Well, good evening, everybody, thank you very much for joining us this evening, my name's Michael Willis.
I'm the director of the Middle East Centre here at Antony's College at University of Oxford.
And it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the sick, you know, Friday seminar series of Michaelmas Term.
Now those of you who've been following the series this time will know,
but we have been focussing on the theme of the environments in the Middle East this term for our sales.
And having looked in previous weeks at Jordan, Tunisia, the Gulf and Iran,
we tend to look at Iraq as evening and our speaker to talk about Iraqis is Dr. Michael Mason.
We're delighted to have with us. Dr. Mason is director of the Middle East Centre at London School of Economics.
We have a surfeit of directors of Middle East Centres on this on this call tonight, as you called Michael.
Go Michael as well. So yes, it must be something that Michael being director of Middle East Sentence.
Dr. Mason is also associate professor of the Department of Geography and Environment
and Associates at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and Environment,
and is the author of a number of books on environmental issues, both generally,
most recently, transparency in global environmental governance that came out in 2014.
Also, the new accountability environmental responsibility across borders came out in 2005,
but also books specifically relating to the issue of the environment in the Middle East,
most recently co-edited Volume Renewable Energy in the Middle East, which came out in 2009.
Tonight, as I mentioned,
we will be speaking about Iraq and we'll be speaking under the title of failing flows the politics of water management in southern Iraq.
Michael. Thank you very much, Michael. I shall go to screen share now.
Welcome everybody. Yeah. Thank you very much, Michael, for it, for you and colleagues for this kind invitation to come to the belief centre.
Oxford, it is strange. I am actually here at the Millicent Oxford and I had hoped when we originally planned
this that this would be a meeting in person with academics and students and such.
Unfortunately, that has not happened, but I have actually made the journey here to allow me to meet colleagues at Oxford.
So thanks very much for the invitation. I appreciate that.
Let me say first, this is a piece of research which was funded through the Conflict Research Programme.
Iraq, which was a UK government funded programme between twenty seventeen, finished a five year programme and conflict research programme.
Iraq Work. There were other countries which were being research under this programme, and I see the Iraq programme,
as was very ably directed by my colleague Alesi Professor Toby Dodge, who I give thanks to for guidance on issues around Iraq.
Now I'm an environmental geographer.
I look at water management, water infrastructure, environmental resources and politics, and this talk is basically about a policy brief,
which is one of the outputs of the conflict research programme Iraq looking at water management in southern Iraq,
particularly looking at Basra City Basin, the government,
this research there was a team of us involved give credit to my colleagues on the team at my Iraq research as I will be,
and my LSC based researcher Zainab Mahdi were both involved in this project.
There is a report policy report which came out for this project.
I can show you the screen, the hard copy here, which we have available, and there will be a link if anybody's interested.
If they want to see the version of this report, which we can make available to you via this.
This series, and also it's available on the LSC Middle East and to a website now.
The policy brief is quite focussed that we hardly have to stay here from UK government
interested in us doing a policy brief as a separate academic paper written out,
which is currently on the second review,
giving a more historical context of the sort of water management politics in southern Iraq in the past decade or so.
But for this particular project we had as the kind of the aim to look at the water situation in 2018,
very specific kind of, and I'll get the reasons for that shortly.
Why 2018 after 2018. But the report just go briefly into the sort of long historical context in terms of a conflict affected water
management sector going back to the Iran-Iraq war and then obviously conflict the more recent conflict in the UK,
US coalition invasion, occupation and civil conflict, also an ISO related violence in Iraq.
The policy, if you like background for this sort of post occupation,
the Coalition Provisional Authority CPA kind of template for the rehabilitation of
infrastructure in Iraq and the focus on this policy brief is on the water sector.
Why do we pick 2018 as the starting point?
Because there were big protests that took place in Basra in 2018 over major water pollution incident in which almost 20000 people hospitalised.
These protests broke out onto the streets. There were also grievances around other public services,
electricity and general sort of disaffection with the sort of city and the provincial government.
And we were in for this policy brief. But we're interested in what's gone wrong.
Why is the water sector not functioning and can we sort of specify what the issues are now?
The tap water in Basra has been undrinkable. Basically, it's the 1990s most households buy water from private vendors.
This is a picture of one in November 2020. And although the tap water delivered by the authorities is supposed to be portable and clean,
it's never used for drinking is even to use it for sort of washing up.
And, you know, some people in the city. So at best it's used to wash cars.
Now, one of the key starting points with this work is that the large proportion of the
population the government isn't actually connected to the public water network.
As part of the data collection. For this study, we were gathering statistics and data from the Basra Water Directorate to which we're thankful.
It wasn't easy because the records are quite fragmented and most of them are not digitalised.
So this involved chasing up sort of paper copies of what's going on in terms of water infrastructure, water management.
So at least the aim for this policy brief, we're looking at the problems in the water supply and treatment infrastructure in Basra government.
The methodology involved interviews with what I would call insiders, water engineers, water managers, public officials,
but also people in civil society who who talk about water management as an issue in Basra,
including civil society activists and religious leaders also gathered data from from Basra Water Director.
Now, as I said, this is a policy brief from talking to the academic paper.
This is academic paper works on some theoretical ideas to account for what's
been happening with the water management kind of failing in Basra government,
which I'm quite happy to kind of go to in questions or discussion. But I won't mention that we'll go into three more in this presentation.
But basically, the key kind of theoretical frameworks, if you're interested, are political ecology and the idea of vascular sort of governance.
As a political marketplace inspired here by my my colleague Toby Dodge's application,
this concept to Iraq and Alex de Waal for applied military to Africa,
which is the idea of understanding the governance in Iraq and southern Iraq,
specifically as a kind of transactional politics, when and politics in which political loyalty and support is bought.
OK. And so in terms of the theoretical work, it's working out how that political marketplace feeds into water management.
Now this is a map in the in the report. So if you if you go to the report, you can look at this in more detail.
One of the things that struck us looking at this situation and there's lots of great literature on the on the so-called water crisis in Basra.
And what we wanted to do with this study is try and be a little bit more granular if you like a little bit
more almost forensic and find out what's actually happening in terms of water flows and water treatment.
The basic problem is that Basra city and again, the focus areas in Basra city, it's really dependent on the paddock now.
This is the dash line on the map.
The Better Canal is a sort of 240 kilometre long canal which brings water from the Gulf of Canal, taking water from the Tigris to Basra.
Now, this better canal was built in the 1990s, a long canal.
And the reason Basra is dependent on the better canal, it would say,
was surely best is what next to the Shatt al-Arab, the Shatt al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The Shatt al-Arab is so polluted by chemicals, by heavy metals, by all sorts of things,
by agricultural sort of flows that is unusable, pretty much unusable in terms of water treatment.
So the whole idea with the Bateau Canal is to provide a fresh water supply for Basra City.
This means Basra City is very much dependent on this particular canal.
Now, one of the things we can talk about,
perhaps and discussion about go into great detail here is the Shatt al-Arab has become more and more saline because of flow reduction since the 1970s,
attributed to upstream dam construction on both, particularly the Euphrates and, more recently, the Tigris in Turkey.
Turkey in particular, also Syria and also Iran, particularly Iran, recently with some of two tributaries which feed into the Shatt al-Arab.
This flow reduction is increasing the seasonal summer incursion of seawater from the Persian Gulf.
This is now reaching all the way up to Basra. OK. So it's sort of over 100 kilometres year.
This salinity is increasing the unsuitability of the water,
which is extracted from the al-Arab because some water is still extracted from the Shatt al-Arab for water treatment for use in Basra.
So what happens? One of the things we found out talk to people about what happens is that there's a rationing system.
Allocation system where the shuttle water is mixed with Guadalcanal Canal Water,
and one of the things to explain is what happened with the 2018 water crisis,
and we looked at the water data, water quality indicators and they'll shoot up in summer 2018 in terms of very, very poor quality.
Even after treatment is the better canal flows were far less.
I'll say shortly why that was so and reduced flows. The Vatican, our fresh water forcing authorities to extract water from the Shatt al-Arab.
It made the water much, much more difficult to treat.
And some of the key problems in 2018 with the treatment systems were overwhelmed by the heavily saline polluted water,
even when it was mixed with the water from the bladder canal. So.
The list for the 2018 crisis,
we can see that the trigger of the collapse of water quality is related to a marked reduction in flows from the battered canal.
If I go back, if I can do that, it's a little bit slow the transition.
One of the reasons being is the better canal was built in the 1990s and the U.N. sanctions regime at the time.
The Iraqi government did not have the resources to build it in a way where it would be more efficient.
So, for example, one thing that strikes you this is the Badr Corps before it reaches Basra City, the barracks and now is open.
So you lose a great deal of water from evacuation the better canal.
At this point, you see pretty solid concrete lining. This concrete lining is not repeated for the holding of the canal.
So some parts of the bad economy are prone to collapse.
The Americans in in 2003 spent some quite significant money trying to rehabilitate the battered canal,
but didn't solve this sort of long term problems with the basic infrastructure not being very sound.
Another big issue the Badr Corps now you don't see, but this picture is often clogged up with Holmwood with aquatic plants,
which is a big problem for the water treatment plants in Basra.
A lot of time taking out this is aquatic plant, which some people attribute actually interestingly to increased temperatures,
increase water temperatures as a result of climatic change. So going back to the water treatment situation in Basra,
Basra is very dependent on a quite small scale water treatment technology called compact water treatment units.
S.W.A.T use, we use the acronym. These are kind of what we might call the water infrastructure workhorse workhorses in
Basra because you supply over 80 percent of treatment capacity across the government,
over 300 units and 90 percent of treatment in Basra city itself, about 198 units.
And these have tended to be favoured by both the Iraqi state and the provincial government and international donors as a good,
resilient, temporary technology. Why? Because they're modular and mobile.
They were large, but you can move individual units around. You can have a water treatment plant, which might have multiple units.
You can take one unit out and the rest continue working. OK.
So this has been the preferred kind of water I can say.
Preferred, I would say, actually enforced water treatment infrastructure technology for Basra in the past couple of decades.
However, to work, these combat water treatment units need the regular water flow from the Badr Canal.
And one of the things with irregular flows from the Vatican now is they're not getting the water
in sufficient quality or quantity rather to produce reliable potable water for Basra residents.
Now in this study, we focussed on two particular plants.
We looked at two treatment plants in Basra, and the key one is this one, which is the OR0 or Alaba's water treatment plant,
because this is the gateway, this receives all the water from the Bladder Canal District.
Some of the water itself and then distributes that water to residents in Basra city, but then channels other the rest of the water.
The more water it has a preliminary filtration. But the rest of the world water, as it's called, is sent to nine water treatment plants in Basra.
Now the issue here is if the production now is failing.
In terms of water flows, you have a knock on cascading failure throughout the whole system.
This is what happened in summer 2018. The OR0, or Alaba's water treatment plant also has its own problems,
and these are reported by in interviews with engineers and managers in terms of heavily corroded rainwater collection basins.
Problems form, as I mentioned, from aquatic plant accumulation alongside the storage basins for the for the Osirak plant.
If the bladder canal fails, the storage basins only give you up to five days capacity to keep the water running into water treatment use in Basra.
So there's an issue here. There has been an issue in terms if the system suffers a shock.
Remember, we're talking about is a system resilient. Then there's only five days capacity, only five days storage capacity.
This is a big issue. This is one of the reasons for the failure again in summer 2018.
Another reason is that there is extensive illegal what's called water tapping, including from the Osirak plant.
Different estimates of this estimate from the UN agencies, about 40 percent of the water.
I've seen estimates distributed by this plant is lost due to leakages, inefficient water sort of channels and illegal connexions,
illegal connexions of extensive use for domestic use, for commercial use and so forth.
So. So there's an issue not early enough war to reach the odds of a plan, if not water,
which is the idea of a plant is enough water then getting through to the water treatment plants supplied from the OR0 plant.
Just to go back quickly, the other water treatment plant below Typekit,
so we look at one of the water treatment plants, which was being supplied by OR0 and the water treatment unit.
You can see in this photograph of water shim plant called algae there, which is about 10 kilometres southwest of Azure City.
And we were interested in looking at this beautiful water treatment plant when we were doing the research.
All of the compact water treatment units were out of use.
The Iraqi government had promised in the start of 2020 some major investment to rehabilitate them all out of use.
That meant this plant was not actually treating water.
It was doing some very basic sort of like chlorination to the water and then pumping the water on this water was not usable for residents.
This caused a big issue in our Zubair, forcing residents even more to go to private water alternative supply sources.
So we see major failings in terms of water treatment capacity going back to the key observer plan.
So we picked these two water treatment plants in terms of and we wanted to do more.
But they were there were constraints in this research,
as many would understand in terms of COVID the pandemic in last year and also the security situation in Basra.
The research or the interviews from the managers and engineers states compact water treatment units should be good for at least 20 years.
The engineers say that at least in in terms of these two plants, they require heavy maintenance after five years.
OK, so something's going wrong in terms of the underinvestment in that basic maintenance.
We ask why they say it is not one of the things.
Sometimes the great literature suggests is that there were chemical shortages or perhaps energy shortages.
The key chemical was relied on. Here are chlorine and aluminium sulphate,
which is used to sort of flush relation to bring particles together in a way which makes it easier to extract them from the water pollutants,
Engineer said. No, it's not the issue. The issue is spare parts and it's bureaucratic, particularly about water pumps.
There was a big issue with water pump failure in 2018,
when the technology was overwhelmed by the mixing of al-Bayda raw water with water from the Shatt al-Arab because the salinity,
the salinity overwhelmed the kind of water treatment capacity. There's been lots of political disputes over the you know who's responsible for this?
Are different. Different parties blame each other in terms of national government, provincial government and so forth.
I can discuss that more, if necessary, in a discussion.
But the key thing here, at least we were told, was spare parts something as simple as spare parts.
This is a picture of the servicing of water pumps at the odds of a treatment plant in November 2020.
So I'll just bring it to a close. I recognise this is quite broad brush.
And so I'm sure there are areas if people want to follow up on particular points,
then I'm happy to discuss those in questions now in terms of what's going on.
One of the thing and we do mention this in the policy brief, actually,
and this is not a surprise when anybody knows anything about Iraq or southern Iraq is the
conspicuous lack of state authority in terms of high tech political decision making,
decision making over water management. There's widespread illegal water extraction.
We were told that this is something this is something the government is dealing with,
but there seem to be little evidence of reducing or there is some prosecutions going on.
At least this widespread illegal water extraction is continuing. One of the things that we saw in this case,
I mentioned the term political marketplace earlier about a political system in which there's an expectation of rent seeking in Basra,
where there's all sorts of both legal semi-legal, if you like in criminal rent seeking,
particularly around around the port and now for underground hydrocarbon contracts.
But here we were quite interested to find that this this when seeking behaviour,
which is often to do with tribal militia threats against contractors or against
water treatment plants in particular with international funding available,
then there's some sort of got some payment made or some guarantee that people will be employed.
Certain goods will be employed by the contractor.
This seem to be a significant problem in weakening significantly water management capacity in Basra as a governor and the city.
This is part of it.
And if any of you know the situation in Basra, the routine violence of politics in Basra and the key role of militias here in deciding what goes on.
So we have we have a loss of legitimacy also for the state. The state is supposed to be the one.
This is from a quote translated from an interview the state supposed to be to take responsibility for delivering safe drinking water.
This is the least the state can do, which is citizens, right? Just as the state asked me to respect the law.
I demand that the state gives me drinking water and we have a we have a water network vulnerability in these situations of political dysfunctionality,
which is becoming more vulnerable because of external physical shocks.
And here we are looking at the reduction in water flow as a result of upstream dams, which I mentioned earlier,
and issues around the sort of irregularity of water flow because of the lack of maintenance of the bad a canal.
And in the context, also, some are saying of recent droughts and climate change.
So we have this added stress that's added to of physical environmental stress.
Now, one of the things international donors and also the Iraqi government have hoped that there'll be some kind of single shot,
high tech make infrastructure solution to the water management crisis in Basra.
This has been if you go into the policy brief, we talk about some of these megaprojects,
including the Japanese Zuiker Japanese Development Agency, a project to upgrade infrastructure, wooden projects in Basra,
to more recent suggestions to build a massive desalination plant outfall near the port,
which is again the idea of a single shot solution or the single shot solutions have all been delayed for all sorts of reasons,
including allegations of contractual malpractices. It's one of one of the recommendations in the report is no.
To put it simply, to single shot solutions, diversify primary sources of public water and in ways that you can do this and make sure in in fact,
the one of the things you can do, which is relatively straightforward and the Iraqi government to commit to this.
And last year is to cover the border canal, to cover the canal,
given a decent sort of lining which would reduce significant evaporation that
a single project admittedly expensive given the length of the Vatican now,
if at least cover certain sections of it, would be for me anyway,
the most efficient single actually you can do in terms at least ensuring that supply source is more efficient.
However, it might also based likely also that desalination will also be necessary.
So in our report, we talk about creating multiple sources for water to make the system more resilient.
You have to improve the operational performance of water distribution networks.
These are going back constructed in the 1970s 1980s, at least for Basra City falling apart.
The engineers, scientists and managers say this. And one of the unfortunate things that seemed to be with with donors in the past,
international donors tended to favour big mega infrastructure projects and not thought
about the more routine daily sort of mundane if you like water distribution networks.
There are examples from across the region which could also be relevant here.
For example, increased use of wastewater recycling, particularly times you have a cultural sector.
Very little wastewater recycling in Basra.
And lastly, we say in terms of the report, I think and this is something international donors could perhaps,
you know, if I do want to spend vast amounts, sums of money in Basra perhaps insist on is a need.
I think at least we recommend of an independent review a dispassionate, impartial,
objective review of water governance in Basra because many people are talking about the sort of crisis or the failures of governance in Basra.
But I think there needs to be an independent sort of review which consults with the stakeholders
on the ground as it were with the water users and those actually walked in the water treatment.
Plus, I should say, did the water engineers or the water managers, at least for me, are not the ones who are failing this situation.
They do incredibly kind of conscientious. And usually these parts are understaffed, so they're working very, very hard and very,
very taboo conditions to make sure this technology keeps running.
So there's an important thing here, I think,
to to take seriously if you want to understand why a water infrastructure management system is not failing,
it won lessons in this report, which to me is quite a common sense.
Thing is talk to the water engineers, talk to the water engineers, not the politicians.
The water engineers are the ones who know what's going on in terms of everyday water management and treatment.
I think my time is I might go maybe an apology to Michael. Oh, that's wonderful.
Thank you very much, Michael. So I might have slipped a slide there.
The slide on on mega infrastructure solutions. All right. Would you like to go back and say something about that, Michael?
We have time. No problem. Yes, very quick. I mentioned this at the end.
I don't know. I somehow skipped. This is the idea for both from the Iraqi government and from donors that there
can be a silver bullet as the answer to the the water management deficit,
impartial government and the Japanese fund.
The Great Basin Water Project, which involves actually doesn't involve water infrastructure, distribution, network rehabilitation and investment.
I should have finished by now. It still hasn't finished. And there was a very good report by Human Rights Watch a year before last claiming that
there were serious contractual malpractices and corruption holding this project top.
And now I've mentioned the one million cubic metre a day now for desalination plant,
which has now gone out at a tender to a company European company in terms of the the contract management.
And this is something that should be finished and I think with 2024, but is also dragging on in terms of arguments,
political arguments about who should get the contract and everything.
And basically, I think this is something I ask where whatever the good intentions of outside contractors and international donors,
the failure to engage understand the political marketplace of Basra is something that.
Means that these donor projects often don't sort of unfulfilled.
And lastly, I mentioned just mentioned there's the upgrading of the of the canal would for me,
be the single most effective infrastructure upgrading kind of media solution because it would
double the capacity of the Armada Canal just by covering it and upgrading parts of the embankment.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.
Michael, thank you very much for a remarkably comprehensive, if rather sobering account of what's happening in Basra on that.
And it's particularly good. We hear a lot of discussion about there being problems,
but we rarely get the sort of in-depth explanation of what is happening technically at the level,
what the technical issues are, why precisely these problems are happening.
We hear about them and I had somebody gone in and as you say, talk to the water engineers to find out exactly what has happened.
So thank you very much for giving that great survey of what the situation in Basra.
We're going to move now to the question and answer session the opportunity.
You have to pose questions and put questions to Michael.
We can do this with the question and answer function, if you look on Zoom along the bottom of your screen, you'll see Q&A.
Now if you press that there's is a box, you can write your question into and then that will give us an opportunity,
and I'll try and select as many of those as possible as we have time for and put them to Michael.
And you're welcome to put your name in if you prefer to be anonymous, that's absolutely fine.
You can alter that to anonymous and we'll try and get through of many of the questions as we can.
I'd like to start with a question myself, Michael. You sort of won.
You invited yourself looking at the politics of it. I think you made the very, very valid point.
But sometimes the politics gets focussed on too much. But people can talk to politicians and as you said, they need to go talk to water engineers.
But could you say a little bit more about the politics,
the local politics you mentioned about the political parties you mentioned about the militias and particularly something on how the local political
or even the local political scene and the role of political parties has effectively issued and where it's obviously clear it's made it worse.
But in what sort of ways? Yeah, sure.
The political system locally, it mirrors, to some extent, the political system nationally,
which other scholars on on the Iraqi political system I'm not a scholar on the Iraqi political system have talked about.
This has a sort of allocation system whereby particular parties,
particular constituencies are at least informally guaranteed sort of access to a particular government offices,
but also as part of this also particular government funding.
Maybe expectation of certain contractual favouritism. Now that is interesting because I think the first election 2005,
after the new constitution had the Islamic Virtue Party as the key as as the lead party base was dominated by by a series of Shia parties.
And since 2009, what you've had is almost what we can call a local alliance of these parties, but they sort of come together.
They seem to realise each of them by themselves cannot dominate the local political scene.
There's a kind of what's called actually in some of the this sort of rent seeking literature I'm thinking of here, people like Douglas North,
who talks about what he calls a limited access orders and how a particular governing structures in often conflict
affected situations where natural resources are a key rental stream as they are in Iraq through frou hydrocarbons,
of course. You have a kind of what he calls north a dominant coalition.
The dominant coalition in Basra is dominated by these, these local Shia parties.
And so they they have this, this kind of they've sewn up, if you like the critical same,
which has created this great gap between those who are represented not only by political
parties and these political parties all have militias and the rest of the population.
And when we had the 2018 protests in Basra, the water, the water situation,
which was something very much triggered this local protesters were perceived that these these these Shia militias are very much rain,
Iranian sort of directed and sometimes funded. And so they were they were burning headquarters.
Think the sort of the head of the Iranian consulate in Basra.
And if you had these local political parties, which were kind of sewed up, it's sort of the governance locally.
And what this means is that the governor, Assad al-Adnani,
is seen as a kind of compromise candidate is somebody who kind of cross between these different groups.
But what it means is, I think you have this is not this is my opinion is not in the policy brief.
You have acquired ossified local political system, which I think is based on a system of quite explicit rent seeking and patronage,
which freezes out a large, I would argue, the majority of the population.
And this causes issues. And if you go into the into why some of the major water management infrastructure projects are stalled and we, you know,
we ask this at the local level and this was said, you know,
this is still because this is not just militias, not just party militias, also tribal militias.
The Trouble militia has said if you don't give us a certain amount of money and will attack you a water treatment plant, for example.
Yeah. So this whole political marketplace penetrates the system.
However, saying that and of course, it's become I'm tragically bloody.
Since 2018, 2019, 2020, we have I have colleagues at Middle East Centre funded through this conflict research programme who've done really,
really fantastic work. Looking in great detail at the protests in 2018, for example,
been hoping to close his university in Denmark now done a great paper in looking at what's happening
with the political protests and particularly some of the political assassinations since 2020,
there's a whole swathe of civil society. Activists have been assassinated by militias.
Militia groups and certain militia groups have been named as responsible for these assassinations.
So it's a very bloody situation in the paper.
I don't think it's in the report,
but in the paper I I quote the former Basra police chief saying bass was run by militias and that's from the police chief.
So it's a very in one way this.
So it's a long answer, Michael.
In one way we have to be careful with characterising this as dysfunctional is dysfunctional in the sense that anybody from outside can say this.
This is madness. This is violent, you know, but it's not anarchic.
It's an organised political kind of system that it might be what's been called a theocracy.
It might be a particular kind of system, which, you know, we have absolutely no time for, of course.
Yeah, but it enables itself to. And that's I think that's a key lesson.
How can you kind of penetrate or at least think about ways in which this political system can
least open up to discussion to civil society groups where perhaps water management is somebody?
Nobody likes having lousy water. So maybe water management is something where you can perhaps even depoliticise it in terms of in and even
even the local alliance or Shia parties know if you're not delivering decent water to the population,
they're going to be out in the streets. So there's a self-interest there for them as well.
Thank you, Michael. We cannot get into questions coming in from those of you attending.
And thank you very much for your questions and please keep coming.
Well, first question comes from Lucy Banish and Lucy, thank you very much, Michael, for the insightful talk,
and Lisa's question is what are feasible financing options for the recommended improvements?
I think ones you mentioned at the end of your tour. How can these things get financed, given the fact that obviously is clearly an issue?
Yeah, there were several things I think I would sit there, thank you for your question, Lucy.
Is that a continuous source of dispute between the provincial government and the national government is its share of of hydrocarbon rents?
And there have been disputes between al-Adnani, the governor, and the national government saying, Well, actually,
basil government should get a fair share of the hydrocarbon rents, given that you have the concentration of oil fields in the South.
So is one of the things that is at least now. It was an issue of use when oil prices were lower, but as oil prices have gone up again,
there's no shortage of Iraqi government money or petrol dollars.
Yeah, there's no shortage of money in terms of saying what these projects cannot happen.
This is why last year it was announced that the Badar Canal would be finally upgraded in a way that become more efficient.
But what happens is, I think, because the political system is at least in terms of Iraqi government money,
the plan that we looked at the al-Shabab water treatment plant,
we were looking at that because the OR0 plant had some international donor money and the al-Shabab plant had some Iraqi government money,
which had been promised but didn't turn up. We couldn't even find out why didn't turn up the money.
Yeah, they wanted money did not turn up.
So there's an issue around government financing locally because the money tends to come down to the national ministries,
including bottled water, to extract the perception locally.
Is this is incredibly bureaucratic.
In fact, the system is made deliberately bureaucratic that if you don't spend it, you have to fill out local legislator forms.
And if you don't do that properly and don't spend your money, the national government grabs the budget back.
So there's a very simple kind of solution here in terms of basic bureaucratic governance in terms of allocation of national government money.
In this case with the Battle Water director. So the issue is not lack of money.
And on top of that, you've got international donors willing to come in.
I'm just saying that the big desalination plant and our food desalination plant is not going to be funded by donors.
The Iraqi government are going to fund this. You know, there are millions or billions of dollars that can be used to buy.
International donors do come in and the that we looked at, which had no functioning compact water treatment units last year, there was a bare plant.
UNICEF came in at the last minute because the manager was screaming, Please help us somebody.
The government is not giving us any money and said that you have this kind of reactive kind of funding from international donor agencies,
humanitarian work. And you know, this is happening under water treatment plants.
So I think at least in terms of international donors or humanitarian funding is often there before things get too grim.
But there could be perhaps a more strategic financing option available which and this is I finished off saying this where you can say,
well, the Japanese government has given hundreds of millions to to upgrade all the water infrastructure for Basra,
but then you've got snowed up with the political system, so you must have some kind of donor payment system,
which is somehow rendered immune from the national and the local political marketplace.
And I think donors probably have more power here than they think.
You know, sometimes a little bit too. They claim to have all sorts of wonderful auditing and transparency anti-corruption devices.
But this is not working. It hasn't worked, at least in the past.
So I think this is not rocket science to set up an international donor payment system,
which can render the payment for water infrastructure upgrading and investment at least more resistant to the local political marketplace.
I'm not going to try to tell you now how to do that. I think I think much more effort be expended in that direction.
Thank you, Michael. Next question comes from a colleague here in Oxford is Sam Hussein.
He says, Hi, Sam actually gave us another of our lectures in our series, I think,
in Week two and gave about an equally wonderful and equally sobering discussion and account of what's happening in Jordan.
And he said, Could you please elaborate more on the challenges of waste water recycling?
You referred to it very briefly. And I suppose also more degrees of normative acceptability amongst the population of treated wastewater
for different uses because I know who Sam touched on this in his own presentation in the case of Jordan.
Yeah, great question. It's and good to see you, I've not seen you, sometimes I get to see you.
Good, good to hear you, and you can get your question. Now this is a caveat wasn't a cop out?
We didn't look at wastewater treatment as as a key kind of research sort of aim at this project in terms of least least not a sewage treatment.
The Bachelor is relying on an old single, massive kind of sewage plant,
which also has its own issues in terms of upgrading and not impact from the water
treatment because it's discharging levels of pollutants into the Shatt al-Arab,
which increasingly the sort of toxic water in the Shatt al-Arab.
So there's there's a separate issue in terms of the sewage network and the sewage treatment plant,
which Miller what I said, I can't go into that into data.
We didn't look into that in detail. But in terms of the wastewater treatment option, well, you know,
I think almost all the water used in agriculture, for example, in Israel, is treated wastewater.
The technology is there to use treated wastewater.
One of the big issues in at least in Basra, is the loss of agricultural land from salinisation Farm,
not using water and not having access to water for irrigation, for example.
Now I know Sam does great, fantastic work around norms in water, and I think the illusion here is would farmers use quote dirty water?
Yeah. Or I would say here is there are some really interesting work on this,
specifically by something called the Eden Restoration Project, which is cited in our policy brief.
And this is and this is related to the various initiatives around restoring Mesopotamian marshes of which I somehow wash.
One of the sort of leading leading Iraqi environmentalist is involved with the restoration project,
which is one component of this is using natural reed beds for for water treatment and
using natural ecological systems for water treatment and showing how this is feasible.
I think they've got the go ahead for a couple of pilot projects this year.
And if you go look at the idea for a policy brief, you'll see the reference to their website to the demonstration project.
They say this is possible and it's interest in the restoration project.
Doing this in a way in which the wastewater treatment is also a way in which the at least
the sort of the Marsh Arab villages also have a kind of cultural heritage restoration.
The ecological restoration runs in parallel with the kind of cultural heritage restoration.
And the idea here is that a lot is talked about about restoring the marshes, about the water flows into the marshes.
An issue here. It's basically the sort of damming upstream, but there is the feasibility for, shall I call them, culturally sensitive,
normatively sensible wastewater treatment kind of projects which could scale up the sort of water access availability.
But thanks. Thanks for the question. Thank you.
A question for another of our colleagues here in Oxford, Adeel Malik, very good to see you idle.
Thanks for joining us. When I deal with the monster that have your view on how things have changed in Iraq and but
specifically says only noticeable difference in water management in Basra pre and post 2003.
And how has the introduction of sectarian allocation system changed the governance of water?
He said a little bit about that at the local level. Perhaps you could say more, particularly looking at what has happened pre 2003.
Yeah, thank God. 2003, you know, the Coalition Provisional Authority, remember, the British were in charge of the South, had a very much a top down.
I would call it ideological project for the investment in public services.
Many people call this a kind of neoliberal project. There were, and there still are to some extent, for example,
proposals for the privatisation of the water sector in the same way there were proposals to privatise oil contracts, which didn't succeed in the end.
And what this meant, and it's interesting if you go into the detail of this,
even in terms of the British government sponsored or the British government work on here,
they had a lot of advice from Adam Smith International think tank,
which is very much sympathetic to kind of free market solutions, as they call them, for public services.
So there was an expectation with water management,
and there was a breaking up of kind of a part of the whole de-Ba'athification in 2003 is breaking up with industries,
losing many valuable experts and go into kind of decentralised free-market philosophy for water infrastructure rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, that played straight into the kind of when the new constitution got agreed,
a new sectarian system into kind of the the political marketplace sectarianism because you had you were creating a whole bunch of separate,
fragmented, decentralised opportunities to earn money.
And these things would be picked off one by one, by particular parties, backed by particular militias.
And even then, when there were large infrastructure projects with the Japanese zuiker and a big infrastructure investment project,
we would assume for a very, very large project, there were protections against these kind of contractual malpractices, allegedly also with that.
That was also held up. And to some extent, this is in the Human Rights Watch report, at the very least delayed because of the sectarian system.
The sectarian system is basically, I think whatever the intentions of those who design the Constitution and I talked about how this sectarian system,
at least locally,
is a little bit different in Basra because it's basically you have a kind of this coalition is dominant coalition of Shia political parties.
So the ethno religious complexion, if you like, is more constantly fixed is that that sectarian system?
It set out the opportunity for rent seeking, including criminal rent seeking,
in a way which perhaps if a different kind of constitutional bargain or or design had been thought about,
which was much more attuned to thinking about crafting a public interest.
Rather than specific sectional interests, maybe that would have happened.
I mean, there's been some interesting work, for example, about how the Iraqi sectarian system is replicating,
to some extent, the sort of constitutionalism which is disabling Lebanon.
My colleague Toby Dodge talks about Iraq as a kind of really informal constitutional system,
and we all know about these sort of failures in energy, water infrastructure in Lebanon.
And unfortunately, these have been replicated in actually even worse, I would say,
in Iraq in terms of the sort of list in terms of suddenly Iraq with a very, very violent kind of militia driven rent seeking.
So again, long answer, I apologise.
It's basically the I think the system, the sectarian system has amplified this, this sort of political marketplace,
which is disabled opportunities for crafting out a kind of a functioning public, interest driven water management infrastructure.
Thank you. Question from Marianne Lennox and Marianne says I was very involved in a multidisciplinary research
project about the Euphrates River and analysing the effects of lack of cooperation between Turkey,
Syria and Iraq, where Iraq was left out.
The situation with the war in Syria hasn't improved the situation regarding water quality and access to enough water to Iraq.
And she asked, How would you look at the future regarding allocation with a more fair water share to Iraq?
Yes, absolutely, yes, that's quite a big question. I don't know how much time I've got.
But it's really important questions to address, actually is the I think you have to think about these things in a whole basin, a whole basin approach.
And I've been, I mean, a whole Bayesian approach. I mean, this sort of Euphrates and Tigris together.
Yeah. In the the Arab geographies a thousand years ago called the Tigris Euphrates Basin Al-Jazeera,
because it constitutes an island, an island in which the sort of swing sort of spring flows.
The spring melts from the mountains in the north in Turkey, as it is now,
would turned into this wonderful pulse of water down the Euphrates and down the Tigris River
floods the kind of sort of the southern Iraqi plains and supports agriculture and so forth.
So I think you need a whole basin approach. Unfortunately, there is no there's no transboundary water agreement involving Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran.
There are actually some agreements on the Euphrates.
There's a Iraq Syria agreement from 1990, which which agreed to a particular percentage share between between Iraq and Syria.
And I think it is 42 percent say we have 58 percent Iraq in terms of entitlement to water.
Now, however, if the water flow is decreasing, that becomes a problem.
Yeah. If because of infrastructure in Turkey, I mean, if looking at the sort of the overall water flow,
the urban water flow has declined markedly since the 1970s as upstream infrastructure has kind of become a more, more developed.
So there's kind of 20 percent less water flow along the Euphrates compared to, say, the first half, at least for the 20th century.
Engineers talk about from the 1970s you've lost what they call the near natural flow regime of both the Euphrates and the Tigris near natural regime,
being a predictable, seasonal pulse of water.
There's more infrastructure, the more dams on the Euphrates, but increasingly more and more on the Tigris,
the elusive dam, for example, massive Turkish dam, which which has been making Iraqi water officials very anxious.
So there's some. I think there's a memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Iraq.
However, these things are not fit for purpose. This is a short answer, these things not fit for purpose because they don't handle the whole basin.
And how do you do that? I think you have to go to international water law.
International water law has very clear provisions about equitable and reasonable use to use the sort of familiar norms of international waters law.
And I think other basins can do this, you know, with the political will, hopefully with assistance of the international community.
You could craft a sustainable, transboundary water agreement for the Tigris Euphrates Basin.
And one of the reasons this is becoming more and more and more necessary is because the impacts of climate change,
because climate change is an additional external stressor,
which is added to I mean, I would say personally that climate change is not the principal determinant of water problems in Basra.
Others have said Iraqi water problems because of climate change, at least not yet.
But it's a stress which is becoming more and more significant.
And so you have to have a a kind of basin wide agreement fit for purpose, which is able, for example,
to factor in variability form from climate change sort of stresses is possible is possible.
Other other watersheds have done in other countries have done it. It just needs the political will.
Thank you, Michael. Unfortunately, the clock is against us, and we've come to the end of our session,
but thank you very much and I apologise to all of those of you who posed questions,
but we weren't able to answer within the time could have talked about this for quite some, given some complexity.
No, my long answers might be no, no. The fascinating, fascinating answer is quite quite the opposite.
Michael, thank you. It's always on a topic like this. We get a lot, a lot of questions, but thank you.
Thank you very much, all of you, for coming. In fact, Michael,
there's actually a lot of I've got a couple of questions about wanting to know where people can get hold of the report that you referred to.
I know you held up. Yes, that one. What's the best way of getting it online? Go to Middle East Centre website.
Mm-Hmm. Go to research. This is LSC Middle East Centre.
I should probably point you. Yes, or we can put it on ours if need be as well that we can share it as a militant website.
Go to research. Go to Conflict Research Programme Iraq.
And then you'll see the various projects in the conflict research programme Iraq.
And this is one of them, a whole host of other stuff as well.
I should I should plug while I'm here,
including some really interesting papers on protest impartially on politics in southern Basra, so I can better government.
And if you want a hard copy, we have plenty of copies of this in the Millicent office in London and listen to listen to our post.
I just contact. Maybe we have to send you one free, of course.
Thank you very much, Michael. We would.
I was saying to Michael beforehand how impressive the LSC Middle East Centre website was and with a lot of fascinating things on that.
But I just wanted to thank Michael for an obviously fascinating lecture, the detail and the knowledge that you've been given here has given us again.
As with many of these talks, rather sobering, but it gives us a better sense of the sorts of things that are going wrong and why they're going on,
and also the solutions that, as Michael said, this is not a an anarchic situation.
There are very, very clear reasons for why these things are happening.
But thank you very much, Michael, and feeding the audience as well and for your questions and please get in contact with
me if you hadn't been able to get through in this opportunity in terms of questions.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you. Jordan, thank you all of you for attending.
And I look forward to welcoming you next week for those who are able to attend.
We will have Netta Cohen talking about environmental issues in the Israel-Palestine dispute, but thank you very much for this evening.
Have a wonderful weekend and thank you very much again, Michael. Thank you.
Bye bye.