Water as a Source of Cooperation rather than Conflict in the Middle East

Organization: Friends of the Earth Middle East
Geographic Area: Middle East
Founder and Director: Gidon Bromberg
Link: www.foeme.org

Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is a regional environmental organization that brings together Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian environmentalists. Our primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect our shared environmental heritage. In so doing, we seek to advance both sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in the region.

In 2002 we launched the "Good Water Makes Good Neighbors" project in Palestine, Israel and Jordan. We believe that because water knows no political or geographical boundaries and is such a vital resource, it can become an impetus for cooperation and not just conflict.

Our strategy was to first pick out the neighboring communities that had the maximum impact on each other. Five sets of partnering communities across national boundaries that shared common groundwater or a river were identified. In each pair of communities we zeroed-in on common issues that the citizens could lobby for together for mutual benefit.

For instance, the agricultural fields on both sides of the Nablus and Alexander rivers are being contaminated by raw sewage. We conducted a signature campaign and thousands of people signed on. The petition – from both communities – called on their governments, as well as the international community, to help change the situation by building a sewage treatment plant. This petition will be presented at a meeting planned in consultation with both mayors and the German government who had originally promised to help solve the problem.

Along another part of this border, where plans are afoot to build a sewage treatment plant, the community has agreed that treated wastewater from the plant will be siphoned off to Palestine, thus increasing their water for agriculture.

Because our work is of a delicate nature, we are careful to build confidence and acceptance among the communities along the respective borders. One strategy to elicit community participation is to target different activities for different groups of people.

We take care to draw FoEME's staff members from the local community, and this goes a long way in building trust. Through our staff, we have access to heads of community groups, principals, teachers, community workers – people who are generally inquisitive by nature and who have a commitment to fostering peace in the region. Their work is often reported via local/regional papers, and since we ensure that the mayor or the village council head joins hands with us, publicity – and action – is assured.

In each community our local staff create a group of water trustees – young volunteers who are committed to helping their community better understand water issues of their own, and of their neighboring community.

We also try to take up local water management projects to act as concrete action examples and further build confidence in what we hope to achieve with their support. We are in the process of converting schools into model water-saving buildings. Water is collected from the roof and stored for use in toilets and in the school garden.

Most recently, we launched joint petitions where the community on both sides of the divide is lobbying their respective governments and the international donor community to accord top priority to water issues. They're pitching it as a path toward development of the region.

More than 4,000 signatures were collected from the cities of Tulkarem (Palestine) and Emek Hefer (Israel). In both communities, sewage routinely floods their agricultural fields.

People were desperate for sewage treatment facilities and for reservoirs for storing fresh water. Both mayors support this petition, and public events – local and international – are in the pipeline to act as pressure tactics.

Another example of our work is when we launched a regional call to save the Dead Sea. We prepared papers, posters stickers, etc., and held public events.

For the first time ever, government officials were brought together to talk about the future of this shared ecosystem. Israel, Jordan and Palestine have openly declared that the sea needs to be saved, and are proposing building a canal to it from the Red Sea. Though we have concerns about this solution from an environmental perspective, the fact is that they have reached an agreement on the need for a cooperative solution. That we are left arguing about how to go about it, is a better position to be in. We can now focus on the details.

Information about the contributor:

Gidon Bromberg is the founder and Israeli Director of Friends of the Earth Middle East and is deeply committed to peace and environmental protection in the region. He is a lawyer and political economist by training and holds a masters degree in International Environmental Law. He is a fellow of the New Israel Fund, is a member of the Israel National Commission for the Environment, of the Israel World Heritage Committee and of the inter-Ministerial working group concerning the Dead Sea. Email: gidon22@foeme.org