Download The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Arab Countries

The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in
the Arab Countries
John Bryden, and Karen Refsgaard
NILF, Oslo, Norway
ICRPS-OECD Workshop on the Water, Energy and Food Nexus
Memphis Tennessee, 18th May 2015
Plan
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Intro: Why the Arab region?
Why a Nexus Approach?
Water supplies and consumption
Energy production and consumption
Rural electrification
Food production and consumption
Institutional issues
Conclusion
Why the Arab Region?
– GDP per capita: $100-$100,000
– 5% of world’s population (360m)
• >50% of food calories imported
– Centre of conflicts around water
• <1% of global water resources
– Energy
• 57% of world’s proven oil reserves
• Enormous untapped solar energy reserve
– High vulnerability to climate change and conflicts
– Human rights issues
– Global impacts and implications
Why a ‘Nexus’ approach?
• Inextricable links between
Water, Food, Energy and
Human existence
– Especially important in
Arab countries
• Dysfunctional separate
governance systems need
to be ‘joined up’
– To ensure synergies, tradeoffs, and HR issues are
properly dealt with
Water
Challenges
• Arab region is in perpetual, and worsening, water deficit,
despite ancient ‘smart’ systems eg. Falaj in Oman
– Agriculture takes 85% of the water
• Many water related regional conflicts
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan (Jordan River)
Turkey-Iraq-Syria (Tigris and Euphrates)
N-S Sudan
Nile River
Ethiopia-Somalia (Jubba and Shabele)
Jordan and Saudi Arabia (Disi/Saq Aquifer)
UN World Water Development Report
2014 Vol.1.
“Water development and management programmes, if
planned properly, can serve multiple functions, from
contributing to energy and food production to helping
communities adapt to climate change. A nexus approach to
sectoral management, through enhanced dialogue,
collaboration and coordination, is needed to ensure that cobenefits and trade-offs are considered and that appropriate
safeguards are put in place”
• The body cannot function
without water
• Competition
– between agriculture,
industry, tourism and
people for water is
increasing
• Access to improved water
supplies
– 53.4m people lack access
– 70% of whom are in rural
areas
– case Lebanon =>
• Desalination plays an
increasingly important role,
but
– Only in the richer
countries
– Costs > $1 per gallon
– Pollutes
– Uses oil at present
• Insufficient attention to
– water conservation and
recycling
Human needs for
Water
Water Policy and Governance Challenges
• Water in chronic deficit
– while GDP, Population and Urbanisation are all increasing
• Access to clean potable drinking water
– a human right and MDG priority
• Food production takes 85%
– and yet there is only 50% self-sufficiency
• NPM in conflict with
– Human Rights approach and with IWRM
• Desalination not a realistic solution in the long run
– and the costs are beyond most people, and poor countries
Energy Challenges
• Supply
– Mostly from fossil fuel resources
– Increased supply comes at the cost of exports
• Demand
– has been rapidly growing
• Energy subsidised expecially in NOEC
– Who does it help?
• Grid infrastructure challenges
• Despite generally high electrification rates
– 23m mainly rural people in MENA region without electricity
– Electrification rates are especially in Yemen, Sudan, Djibouti,
Somalia and Eritrea
Energy hopes ...
• Renewables, especially solar
and wind
– But need adaptation of
technology, and lack
indigenous innovation systems
and competitive manufacture
– Wish – and some plans in
richer countries - to use for
desalination of water
• Off-grid, decentralised
solutions
<= case training course in Jordan
– But not necessarily popular
with large state owned and run
electical utilities
• Potential human rights issues
in future
Food Challenges
• Industrialisation of agriculture over 50 years has
severely depleted aquifers
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Irrigation systems are mostly inefficient/wasteful
85% of regions annual water use is for ag. (case Egypt)
Ag water use is subsidised
Waste water is largely unused
• Food is expensive
– The poor spend 35% to 65% of income on food
• Access to nutritious food is a human right
Food solutions
• More efficient irrigation, incentivised by tougher
regulations and pricing for ag use
– Focus on areas with adequate water resources eg
Ethiopia, S Sudan
• Utilise
– recycled wastewater via urban agriculture,
– more water harvesting
• Focus on basic foods for human nutrition
– but what about qat in Yemen?
• Improve dryland and rainfed agriculture,
– by developing new or improved drought-resistant
varieties (eg the Awasi sheep)
• A new approach to land tenure/ ownership/ rights
and communal property
– Ending ‘land grabs’, and ‘distributions of favour’(eg
Sudan)
Institutional Issues are the Key
• Human rights focus needed – access to food, water and energy for all!
– India’s National Food Security Act (2013) as a ‘model’?
– But not all Arab countries have signed the HR conventions, and some have with
reservations
• Land & water ownership, tenure and use rights need a new approach in which
markets must be heavily regulated
– Conflicts between Human Rights approach and New Public Management approach
• Bottom-up and needs-oriented approach
– Must be context-sensitive
– One size does not fit all!
Conclusions
• There are serious and inter-linked problems of
water, food and energy in the Arab countries
– Above all, Water, a major source of regional and
supra-regional conflicts, and a problem being
exacerbated by extremes of wealth and poverty, and
by climate change
• The nexus approach enables
– better joined-up governance,
– but leaves major institutional issues unresolved
• Especially Human Rights vs NPM approaches
• Land & Water Rights and Regulations
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
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