successful for a time at improving water savings at relatively low cost. But without price mechanisms or crop selection policies to discourage excess water usage, farmers simply stopped using these technologies when they fell into disrepair. Rather than abandoning projects like this, donors and the government should lean into the lessons learned and continue to support the maintenance of the projects while gradually increasing prices, incentivizing less water-intensive crops, and regulating water usage.

A More Resilient Path Forward

COMMUNICATIONS

To enhance water security, the monarchy itself needs to take on a more proactive role in negotiating with powerful stakeholders to limit their water usage, minimize pollution of existing supplies, and increase water efficiency across the agricultural and municipal sectors. For many within Jordanian society and politics, the king has the final word. That means that he must empower civil servants to carry out policies and serve as a mediator when there is discontent. When powerful constituents protest, the king needs to support civil servants with their efforts to rein in overconsumption. To assuage discontent among powerful stakeholders, the king and high-ranking government officials can explain the threat of water insecurity to the nation.

One time-tested tradition during moments of protest and popular discontent has been for the king himself to visit powerful stakeholders, such as tribal leaders, and listen to their grievances. Direct meetings and negotiations between high-level government officials and various stakeholders, such as farmers and political elites, can help minimize these actors’ resistance to large structural changes.

Donors and the government could also distribute free water conservation equipment along with the promise to provide maintenance—in return for being able to enforce water and crop regulations. Paired with a major public relations and education campaign about the need to conserve water and the benefits of the technology provided, this could simultaneously shift public attitudes and provide the needed sticks and incentives to water users. An educational campaign on planting vegetable and fruit varieties that are less water intensive and more drought resistant, followed by the provision of free seeds to farmers, could increase the probability of compliance. Farmers also need financial and educational support to see them through the transition. Farmers stealing water or continuing to grow water-intensive crops should be subject to significant punishment to effectively change behavior. Some may say this is expensive, but many water experts have stated it would likely cost less than the numerous failed projects already undertaken. It is also increasingly existential for Jordan to prioritize such spending.

This gradual approach would include a prolonged national education and public relations campaign equating water security with national security and socio-economic justice. Greater transparency and information-sharing will be key, but given the deep mistrust of the government by the public, those water governing institutions cannot do it alone. They will need to enlist civil society, religious institutions, private sector actors, and trusted community members to lead the way. What they have going for them is that every Jordanian knows the country is water scarce. But providing specific information on how individuals can improve water security is essential—as is ensuring that everyone is held to the same standard.

This dissemination of information to the public through various means (e.g., TV, radio, social media, religious institutions, and schools) could lay the groundwork for the harder policies ahead, such as increases in water tariffs and decreases in import tariffs on water-intensive goods. In 2023, Jordan used this strategy to spread awareness about upcoming municipal water subsidy cuts for all households consuming above a fixed quantity. After a prolonged information campaign and transparent public discussions on the price increases, the government implemented a policy in January 2024 to gradually increase water prices and to shift from quarterly to monthly payments to minimize the impact on water bills. To increase transparency and prepare society for new water utility bills, the government even released a water bill calculator on their website to allow people to anticipate their bills. There was still some domestic discontent with the new policy, but the gradual and transparent approach proved effective at minimizing the mass protests that typically accompany many of Jordan’s domestic policy changes. As such, policymakers should think about applying a similar strategy to the agricultural sector.

With backing from the king, government representatives can carry out a public campaign to educate society about the nation’s water crisis and the need to conserve water for current and future generations. Such a campaign would influence the population to make native plants and water conservation more of a priority. This approach could gradually reduce pressure on the government—an actor often seen as merely taking away benefits—and recast it as a leader in the fight to secure the nation for future generations. Such public campaigns would then make it easier to regulate the water consumption of wealthier segments of Jordan’s population, who are often less efficient. For all of these reforms, a gradual approach with continuous follow-through to fine-tune existing projects would allow the government and donors to chip away at Jordan’s water woes.

EXPANDING WATER TREATMENT AND REUSE

Jordan will also need to expand its reuse of treated graywater and wastewater. Currently, farmers can switch to a mixture of graywater (water used in household cleaning, baths, and washing machines), treated wastewater, and surface water from the King Abdullah Dam and Zarqa River for many crops. Households have the option to use graywater in their gardens. The government, in turn, can be more transparent about the quality of water in the reservoirs.

There also remains plenty of room for improvement in expanding wastewater treatment facilities in rural areas. In 2023, the country had 33 wastewater treatment plants that produced 186 mcm per year of treated effluent. About 90 percent of treated wastewater is reused in either the agricultural or industrial sectors, which represents a huge improvement. But some 30 percent of the urban population and 80 percent of the rural population are still unconnected to the wastewater network. Expanding access in these remaining areas could be a major boost for the conservation and preservation of domestic fresh water supplies. Promoting the reuse of graywater would also have significant benefits. In rural areas that lack wastewater treatment plants, the government encourages households to voluntarily recycle graywater for irrigation and toilet flushing purposes. As a result, it is estimated that 54 mcm per year of graywater is reused in Jordan. Such programs can be expanded to the rest of the country with little political blowback, if any.

Subsidizing high-quality water conservation technologies—like drip irrigation—and less water-intensive crops in the near term will vastly improve water savings. It may also minimize political consequences for governmental crackdowns on excessive usage or theft. Convincing the remaining elite farmers who grow water-intensive citrus, or other crops for regional markets, to partially use treated wastewater will also be important. Currently, these farmers fear that treated wastewater will harm their fruit trees and curb their export potential.

By focusing on improving the quality of treated wastewater, testing the water as it travels through various points, and sharing test results with farmers, the government can help to overcome some of these perceptions. Even test crops could be used to show the benefits of using certain kinds of treated water or water-conserving equipment, such as drip irrigation and weather- and soil-monitoring systems. The co-founder of iPlant, a Jordan-based startup in the field of agricultural technology, has even said that treated graywater is more beneficial to plants grown in vertical farms than tap water.

The government and donors should also support studies assessing whether treated wastewater or graywater can stabilize aquifers. Underground aquifers are naturally resistant to increased evaporation as the climate changes, but if they collapse, that naturally sustainable water storage mechanism disappears.

EXPANDING RELIABLE WATER SUPPLIES

Finally, while it is important for Jordan to improve its domestic management of water, doing so will still be insufficient to meet the country’s domestic water needs. Closing the gap on all non-revenue water (estimated at around 100 mcm per year) would still leave a deficit of over 50 mcm per year today. This deficit is only going to increase due to factors like climate change, population growth, increased upstream consumption of shared water resources, and overextraction of aquifer water.

Jordan’s domestic water demand is expected to rise from 1,128 mcm per year in 2022 to 2,000 mcm per year in 2040. If Jordan is able to curb both water theft and overconsumption, the country can save an estimated 100–150 mcm per year, which is still not enough to close the gap.

Therefore, something must also be done to increase supply for the future. Given the vulnerability of multilateral efforts to regional and domestic politics, the construction of joint infrastructure or the purchasing of additional water from Israel may not help Jordan secure a reliable source of water in the current political environment.

Rather, Jordan should follow the experience of Israel and the Persian Gulf states by building its own desalination capacity within its territory. To secure a sustainable supply of water, Jordan is proceeding with the National Water Conveyance. Even with the operation of the National Water Conveyance and other new multilateral projects, Jordan is unlikely to meet even its domestic water needs in the near term. In fact, with the operation of these new projects, Jordan is expected to face a 15 mcm per year deficit in its water needs by 2035. In light of growing frustration within Jordan toward Israel and the challenges of negotiating a multilateral project, international donors should support the NWC. After securing the desalination plant and improving its domestic water management, Jordan could then opt to join multilateral projects as a means for promoting peace in the turbulent region and helping to build the country’s resilience to climate change.

Even with the NWC, Jordan must secure a financially acceptable deal. At the time of writing, the bid for the NWC was more than 50 percent over initial cost estimates and interest rates on the project were oppressively high. Financial acuity will be needed to ensure that the project does not bankrupt the country, causing a financial crisis even before the country reaches a water crisis. In addition to the high cost estimates, the deal requires more synergy with the National Electric Power Company. Electricity for the project would come to over 12 percent of Jordan’s total electricity use and increase the water sector’s electricity usage by 150 percent. Failing to better integrate the electricity and water sectors for this project could threaten the reliability of the grid. These issues are manageable but may require a reconsideration of the logistics of the project to ensure that Jordan does not dig itself out of water insecurity, only to be hit with other crises.

Conclusion

Neoliberal economic theory advises the use of pricing mechanisms to encourage a resource’s efficient and sustainable use. However, cheap water is intimately connected to the political bargain that the Jordanian monarchy made with its citizens during the state-building process. In return for citizens’ loyalty, the government keeps resources like water cheap and public sector jobs available.

Systemic reforms that would improve the water deficit are, therefore, potentially threatening to Jordan’s stability. Jordan’s international benefactors, such as the United States and major European donor governments, know this well. So, while donors encourage the government to reduce water waste, they also have tended to prioritize political stability over environmental and financial sustainability, fearing the social and political impact of price increases or water shortages.

For decades, to avoid upsetting this delicate balance, international donors have worked with Jordan to increase its water supply. While Jordan’s government pushed to construct hydrological infrastructure—either multilateral, bilateral, or domestic—to augment supplies, it delayed domestic reforms. These delays entrenched the sociopolitical obstacles to water security through improved efficiency. The disappointing results of multilateral and transboundary water efforts have further pushed Jordan toward a precipice. But there are steps that can be taken that will begin to chip away at the challenge and put the country on more resilient ground.

Jordan cannot alter its natural aridity and downstream location. Increasing its dependence on its riparian neighbors for additional water leaves it highly vulnerable. To address its existential water crisis, Jordan should focus on solutions within its control: reducing domestic demand for water and augmenting domestic supplies. The king and donor governments have the most power to shift Jordan’s grim trend toward deepening water insecurity; they can achieve this by following policies that offer a staggered series of carrots and sticks.

ccess to basic public goods, such as electricity and clean water, is an integral part of state stability and regime legitimacy. The combination of climate change, refugee influxes, and mismanagement is threatening Jordan’s ability to provide its population with a basic essential resource that is not only integral to regime stability but also to human security. By 2100, if Jordan does not undertake critical measures, over 90 percent of its low-income population will experience critical water insecurity. The poor in Jordan already struggle for clean water. Any further decrease in water availability and quality can raise the potential for instability in a relatively stable country.

The thousands of Jordanians protesting for days straight in 2024, calling on the government to cancel its agreements with Israel, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria highlight the vulnerability inherent to dependence on Jordan’s unstable neighborhood for something as essential as water. To avert a crisis, Jordanians, their government, and their government’s allies must cooperate to expand supply and reduce demand for water within the borders of the country. And, as the region stabilizes, work on multilateral efforts to augment water supplies and build regional peace can resume.

Conclusion

Natasha Hall

The Middle East is no stranger to water scarcity and violence. For centuries, conflict has exacerbated water insecurity and vice versa. But the region is now at a tipping point. Groundwater aquifers are running dry or becoming contaminated, populations are exploding, and borders are more hardened than ever, making resettlement—a time-tested survival strategy—impossible.

Nowhere are these issues more evident than in the Palestinian territories. In initial plans for this volume, these areas were meant to be among the case studies. But the events of 2023 and 2024 swept away any notion that CSIS could conduct a timely, forward-looking study of what was possible there. Even before the most recent conflict, conditions in the West Bank and Gaza exemplified the danger of applying an apolitical lens to a political problem. As is the case across much of the region, water security fell prey to the lack of political progress on resolving underlying conflicts. Without that political progress, donor governments and aid agencies have resorted to applying technical fixes to political problems. But in the Palestinian territories, as in much of the world, water insecurity has been a sign of deeper dysfunction.

For decades, Israel has restricted West Bank Palestinians’ freedom to cultivate land, rehabilitate infrastructure, or build wells and desalination plants, while simultaneously being very permissive of Israeli Jewish citizens—including settlers’—requests to do the same. As a result, around 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas of the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Gaza, even before the current hostilities, it was difficult for Palestinians and donors to build adequate desalination facilities to treat enough contaminated and brackish groundwater to rescue the endangered Coastal Aquifer, upon which the 2.3 million people living in Gaza depend for water. For political and security reasons, Israel has also wanted to develop Palestinians’ reliance on Israeli supplies of water and energy, which the Israeli government has sometimes interrupted. The recent conflict has laid bare this asymmetry. At the start of the conflict, the Israeli government immediately cut almost all of Gaza’s access to water, energy, and food. As the conflict in Gaza has raged for months, clean water has become scarce, and polio has reemerged after 25 years, when untreated sewage flowed into the streets.

As Ciarán Ó Cuinn noted in the foreword to this volume, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a particularly egregious example of what happens when donors, mediators, and communities are unable to resolve political challenges to water security. Political issues constrain both sustainability and equity in all case studies evaluated in this volume, as well as all over the world. Governments decide how and where to spend money, and vested interests (e.g., polluting industries, warlords, and farmers) can play an outsized role as well. Even in the United States, local tax revenues—and the associated political and financial power—often dictate where infrastructure will be rehabilitated or built. Flint, Michigan, is a case in point.

Flint, a predominantly Black and poor community, will forever be synonymous in the United States with its water crisis. Local authorities dismissed concerns of high lead levels in the water in order to cut costs. But much like the Middle East, water insecurity was present both before and after Flint’s lead-laden water became headline news. Flint’s woes stemmed from historic marginalization, not local authorities’ inability to provide safe water for residents.

Given these difficulties in the world’s richest and most powerful democracy, it may seem quixotic to prioritize water security within the existing disorder of the Middle East. But despite the challenges, these case studies show that water can no longer be put on hold. Countries have been living beyond their means to avoid war and instability. But equating the absence of a direct water war with cooperation or peace has been dangerous.

Local conflicts and human insecurity have increased, even as countries have not gone to war over water. For weaker parties, war has not been an option. Rather than immediately resort to violence, those most affected by water insecurity—the poor, the marginalized, and weaker states—have simply tried to cope. They have used less water as governments have begun withholding or rationing water for certain communities. As water and sanitation services have deteriorated, people have resorted to buying expensive bottled water and relying on water trucking if they can afford to. Those who cannot afford bottled water have gotten sick. Farmers lucky enough to be able to drill deeper for water have done so. Those that cannot have moved, when possible. They have sold their possessions, married off their daughters earlier than planned, and sent their sons and husbands to work in cities, where they have often been seen by urban populations as an added burden on already limited services. Weaker downstream riparians have tried to cope rather than fight, but regional tensions and violence have increased as a result.

Now, these coping mechanisms are reaching a breaking point throughout the Middle East, with some communities forced to accept emergency rations of water and falling victim to previously eradicated waterborne diseases like cholera and polio. A third of the countries in the Middle East are embroiled in active conflicts, and many others are hosting refugees or are affected in some way by neighboring conflicts. Not only is there no end in sight to these crises, but they seem to be getting worse.

▲ Figure 6: Daily Domestic Water Usage per Capita (Liters)

Unemployment rates remain high; water is running out; the energy transition is coming, as are other great powers and regional powers, who will have their own agendas. In Jordan, youth unemployment reached as high as 50 percent in 2020. More and more Jordanians are finding illegal pathways out of the country. At the same time, every country in the Middle East and North Africa will experience extreme water stress by 2050, meaning that all will be using at least 80 percent of their available water supplies. If oil prices fall, producers like Iraq will be far less able to absorb the unemployed into the public sector or provide basic services. At the same time, global competition will allow countries to play great powers off one another, lessening the pressure from any one donor government to reform governance. Dealing with the seismic social and economic shifts of the next decade will require thoughtful planning, but the region is currently mired in crisis management, with international interest diminishing and aid budgets plummeting. And even with generous aid, problems like conflict, financial troubles, and water insecurity persist. Across the region—especially in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestine—the United States and other international donors have spent tens of billions of dollars on water security. It is time to reconsider how these funds are spent, not cut them off.

To achieve better outcomes, the politics that have brought the region to this inflection point cannot be ignored. For decades, Western governments, as donors and political stakeholders in the Middle East, have prioritized short-term stability over long-term sustainability and human security. Across the region, governments have feared systemic reforms would tip a delicate political balance out of their favor. Western governments have shared their concern. As a result, many reforms and regulations have either never been implemented or were weakened. Due to the political challenges of reform, governments and donors have focused on building dams, exploiting groundwater, and building desalination plants. Few of the countries covered in this volume have adequately pursued wastewater treatment and reuse, targeted water theft and leakage, enforced more moderate water usage, or negotiated fair and sustainable water-sharing agreements.

The authors in this volume do not shy away from the political challenges to water security. Rather, they acknowledge the many hurdles and the motivations of various stakeholders, thereby outlining feasible steps toward more sustainable and equitable water management.

Syria and Yemen are perhaps the most challenging cases. Embroiled in conflict for years, both societies struggle to invest in long-term solutions to their increasingly existential water insecurities. Donor governments and private investors are reluctant to support possible solutions, and sometimes are even legally constrained from doing so. Nonetheless, authors Mauvais and Al-Saidi both argue that there are small steps that the international community can and must take to set both areas on a more sustainable path. Building local capacity and monitoring capabilities would allow communities to measure the extent of their water problems and advocate for solutions with authorities and donors. Connecting local experts and civil society to the wider world could also make local authorities and vested interests more accountable and build awareness of concrete solutions. In the cases of Sana’a and northeastern Syria, these solutions include diversifying and incentivizing drought-resistant crops and ensuring that water is part of peace negotiations.

In these cases, international actors can also play a diplomatic role. In northeastern Syria, they can encourage Turkey to release more water and cease the destruction of vital infrastructure. In Yemen, they can encourage warring parties and diplomats to incorporate water management into negotiations, including incentives for rehabilitating and building water-related infrastructure and concessions on access, human rights, and security. Both authors argue that such steps will be vital for national and global security as these areas grow unable to absorb the unemployed or provide food and water for their people. Destabilizing internal and outward migration will be inevitable without these measures.

In Basra, the obstacles to reforming the agricultural sector are so wide-ranging that the authors have focused on one aspect of water insecurity that is reasonably surmountable: the provision of safe drinking water and preparation for further urbanization. Those steps will not solve all of Basra’s problems, but they are necessary and feasible in the current environment. However, the authors also outline reasonable steps that may encourage greater cooperation in agricultural and transboundary management—the greatest potential sources of water security in the country. Recommendations include linking water to other areas of concern for transboundary neighbors, like trade and security.

Regarding Jordan, author Zawahri argues that the government should work with civil society and local leaders to frame stewardship of water resources as a patriotic and social justice issue. Part of this effort will be enacting reforms in a transparent and universally accountable way, while providing ample investments and sufficient time to ease the transition. At the regional level, Zawahri acknowledges the need for water-stressed Jordan to develop its own water resources to overcome the long-standing political challenges to transboundary, multilateral water deals. Indeed, the data shows that Jordan will need to pursue multilateral efforts, domestic desalination capacity, and greater domestic water-use efficiency just to meet the needs of its growing population by 2035.

Even with these more limited politically feasible steps to achieving water security, conflict, broadly defined, may be necessary. Contestation—defined as the divergence of goals, objectives, expectations, methods, and behavior—does not have to amount to violence or coercive cooperation. It is the way such conflicts are approached that will define the future of water security in the region and the potential for violence. Avoiding the political realities of extreme water insecurity is leading to more crises, which could cause further instability in the future. Eminent scientists and academics briefing the UN General Assembly have already noted that disputes over shared water resources will rise due to changes brought on by climate change and growing human demands for water. In all of these areas, employment in security services or armed groups is fast becoming one of the most important and last remaining livelihoods opportunities.

Despite the bleak predictions, this volume contends that while disagreements are inherent to the quest for equitable and sustainable water management, violence is not inevitable—provided stakeholders, including regional governments, non-state governing actors, and donor governments, take decisive action. In some cases, that action will require more financial investment. More often than not, however, it will require different strategies. The current investments of time and resources should be shifted toward endeavors in which donors, governments, and lenders consider stakeholders’ incentives and follow the projects through, ensuring that some stakeholders do not become spoilers. For example, donors and governments should work toward building civic consensus around the need for wastewater treatment plants, emphasizing the upsides and debunking negative assumptions. Governments should not simply cut farmers off from using water or cultivating all of their land; they should assist farmers in transitioning to less water-intensive crops and farming methods. At the transboundary level, more diplomatic investment is needed to open paths for solutions that are not politically feasible today. In other words, donor governments with influence over upstream countries should encourage them to prioritize equitable water sharing. Downstream countries should manage domestic water sources more carefully, but they should also strengthen their diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation with neighbors to ensure that they are diversifying their leverage.

The choice is stark. Either change course or face far greater challenges in the future. The Arab Spring and the subsequent conflicts have shown that the status quo is untenable. Those movements shook the region. As the aftershocks have continued, mistrust has increased between communities and countries, all while investment interest has decreased—yet both trust and investment will be crucial to achieving water security.

Despite these challenges, time is of the essence. Rather than sidestepping the political challenges, this volume has aimed to provide concrete steps to incentivize change among actors currently benefiting from an unsustainable status quo. To do so, countries must enlist reform-minded government officials, donors and international stakeholders, warring parties, civil society, farmers, and aid agencies. Each player must play a part in leveling the field. If they do not, inequity will widen, a growing swath of territory will become unlivable, and conflict—violent conflict—will break out and spill across borders. By implementing the solutions outlined here, countries can avert a looming crisis and pave the way for a more stable future.

Natasha Hall is a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Natasha has over 15 years of experience as an analyst, researcher, and practitioner in complex humanitarian emergencies and conflict-affected areas with a specialty in the Middle East. Most recently, she has worked on the Syrian conflict with The Shaikh Group, GIZ, Mayday Rescue, Center for Civilians in Conflict, and the U.S. government’s Refugee Affairs Division.

Ciarán Ó Cuinn is head of mission at MEDRC. MEDRC is the sole surviving institution of the Multilateral Middle East Peace Process, mandated to be a model organization for states seeking to use transboundary environmental issues in the service of a peace process.

Hassan Janabi is the former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and the former minister of water resources from 2016 to 2018. He also served as Iraq’s ambassador to Japan and led multiple departments in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the Department of International Organizations and the Department of Human Rights.

Lyse Mauvais is a freelance environmental journalist with three years of experience in the Middle East. Based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, she focuses on the intersection of conflict and post-conflict recovery with the environment. Lyse has covered environmental and humanitarian issues in Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel for outlets including Mongabay, Middle East Eye, and Al Jazeera.

Mohammad Al-Saidi is an associate professor at the College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, where he focuses on environmental development, water governance, the management of transboundary water resources, and energy and sustainability policies. Before joining Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Dr. Al-Saidi was a faculty member at the Center for Sustainable Development at Qatar University from 2016 to 2024.

Maha Yassin is a research fellow with the Institute of Regional & International Studies at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, where she specializes in environmental policy, climate security, and activism in Iraq. Previously, she worked as a research fellow and outreach officer at the Clingendael Institute, where she managed the Basra Forum for Climate, Environment, and Security.

Neda Zawahri is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Cleveland State University. She studies environmental politics and environmental security in the Middle East and South Asia. Zawahri’s current research agenda focuses on adapting to climate change in the Middle East, the role of institutions in governing transboundary water resources, the political economy of water management, and water security in conflict-affected areas.