The Impact of the Internal Variables on Water Security in the Middle East (Water is a Foundation for Human Prosperity)

This paper deals with the origins of international conflicts over the use of rivers, lakes, or ground water aquifers. The Middle East (ME) has long balanced the competing water demands of households, industry, and agriculture. Careful management of water resources has been an absolute necessity in this region where annual renewable water supplies average about 435.2 billion cubic meters (BCM), compared to Africa's 3, 950 BCM, Asia's 12, 009 BCM, and the world total of 43, 764 BCM. The Middle East region's water security and internal variables has been worsening since 1960s, has not become a political issue because it has been possible to de-emphasize the problem. As it is fundamental to the internal variable in Middle East such as, political changes and tensions, social, economic, and environmental sustainability of every community and every political economy, water is a strategic resource. In political economies where water sustainability is narrowly defined as water self-sufficiency, water will be identified as a particularly strategic resource. A regional security complex is defined as the integration of regional relations resulting from the rapport de forces particular to the region, which is determined by asymmetries of power, the Middle East region, with its many ideological, religious, and geographical disputes, extensive water resources, such as the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, are coming under increasing population, irrigation, and energy pressure. And every major river in the region crosses international borders.