Part of Annotated Bibliography

The Guardian: What Does the Arab World Do When It's Water Runs Out? -- Media Source

This is a reliable media source that describes the impending event of the Middle East running out of water. The article explains that the water shortage is relegated to the shadows because the talk is always about oil. The experts predict riots on a scale unseen at this point in time.

One expert claims "In the future the main geopolitical resource in the Middle East will be water rather than oil. The situation is alarming." The situation is inescapable. As one experts says, "Unless there is a technological breakthrough or a miraculous discovery, the Middle East will not escape a serious [water] shortage."

This information is credible because it is a well-established British newspaper and this article was written by the head of the environmental section of The Guardian. It is not written by a blogger or a unqualified journalist. This author has experience in the environmental field and is qualified to make predictions about the future of the environment. This article will help improve our papers because it gives us a taste of what the public will read, not just what scholars and professors will read.

Vidal, John. "What Does the Arab World Do When It's Water Runs Out?." The Guardian, February 20, 2011. Accessed February 22, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/20/arab-nations-water-running-out.

(Sean Manley)

Global Ecology in Human Perspective, Charles H. Southwick

This a reliable tertiary source that describes how human interactions to nature has caused climate change to occur and has portray the way humans treat Earth very badly in more of a scientific form. But it does mentions about the Middle East; what it used to be, its downfall and it current condition. It talked about how the Middle East caused desertification during ancient times by cutting forests, fields cleared, agriculture being accelerated. Even though they did not meant for this to happen it did show how “humans were influential in accelerating and intensifying desert formation and were often the key factor” (130). It also describes how ancient techniques of war craft can effect the environment that has affected the way the people of the Middle East live. This will be useful information because in contemporary times, the Middle East is having problems with wars and misuses of agricultural practices that could hurt them in the future. It is as if history is going to be repeated.

Southwick, Charles H. Global Ecology in Human Perspective. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
(Gabe Simkover)






Climate Change Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

This is a reliable internet source because it talks about reasons in which climate change has effected the Middle East and future implications of what could happen to the Middle East which are all negative. Some of the negative consequences could be more intense flash floods, long-term salinizations of inland aquifer systems, lower yields of major crops and an increase likelihood of sand and dust storms. This is important to refer to because this shows what will happen if the world keeps this exponential growth in our carbon footprint that it will negatively affect the Middle East in the future. This article even points out which topics the Middle East needs to pay more attention to; Climate change and Tran boundary water resources and Agriculture and food security. This will be important information that could be place near the end of the paper, because it could show that this is what the Middle East needs to do before anything gets any worse.

Sowers, Jeannie, and Erika Weinthal. "Climate Change Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa." The Dubai Initiative Havard. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Web. .
(Gabe Simkover)





Water Wars in the Middle East: a Looming Threat

This is a reliable peered review source because it mentions about how much importance water is to the region of the Middle East and the wars for territory that will give them some water for the upcoming years. It mentions about the water wars between Lebanon and Israel, in which it mentions about gives background information like; how both ended p with droughts, historical of violent confrontations between Israel and Lebanon, distrust, varying development needs and territorial disputes. In Israel, the average citizen uses up to 348 liter of water per person per day while countries like Lebanon uses below a hundred liters of water per person per day. This demonstrates how both countries live different lifestyles and that because Israel is a stronger country that they will have a better chance of taking over water supplies that Lebanon would need too. Lebanon will eventually suffer with less drinking water and enough water for agriculture. This could definitely be foreshadowing the future when more industrialized countries start running out of water.


Amery, Hussein A. "Water Wars in the Middle East: a Looming Threat." The Geographical Journal 168.4 (2002): 313-23. Print.
(Gabe Simkover)





Bonne, Alfred. "Land and Population in the Middle East: Trends and Prospects." Middle East Journal 5, no. 1 (1951): 39-56.

This journal article by Alfred Bonne discusses the growing apprehension towards the increase in the earth's population as against the limited potentialities of its natural resources. Discussing grave implications of this increase unaccompanied by any adequate expansion of food production and how the Middle East is and is not prepared for this event. Discussions of available land and water resources are discussed in terms of population growth and how generally the standards of living and the levels of economic, social, and political organization in nearly all parts of the Middle East are low. “Assuming an inferior grade of productivity for part of the Middle East lands as compared with areas of the temperate zone, we are still entitled to say that for the region as a whole there is no need to be concerned over the relationship between land and population for a considerable time to come”.The only exception is Egypt. However this does not take into account water needs but only land and food.

This article is a reliable peer reviewed article. The MEI is a nonprofit organization based in Washington D.C. Whose mission is to "promote knowledge of the Middle East in America and strengthen understanding of the United States by the people and governments of the region." The MEI checks out on Ulrichs.
(Jeremy Gavelin)




Hirsch, Abraham. "Water Legislation in the Middle East." The American Journal of Comparative Law 8, no. 2 (1959): 168-186. http://www.jstor.org/stable/837457 . (accessed February 14, 2011).

This journal article by Abreaham Hirsch talks about water laws in the middle east. Water legislation in the Middle East has a recorded history of four millennia. Water legislation is a policy-making instrument in the hands of a government intent on mobilizing national water resources to the fullest degree possible and Water legislation is significant in terms of the development of the Middle East. This article goes briefly through history and how more modern water laws came to be. The article focuses on four main levels of water laws. Local customs (based predominately on ancient law), religious law (or civil-law provisions of religious law codes), Ottoman law that has survived the disintegration of the empire, and new laws. This article offers valuable insight into how modern practices of water rights may have been based on or the rights that the people believe that they should have. This could be good background information for a report based upon water.

The American Society of Comparative Law was founded in 1951 "to promote the comparative study of law and the understanding of foreign legal systems . . . [and] private international law." With more non-United States sponsor members joining, the Society has become an international forum for comparative studies. The ASCL checks out on Ulrichs.
(Jeremy Gavelin)




"Our Common Future, Chapter 11: Peace, Security, Development, and the Environment - A/42/427 Annex, Chapter 11 - UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements." UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements. Hyperlinked collection of more than 500 key United Nations documents. http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-11.htm#I (accessed February 22, 2011).

This policy document from the United Nations discusses environmental stress as a source of conflict, conflict as a cause of unsustainable development, and steps towards security and sustainable development. Focusing mostly on political issues as a result of environmental issues this article points out how conflict occurs when political processes are unable to handle the effects of environmental stress resulting from erosion and desertification, for example. In addition to the problems of poverty, injustice, and environmental stress, competition for non-renewable raw materials, land, or energy can create tension. It was the quest for raw materials that cause much of the competition between colonial powers. Conflicts in the Middle East inevitably contain the seeds of great power intervention and global conflagration, in part because of the international interest in oil.

This policy document is a reliable source as it was on the website http://www.un-documents.net which was supplied as a link by Dr. Tappan. UN Documents: Gathering a Body of Global Agreements has been compiled by the NGO Committee on Education of the Conference of NGOs from United Nations web sites.
(Jeremy Gavelin)

Climate Change May Boost Middle East Rainfall

Recent projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised fears that storm activity in the eastern Mediterranean would decline this century if global warming continues on present trends. In turn, that would have reduced rainfall by between 15 and 25 per cent over a large part of the so-called Fertile Crescent.

This is land encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and north-eastern Iran and the strategically important headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

When University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre researcher Dr Jason Evans analysed the IPPC projections, he found that the region's agricultural base faced significant challenges as a result. About 170,000 square kilometres of viable rain-fed agricultural land would be lost; a longer dry season would limit grazing on rangelands; and changes in the timing of maximum rainfall would force farmers in northern Iran to change cropping strategies and even crop types. The results are to be published in the journal Climatic Change.

But the IPCC projections were based on the results of global modelling of climate change, which tends to obscure smaller-scale regional effects.

"The global models are good for investigating what's likely to happen on a planetary scale but the resolution is quite coarse when looking at a more localised regional scale," says Dr Evans. "It's a bit like enlarging a digital photograph until it becomes pixellated and all sorts of detail is blurred out."

"Simulating the climate of the region is a challenge for climate models, due in part to the high natural inter-annual variability, the topography of the region - which includes multiple mountain ranges and inland seas - and the presence of a slight cooling trend in recent decades despite the global trend being a warming."

So in a second far more detailed study, to be published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology, Evans used regional climate modelling specific to the Middle East, and the result was very different.

It emerged that while storm activity over the eastern Mediterranean would indeed decline, moisture-bearing winds would be channelled inland more often and diverted by the Zagros Mountains, bringing an increase of over 50% in annual rainfall to the Euphrates-Tigris watershed.

"We need to confirm this result with other models, but a 50 per cent increase in rainfall in such an important agricultural area is a much more hopeful scenario than a 15 per cent decline," says Evans