In the years following its inception in 1994, EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) promoted cooperative relations between Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians over issues pertaining to the region’s shared environmental heritage and resources. These were optimistic times of the Peace Process, when and an end to the bloody Israeli-Arab conflict seemed near.
But the turn of the Millennium saw us entering into a period of great turmoil and uncertainty. By 1998, the belief that peace in the Middle East is indeed within reach had faded in the face of the Oslo Accords’ failure to stand up to peoples’ expectations. Being a regional organization in a region where the very term Peace Process has come to mean increased violence and preservation of the status quo – was becoming harder than ever.
In order to stay relevant EcoPeace/FoEME, a top-down advocacy organization at its inception, decided to complement this classic method of work with a bottom-up approach of community led activism that emphasizes dialogue, confidence building, and cooperation activities on cross border natural resources, particularly shared waters. Despite the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2001 we managed to convince funders that cooperative relations between Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian communities were possible, and the organization’s 'Good Water Neighbors’ (GWN) project was launched early that year, initially involving 11 communities – five Palestinian, five Israeli and one Jordanian.
The project was designed to raise awareness of the shared water problems of these communities, educate youth and harness both adult residents and municipal staff to the task of changing reality on the ground. Based on identifying cross-border communities and utilizing their mutual dependence on shared water resources as a basis for developing dialogue and cooperation on sustainable water management, the project today includes 28 communities (11 Palestinian, nine Israeli and eight Jordanian), who share the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, the Mountain and Coastal Aquifers, and various cross border streams.
By addressing issues of sanitation and conservation the GWN project thus constitutes the basis for our efforts to advance the rehabilitation of these declining natural resources. Another major goal is to help these communities in developing the social and economic potential that the rehabilitation of these shared waters hold, with a strong emphasis on opportunities for tourism.
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2019 has only just begun, but it is already hard to imagine that there will be other extreme weather events with disastrous consequences such as cyclone Idai happening again this year. In all likelihood, such events will continue to occur as 2019 rolls on. Idai is, once more, proof of how devastating and toxic the mix of climate change, extreme weather events and poverty can be: Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe – countries that rank low in human development but contribute very little to global greenhouse gas emissions – suffer from some of the worst impacts of climate change.
adelphi has relaunched its exhibition Environment, Conflict and Cooperation (ECC) Exhibition to illustrate how unprecedented environmental changes interact with social, political, and economic risks to exacerbate conflict. We invite you to explore our online exhibition and to learn more about urgent issues of our time: climate, energy, migration, extractives, food and water.
Climate security risks are, by all interpretations, a global threat. But when it comes to setting a political climate security agenda, a handful of countries stand out. In an interview with Climate Diplomacy, Michaela Spaeth, Director for Energy and Climate Policy at the German Federal Foreign Office, highlights some of Germany’s goals and challenges in forwarding the issue during its 2019-20 membership in the UN Security Council.
The Planetary Security Conference 2019, which concluded on 20 February, saw a number of workshops being held on the Sahel region and specifically Mali, one of the Conference’s three spotlight regions. These workshops examined the region’s climate-water-security risks as well as the #doable actions and solutions to address these issues.