Author: Matt Luna
Glada Lahn works at the intersection between resource governance and geopolitics, economics and human security, specializing in the facilitation of expert dialogue and facilitation of communities of practice. Since joining Chatham House in 2004, Glada has led research on energy policy in the GCC, energy in humanitarian crises and the prospects for oil and gas producers during climate-related transition.
You began your career working on oil and gas in the MENA region. How did water come into the picture?
Sooner or later, water comes into everything. Early on at Chatham House, I was working on governance of the oil and gas sector in the Middle East. National oil companies, ministries and regulators kept airing concerns about the waste of oil and gas domestically. So in 2009, I worked with colleagues here and in the region on how countries could conserve fuel in the GCC.
Every time we listened to technical experts in Saudi Arabia and later in the UAE, Oman and Kuwait, water quickly came up. Since the economic boom that oil and gas created, water hasn’t been treated as valuable as cheap oil and gas can be used to pump up groundwater and desalinate sea water, and revenues can pay for food imports. Hyper cheap diesel encouraged crazy things. Like in the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia was the world’s sixth largest wheat exporter, because it could pump out the groundwater so cheaply with fuel prices at six to seven cents a litre – even now, it’s only double that for farm use.
Then there is the issue of water use in the oil industry itself. In Oman, for example, one barrel of oil can bring up 9 barrels of brackish, saline groundwater – there have been some innovative approaches there to using reedbeds to clean it up rather than using more subsidized electricity to pump it back into the ground. In Iraq, a study last year showed that you need three to five barrels of fresh water to produce every barrel of oil there, and another barrel for refined products. The government is looking to expand that production while it’s also suffering from this deadly water crisis.
And water crises do not stay within borders, do they?
No, right. You can see how worried GCC countries are right now about the risk of nuclear contamination from Iran to the sea water that they rely on for desalination. These kinds of problems underscore the shared interests in environmental security.
A few years ago, Chatham House worked with a number of institutes across Europe on an EU-funded project on Cascading Climate Risks, which examined how climate impacts in other parts of the world could compound with other dynamics on the ground and “cascade” across borders through, for example, trade, conflict and migration. I led a report on the Middle East and North Africa with input from a lot of experts in the region.
A key message was that managing water is going to be central to resilience – not only for urban fresh water supplies, but also for stemming rural to urban migration and for food security. This will mean better cooperation between neighbouring countries and more long-term, coordinated approaches from foreign investors, financiers and donors. In Syria, for example, if we want to see long-term stability and people returning safely to their homes, we need livelihood investments so people can start growing food in ways that uses water sustainably. Reconstruction needs to rehabilitate polluted streams and rebuild for a more water scarce, flood prone future.
Speaking of Syria, what has changed since you worked on the study in the Euphrates. Would you now look at transboundary water in the region differently?
So one of our Academy fellows, Nouar Shamout, was conducting a study on the Euphrates River around 2013-15, and I supported that research. This was just as civil war was engulfing Syria. The Euphrates river – which flows from Turkey, across Syria, into Iraq and into the Persian Gulf was controlled by different armed actors, including Daesh. We were seeing weaponization of water by Daesh and the Assad regime.
Nouar surveyed the troubled history of transboundary water cooperation – but while inadequate, there were some agreements to build on. At that time, we were hoping for some kind of return to stability in two or three years. Well, that conflict raged on for another ten years and the state of the river and capacity for managing it deteriorated.
So the first thing is the sheer scale of damage to address alongside transboundary management. There was the devastating outpouring of millions of people from the area, massive destruction of water infrastructure including water treatment plants and pipelines, along with the use of water to gain military strategic advantage – which today seems to have become normalized across the region.
Related to that is the loss of trust in international norms and laws and standards, especially given the actions of Israel and the US in the region, and the way that the U.S. and western country leaders have treated breaches in international law in comparison with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That affects countries willingness to participate in good faith in international conventions such as the UN Watercourses Convention.
Thirdly, you’ve got increasingly extreme climate impacts which – as mentioned – are having a worse effect where there is environmental degradation, and water is really the front line here. In 2022, for instance, the dust storms that affected Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Gulf were so intense not only because of the stronger winds, but due to mismanagement of land and water. Farm losses due to conflict, removal of plants and trees from the land and receding river flows created more dust to be swept up. This actually creates an incentive for transboundary cooperation – Kuwaiti funding is already being deployed to restore vegetation in southern Iraq to reduce the dust impacts.
What impact do you think the U.S. withdrawal of aid and other policies might have on cooperation for improving water security in the region?
The termination of USAID will be huge for some societies in the region – Yemen in particular for water and sanitation – and the earlier UNRWA cuts for Palestinians. But we don’t yet have a clear picture because deals are being struck in a more ad-hoc manner. Jordan managed to keep at least some of its U.S. funding for water, likely due to its strategic role in the region being located next to Israel and the Gulf.
In terms of a positive, you’ve seen this conversation arising among African economists on how some areas have become hobbled by aid dependence – as in “we need to harness this shock treatment to become more regionally integrated and build the capacity within our own government institutions.” This could be a long-term upside of aid withdrawal.
How do you see water fitting into current crises and geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East?
On weaponization of water, nowhere has this been more acute than in Gaza. The Israeli authorities and military have destroyed desalination and water treatment infrastructure – most of it World Bank or EU-funded – as well as cutting off water supplies from Israel. The immense human suffering and loss of life as a result of these actions are on show for all to see. If other countries want to have a positive influence on water in the region, they need to take steps to enforce international law. Right now, the failure of Western countries – and some in the region – to take concrete actions against genocidal behavior limits their ability to weigh in on water or climate resilience or really any environmental or human rights issues in future. Integrity is really at an all-time low.
Another finding of the CASCADES work is that environmental crises are becoming more frequent triggers for political unrest. This is because they spotlight inequality and question government legitimacy. One illustration comes from the Basra riots in 2018 which were spurred by mass water poisonings, and their violent state repression – which then fed into a larger uprising the following year. There was a young man being treated in a hospital in Southern Iraq after brushing his teeth with contaminated tap water. He was quoted as saying “We have a treasure trove of oil beneath our feet, so how is it possible we don’t have drinking water?
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At the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre, Glada has worked on a range of international resource-related projects which intersect with geopolitical, trade and development concerns. Glada has also worked independently for organizations including the International Energy Agency, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and various UN bodies. She has a background in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies (SOAS, University of London, University of Damascus and London School of Economics).