This paper offers an assessment of the political challenges, and opportunities, that climate change and increasing water scarcity pose for Arab states, particularly those that do not have large reserves of oil and natural gas. Most of the existing academic literature on “water politics” in the Middle East focuses on the international dimensions of growing water scarcity and has neglected the impact that this phenomenon can have on politics within Arab countries. This paper seeks to help fill this gap in the literature through a case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. While Jordan is not representative of all Arab countries, its status as one of the most “water poor” countries in the region makes it a critical case for understanding the various challenges that Arab countries in general will face as population growth, rising regional temperatures, and increasingly volatile meteorological events lead to lower levels of freshwater per capita. Moreover, Jordan is currently experiencing developments similar to those of many other Arab countries (e.g., extreme social frustration with economic and political inequality, poor government management of water resources, and growing tensions between social groups). The paper will illustrate that Jordanian and other Arab governments’ nearly exclusive focus on increasing the supply of available freshwater is short sighted, ecologically destructive, and creates the potential for serious political challenges to political elites in the region who are already weak and vulnerable. The paper will also analyze several examples of current conflicts between the Jordanian government on the one hand, and groups such as farmers and municipal water consumers on the other. This analysis will demonstrate the areas where the Jordanian government is failing to responsibly manage freshwater resources and suggest solutions which are sensitive to the politically volatile task of imposing water conservation practices on social groups already frustrated with the government’s poor management of the economy and haphazard political reform efforts. The paper’s conclusions are based primarily on information acquired from personal interviews with Jordanian water experts and political analysts during January 2012. In addition, the paper relies heavily on recent publications by the Agence Française de Développement (AFP), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and the Jordanian government in order to empirically demonstrate the dire state of freshwater resources in the kingdom.

Stories about “green carnage” often get lost among headlines that emphasize civilian and material losses during times of war. War’s violation of the environment, however, has far-reaching consequences on the lives and livelihoods of many communities and on these communities’ perceptions of invading governments. For many civilians living in agrarian communities, for example, trees are tended with immeasurable care and protection, across many generations, and their loss is cause for lamentation and outrage. “We want 5 troops dead for each tree they cut down,” a lament offered by a ten-year-old boy as he witnessed his family’s orange trees being bulldozed by American troops in Iraq, is a response to such a loss. This boy’s outrage, captured by the Iraqi blogger Riverbend, is a powerful illustration of the kinds of connections drawn between human and non-human world(s) by contemporary Arab women writers. I argue that these connections are a vital and often unrecognized feature of contemporary war diaries and “blogs” authored by Arab women. Using Ecocriticism as a framework, I provide a textual analysis Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning, Zeina El-Khalil’s “Beirut Update” (2006), and El-Haddad’s Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between (2010), highlighting the environment-centered sections that document and protest the violations committed against the environment in the name of security and the Global War on Terror. I demonstrate how these environment-centered diaries contribute to contemporary debates about the impact of war on the environment and how these narratives affirm an increasingly sophisticated environmental consciousness among civilians in war-torn countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine.

The literature addressing the extent to which freshwater is infused with the potential for conflict, and the implications of lack of water availability, can be broadly divided into two schools of thought. The first approach is that of ‘neo-Malthusianism’, whose proponents contend that freshwater scarcity is pervasive and growing, and will be an increasing irritant to interstate relations in the future and a salient cause of conflict. In contrast, the ‘Cornucopians’ argue that scarcity is an eminently soluble problem, that a host of technological, innovative and institutional remedies can be brought to bear to alleviate scarcity, and that collaboration and cooperation, not conflict, has been and will be the norm in interstate relations over shared water resources. Evaluating both theories, I find that neo-Malthusians offer a more plausible account of future interstate water relations in the Middle East. Growing physical constraints to water supplies and the shortcomings of current technological and institutional mechanisms for easing scarcity will continue to render access to freshwater a likely flash-point of future antagonisms in the region. Despite the rapidly approaching natural limits to consumption of available water supplies, the adoption of several key policy interventions by Middle Eastern states and/or the international community may well alleviate water scarcity to an appreciable degree, and prevent intensifying competition over scarce water resources from erupting in violent conflict. These policy options and their merits are discussed and justified in the final section of the article.

The planned Ilisu Dam will inundate a 12,000-year history, including the ancient town of Hasankeyf along the Tigris valley in the pre-dominantly Kurdish-populated southeast Turkey. There have been public campaigns to stop the construction of the dam in recent years by activists in Turkey and in Europe including sponsoring the creation of two 2010 video-clips of two popular figures from Turkey. Tarkan’s, written and performed with Orhan Gencebay, Uyan (“Wake Up” in Turkish) video-clip depicts the damages that environmental pollution has caused in Turkey and around the world. Tarkan has embraced a leading role in environmental activism in Turkey. He is also one of the liberal environmental activists trying to stop the construction of the Ilisu Dam, which would destroy the environment and archeological sites in Hasankeyf. Produced and directed by famous director Fatih Akin, the video-clip of Aynur Dogan’s Rewend (“Nomad” in Kurdish) implies the need for the preservation of the tradition and historical monuments with a subtler environmental activist tone. Tarkan, on the other hand, a mainstream Turkish musician, is attempting to transcend the cultural binary between Turkish and Kurdish citizens of Turkey in order to reach a wider swath of the population to mobilize a more easily accessible discourse for the liberal audience in Turkey. This presentation will be a comparative textual and contextual analysis of two video-clips written and performed by Tarkan, the most popular Turkish vocalist and pop music singer; and Aynur, one of the most popular Kurdish vocalists of the 21st century. Going beyond the lyrical comparison of those two songs dedicated to the environmental pollution and the preservation of the historical town of Hasankeyf respectively, this presentation will recap two competing visions of Turkish and Kurdish environmentalism in contemporary Turkey dealing in the context of the Kurdish uprising. By questioning the implications of ownership of the space and heritage of Kurds in Hasankeyf as well as the environmental sensibilities of the liberal Turkish people, this presentation will compare two popular singers’ attempts to relate with the land, space, history, environment, and ownership in their musical expressions.