Counterintelligence really has to broaden its mandate. A unified Arab water intelligence and counterintelligence authority would be most interesting!
Alarming water loss in Middle East, NASA study says
DOHA, Qatar – A NASA study found that an amount of freshwater almost the size of the Dead Sea has been lost in parts of the Middle East due to poor management, increased demands for groundwater and the effects of a 2007 drought.
The study, to be published Friday in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, examined data over seven years from 2003 from a pair of gravity-measuring satellites. Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 117 million acre feet of its total stored freshwater.
About 60 percent of the loss resulted from pumping underground reservoirs for ground water and another fifth due to impacts of the drought including declining snow packs.
Phi Beta Iota: The Middle East and North Africa are the perfect region for applying integrated intelligence (and counterintelligence). For example, completely apart from the massive Israeli theft of Arab water to support an agricultural industry that uses 50% of the water to produce less than 5% of the Israeli GDP, we have the successful resurrection of the Dead Sea by indigenous methods, growing figs and lemons with existing rainfall harvested by tradtional furrows. We also have the dramatic combination of solar energy and water desalination that is proving so successful in Australia and creating square miles of supermarket produce.
See Also:
2004 (US) Spinney Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
George Abney: Emerging Desalination Technology
Graphic: Stress on Great Lakes Water + Water RECAP
Graphic: Water Footprint Across Your Day…
Half a Trillion Dollars to Build Huge Desertec Plan?
Reference: Buried No Longer – Confronting America’s Water Infrastructure Challenge
Search: Aquifers of the World + Water RECAP
