State Dept. Documents Reveal Biggest ME Worry - Water Shortages Destabilizing Everything

[hatrack]

EDIT

“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.

On Sept. 22 of that year, Seche sent a stark message to the U.S. State Department in Washington relaying the details of a conversation with Yemen’s minister of water, who “described Yemen’s water shortage as the ‘biggest threat to social stability in the near future.’ He noted that 70 percent of unofficial roadblocks stood up by angry citizens are due to water shortages, which are increasingly a cause of violent conflict.” Seche soon cabled again, stating that 14 of the country’s 16 aquifers had run dry. At the time, Yemen wasn’t getting much news coverage, and there was little public mention that the country’s groundwater was running out.

These communications, along with similar cables sent from Syria, now seem eerily prescient, given the violent meltdowns in both countries that resulted in a flood of refugees to Europe. Groundwater, which comes from deeply buried aquifers, supplies the bulk of freshwater in many regions, including Syria, Yemen and drought-plagued California. It is essential for agricultural production, especially in arid regions with little rainwater. When wells run dry, farmers are forced to fallow fields, and some people get hungry, thirsty and often very angry.

The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.

EDIT

https://www.revealnews.org/article/were-running-out-of-water-and-the-worlds-powers-are-very-worried/

[avebury]

1. Remember - Companies like Nestle don't look at water as a fundamental human right

but should be a marketable commodity.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-privatisation-of-water-nestle-denies-that-water-is-a-fundamental-human-right/5332238

The Privatization of Water: Nestlé Denies that Water is a Fundamental Human Right

The current Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, the largest producer of food products in the world, believes that the answer to global water issues is privatization. This statement is on record from the wonderful company that has peddled junk food in the Amazon, has invested money to thwart the labeling of GMO-filled products, has a disturbing health and ethics record for its infant formula, and has deployed a cyber army to monitor Internet criticism and shape discussions in social media.

This is apparently the company we should trust to manage our water, despite the record of large bottling companies like Nestlé having a track record of creating shortages:


Large multinational beverage companies are usually given water-well privileges (and even tax breaks) over citizens because they create jobs, which is apparently more important to the local governments than water rights to other taxpaying citizens. These companies such as Coca Cola and Nestlé (which bottles suburban Michigan well-water and calls it Poland Spring) suck up millions of gallons of water, leaving the public to suffer with any shortages. (source)

But Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Nor is it a human right. So if privatization is the answer, is this the company in which the public should place its trust?

Here is just one example, among many, of his company’s concern for the public thus far:


In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who’s to blame? He says it’s bottled water-maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. “The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet,” Dilwan says. (source)

Why? Because if the community had fresh water piped in, it would deprive Nestlé of its lucrative market in water bottled under the Pure Life brand.

[sulphurdunn]

8. But Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.”

Then neither are the claimed rights or continued existence of the Nestle corporation.

[aggiesal]

10. Anytime I see the word Privatization, I think we should call it what it really is ...

[font color=RED size=6]PROFITZATION![/font]

[MisterP]

16. social wars always break down when the oligarchs suddenly see that the armies they've hired

have turned around

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. You drew our attention this on DU in 2008, long before that cable

"Water Wells Beneath Sanaa Hit 1,000 Meters As Yemen Water Crisis Tightens"

We had a link in August 2009 to this: "Unprecedented water rationing in cities" is a thread title "Fighting in Yemen escalates" on 24th August 2009 - before the diplomatic cable (you can't read the thread now - you get a database error, like you do with various DU2 threads). And then threads like "Yemen's Capital Could Run Out Of Water by 2025", "Yemen's Water Crisis", and replies noting the water shortage, in 2010, and more threads.

DU is a good place for environmental and political news.

[Nihil]

17. 8 years and not only no improvement but an acceleration of the downward spiral.

> DU is a good place for environmental and political news.

Very true but things like this also make it a trifle depressing:
8 years on and all that can really be said is "We told you so."

[JDPriestly]

3. I woke up this morning before 5 a.m. with the thought that the TPP is really about

the privatization of water. It's a crazy thought . . . . . maybe. I probably had a nightmare about the TPP and water. I dream about the oddest things.

But then I go to DU and read this article. The TPP and this "new world order" does appear to me to be at least in part about water.

This is a topic we should continue to watch.

Is the drought in the Middle East due to climate change? Or is it due to the fact that so much water is pumped into oil wells? (I should know more about the drilling of oil wells considering my background but I don't know this. I do know that water is pumped into oil wells.)

Thanks for posting this article. As we watch the TPP which appears to MANDATE or REQUIRE that privatization be legal everywhere in every area that has been traditionally under democratically agreed to laws, we must observe how it might affect our water rights, our water laws.

[Kip Humphrey]

4. Then maybe instead of drones & cruise missiles we should be building desalinization plants.

duh.

[truebrit71]

5. Nope. That makes far too much sense.

How can we spread "democracy" around the planet if we can't blow shit up?

[Kip Humphrey]

6. Oh yeah. I forgot. And Hillary will continue doing the same unfortunately. We NEED Bernie.

[jwirr]

12. We desperately need an answer to this problem but every

time I read the words desalinization plants I remember the words of one of my science professors. He told us that we need to stop thinking that everything in the world in infinite. That all our resources will last forever. How many years of water from the ocean are there?

[Kip Humphrey]

13. Therefore, let the violence continue; let the children die? Nope, not an acceptable alternative.

The long-term solution needs to be addressed but, hopefully, not on the backs of the poor and the refugees.

As for, How many years of water from the ocean are there? More than you or your science profs think.

[jwirr]

15. My prof was talking about fossil fuels not the ocean. I am

the one who has wondered about the ocean. And yes there is a lot of water in the ocean. But if we continue to use it the way we do now - how many generations.

[happyslug]

18. A better solution may be just pumps and pipelines

Water evaporates, especially in hot temperatures. Sand and other types of soil filters out salt. Thus pumping water from the Red Sea and just leaving the Sun and soil do its work, you may outdo this drought without the use of costly distillation equipment. In the US this has been proposed for decades for Death Valley (Death Valley has an advantage, the electrical power to pump the water to Death Valley, can be regain by the water powering generators as it pours into Death Valley. Given Death Valley is below sea level the electrical usage may even out). Similar proposals have been made for the Qattara Depression on the Libyan-Egyptian border, the Dead Sea and the Aral Sea (through the Aral Sea would be the most costly, it is the furthermost from the ocean, most plans for it involved diverting Caspian sea water and/or Siberian river waters).

The shear amount of water released into the Atmosphere is produce rain around where ever the water is sent to. Fresh water wells can be drilled a short distance from the salt water and if far enough, it would be fresh.

The biggest problem with such plans is while the water pumped into the new system, will be unusable, the springs and rain will be usable BUT not controllable by the people who built the pumps and pipes. Thus the wealthy dismiss such plans as NOT viable, for they can not figure out a way to deny access to such water to the poor peasants around the salt water reservoir (and God Forbid that actual WILD ANIMALS would get to use the water).

Sorry, they are ways to at least address the problem, but it means spending money that will NOT benefit the wealthy.

[Stonepounder]

7. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

We plebeians are willing to put up with a lot. We will put up with falling wages, corrupt governments, income disparity, shrinking job markets and the like. We will put up with bread and circuses. But...

When we can't feed our children or give them enough to drink, when we can't put a roof over their heads, when we can't afford medical care to keep them alive, then the blockades go up and the pitchforks come out. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Or, as Yeats put it in 'The Second Coming':

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Seems to me that we are rapidly approaching that point.

[jwirr]

14. Chris Hedges talked this morning about the plans to deal

with the Bangladesh people when the water begins to rise. It is already happening - India is building a wall to keep them right where they are.

Unfortunately when the worst happens the battle is usually between those in the middle and those at the bottom. THAT is why the rich are all about getting richer.

[quoddy woman]

9. Nestle will control what's left of us.

The next wars will be fought over water. Pay attention!

[mountain grammy]

11. We really need a change in our foreign policy..

It's more critical now than ever.