1 00:00:05,300 --> 00:00:11,870 Well, good evening, everybody, thank you very much for joining us this evening, my name's Michael Willis. 2 00:00:11,870 --> 00:00:16,760 I'm the director of the Middle East Centre here at Antony's College at University of Oxford. 3 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:23,690 And it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the sick, you know, Friday seminar series of Michaelmas Term. 4 00:00:23,690 --> 00:00:26,030 Now those of you who've been following the series this time will know, 5 00:00:26,030 --> 00:00:32,030 but we have been focussing on the theme of the environments in the Middle East this term for our sales. 6 00:00:32,030 --> 00:00:37,290 And having looked in previous weeks at Jordan, Tunisia, the Gulf and Iran, 7 00:00:37,290 --> 00:00:43,610 we tend to look at Iraq as evening and our speaker to talk about Iraqis is Dr. Michael Mason. 8 00:00:43,610 --> 00:00:49,670 We're delighted to have with us. Dr. Mason is director of the Middle East Centre at London School of Economics. 9 00:00:49,670 --> 00:00:54,660 We have a surfeit of directors of Middle East Centres on this on this call tonight, as you called Michael. 10 00:00:54,660 --> 00:00:59,450 Go Michael as well. So yes, it must be something that Michael being director of Middle East Sentence. 11 00:00:59,450 --> 00:01:03,140 Dr. Mason is also associate professor of the Department of Geography and Environment 12 00:01:03,140 --> 00:01:08,030 and Associates at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and Environment, 13 00:01:08,030 --> 00:01:13,220 and is the author of a number of books on environmental issues, both generally, 14 00:01:13,220 --> 00:01:18,290 most recently, transparency in global environmental governance that came out in 2014. 15 00:01:18,290 --> 00:01:24,590 Also, the new accountability environmental responsibility across borders came out in 2005, 16 00:01:24,590 --> 00:01:29,390 but also books specifically relating to the issue of the environment in the Middle East, 17 00:01:29,390 --> 00:01:35,510 most recently co-edited Volume Renewable Energy in the Middle East, which came out in 2009. 18 00:01:35,510 --> 00:01:36,590 Tonight, as I mentioned, 19 00:01:36,590 --> 00:01:45,200 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. 20 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:50,240 Michael. Thank you very much, Michael. I shall go to screen share now. 21 00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:58,820 Welcome everybody. Yeah. Thank you very much, Michael, for it, for you and colleagues for this kind invitation to come to the belief centre. 22 00:01:58,820 --> 00:02:04,430 Oxford, it is strange. I am actually here at the Millicent Oxford and I had hoped when we originally planned 23 00:02:04,430 --> 00:02:08,930 this that this would be a meeting in person with academics and students and such. 24 00:02:08,930 --> 00:02:14,330 Unfortunately, that has not happened, but I have actually made the journey here to allow me to meet colleagues at Oxford. 25 00:02:14,330 --> 00:02:17,570 So thanks very much for the invitation. I appreciate that. 26 00:02:17,570 --> 00:02:24,420 Let me say first, this is a piece of research which was funded through the Conflict Research Programme. 27 00:02:24,420 --> 00:02:35,030 Iraq, which was a UK government funded programme between twenty seventeen, finished a five year programme and conflict research programme. 28 00:02:35,030 --> 00:02:40,970 Iraq Work. There were other countries which were being research under this programme, and I see the Iraq programme, 29 00:02:40,970 --> 00:02:49,040 as was very ably directed by my colleague Alesi Professor Toby Dodge, who I give thanks to for guidance on issues around Iraq. 30 00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:50,630 Now I'm an environmental geographer. 31 00:02:50,630 --> 00:03:00,800 I look at water management, water infrastructure, environmental resources and politics, and this talk is basically about a policy brief, 32 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:07,940 which is one of the outputs of the conflict research programme Iraq looking at water management in southern Iraq, 33 00:03:07,940 --> 00:03:11,330 particularly looking at Basra City Basin, the government, 34 00:03:11,330 --> 00:03:20,900 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, 35 00:03:20,900 --> 00:03:25,940 and my LSC based researcher Zainab Mahdi were both involved in this project. 36 00:03:25,940 --> 00:03:29,990 There is a report policy report which came out for this project. 37 00:03:29,990 --> 00:03:37,100 I can show you the screen, the hard copy here, which we have available, and there will be a link if anybody's interested. 38 00:03:37,100 --> 00:03:42,230 If they want to see the version of this report, which we can make available to you via this. 39 00:03:42,230 --> 00:03:48,350 This series, and also it's available on the LSC Middle East and to a website now. 40 00:03:48,350 --> 00:03:52,670 The policy brief is quite focussed that we hardly have to stay here from UK government 41 00:03:52,670 --> 00:03:57,050 interested in us doing a policy brief as a separate academic paper written out, 42 00:03:57,050 --> 00:03:59,030 which is currently on the second review, 43 00:03:59,030 --> 00:04:06,110 giving a more historical context of the sort of water management politics in southern Iraq in the past decade or so. 44 00:04:06,110 --> 00:04:13,700 But for this particular project we had as the kind of the aim to look at the water situation in 2018, 45 00:04:13,700 --> 00:04:17,510 very specific kind of, and I'll get the reasons for that shortly. 46 00:04:17,510 --> 00:04:28,640 Why 2018 after 2018. But the report just go briefly into the sort of long historical context in terms of a conflict affected water 47 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:37,640 management sector going back to the Iran-Iraq war and then obviously conflict the more recent conflict in the UK, 48 00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:45,380 US coalition invasion, occupation and civil conflict, also an ISO related violence in Iraq. 49 00:04:45,380 --> 00:04:49,940 The policy, if you like background for this sort of post occupation, 50 00:04:49,940 --> 00:04:57,170 the Coalition Provisional Authority CPA kind of template for the rehabilitation of 51 00:04:57,170 --> 00:05:02,240 infrastructure in Iraq and the focus on this policy brief is on the water sector. 52 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:04,820 Why do we pick 2018 as the starting point? 53 00:05:04,820 --> 00:05:14,450 Because there were big protests that took place in Basra in 2018 over major water pollution incident in which almost 20000 people hospitalised. 54 00:05:14,450 --> 00:05:19,700 These protests broke out onto the streets. There were also grievances around other public services, 55 00:05:19,700 --> 00:05:26,150 electricity and general sort of disaffection with the sort of city and the provincial government. 56 00:05:26,150 --> 00:05:31,310 And we were in for this policy brief. But we're interested in what's gone wrong. 57 00:05:31,310 --> 00:05:38,890 Why is the water sector not functioning and can we sort of specify what the issues are now? 58 00:05:38,890 --> 00:05:46,180 The tap water in Basra has been undrinkable. Basically, it's the 1990s most households buy water from private vendors. 59 00:05:46,180 --> 00:05:56,080 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, 60 00:05:56,080 --> 00:06:00,640 it's never used for drinking is even to use it for sort of washing up. 61 00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:05,650 And, you know, some people in the city. So at best it's used to wash cars. 62 00:06:05,650 --> 00:06:12,430 Now, one of the key starting points with this work is that the large proportion of the 63 00:06:12,430 --> 00:06:16,330 population the government isn't actually connected to the public water network. 64 00:06:16,330 --> 00:06:24,850 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. 65 00:06:24,850 --> 00:06:29,950 It wasn't easy because the records are quite fragmented and most of them are not digitalised. 66 00:06:29,950 --> 00:06:37,030 So this involved chasing up sort of paper copies of what's going on in terms of water infrastructure, water management. 67 00:06:37,030 --> 00:06:44,500 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. 68 00:06:44,500 --> 00:06:52,420 The methodology involved interviews with what I would call insiders, water engineers, water managers, public officials, 69 00:06:52,420 --> 00:06:58,570 but also people in civil society who who talk about water management as an issue in Basra, 70 00:06:58,570 --> 00:07:05,500 including civil society activists and religious leaders also gathered data from from Basra Water Director. 71 00:07:05,500 --> 00:07:10,480 Now, as I said, this is a policy brief from talking to the academic paper. 72 00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:16,660 This is academic paper works on some theoretical ideas to account for what's 73 00:07:16,660 --> 00:07:21,490 been happening with the water management kind of failing in Basra government, 74 00:07:21,490 --> 00:07:29,350 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. 75 00:07:29,350 --> 00:07:36,640 But basically, the key kind of theoretical frameworks, if you're interested, are political ecology and the idea of vascular sort of governance. 76 00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:41,080 As a political marketplace inspired here by my my colleague Toby Dodge's application, 77 00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:46,990 this concept to Iraq and Alex de Waal for applied military to Africa, 78 00:07:46,990 --> 00:07:51,100 which is the idea of understanding the governance in Iraq and southern Iraq, 79 00:07:51,100 --> 00:07:58,850 specifically as a kind of transactional politics, when and politics in which political loyalty and support is bought. 80 00:07:58,850 --> 00:08:08,020 OK. And so in terms of the theoretical work, it's working out how that political marketplace feeds into water management. 81 00:08:08,020 --> 00:08:14,500 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. 82 00:08:14,500 --> 00:08:23,080 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. 83 00:08:23,080 --> 00:08:28,780 And what we wanted to do with this study is try and be a little bit more granular if you like a little bit 84 00:08:28,780 --> 00:08:34,570 more almost forensic and find out what's actually happening in terms of water flows and water treatment. 85 00:08:34,570 --> 00:08:42,670 The basic problem is that Basra city and again, the focus areas in Basra city, it's really dependent on the paddock now. 86 00:08:42,670 --> 00:08:44,890 This is the dash line on the map. 87 00:08:44,890 --> 00:08:57,550 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. 88 00:08:57,550 --> 00:09:02,110 Now, this better canal was built in the 1990s, a long canal. 89 00:09:02,110 --> 00:09:05,920 And the reason Basra is dependent on the better canal, it would say, 90 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:12,190 was surely best is what next to the Shatt al-Arab, the Shatt al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. 91 00:09:12,190 --> 00:09:18,730 The Shatt al-Arab is so polluted by chemicals, by heavy metals, by all sorts of things, 92 00:09:18,730 --> 00:09:25,870 by agricultural sort of flows that is unusable, pretty much unusable in terms of water treatment. 93 00:09:25,870 --> 00:09:31,570 So the whole idea with the Bateau Canal is to provide a fresh water supply for Basra City. 94 00:09:31,570 --> 00:09:36,400 This means Basra City is very much dependent on this particular canal. 95 00:09:36,400 --> 00:09:38,470 Now, one of the things we can talk about, 96 00:09:38,470 --> 00:09:47,980 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, 97 00:09:47,980 --> 00:09:56,050 attributed to upstream dam construction on both, particularly the Euphrates and, more recently, the Tigris in Turkey. 98 00:09:56,050 --> 00:10:04,030 Turkey in particular, also Syria and also Iran, particularly Iran, recently with some of two tributaries which feed into the Shatt al-Arab. 99 00:10:04,030 --> 00:10:12,760 This flow reduction is increasing the seasonal summer incursion of seawater from the Persian Gulf. 100 00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:18,430 This is now reaching all the way up to Basra. OK. So it's sort of over 100 kilometres year. 101 00:10:18,430 --> 00:10:22,900 This salinity is increasing the unsuitability of the water, 102 00:10:22,900 --> 00:10:31,060 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. 103 00:10:31,060 --> 00:10:38,470 So what happens? One of the things we found out talk to people about what happens is that there's a rationing system. 104 00:10:38,470 --> 00:10:46,120 Allocation system where the shuttle water is mixed with Guadalcanal Canal Water, 105 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:51,220 and one of the things to explain is what happened with the 2018 water crisis, 106 00:10:51,220 --> 00:10:59,890 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. 107 00:10:59,890 --> 00:11:06,220 Even after treatment is the better canal flows were far less. 108 00:11:06,220 --> 00:11:14,020 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. 109 00:11:14,020 --> 00:11:17,230 It made the water much, much more difficult to treat. 110 00:11:17,230 --> 00:11:26,140 And some of the key problems in 2018 with the treatment systems were overwhelmed by the heavily saline polluted water, 111 00:11:26,140 --> 00:11:31,260 even when it was mixed with the water from the bladder canal. So. 112 00:11:31,260 --> 00:11:33,990 The list for the 2018 crisis, 113 00:11:33,990 --> 00:11:45,180 we can see that the trigger of the collapse of water quality is related to a marked reduction in flows from the battered canal. 114 00:11:45,180 --> 00:11:48,420 If I go back, if I can do that, it's a little bit slow the transition. 115 00:11:48,420 --> 00:11:55,380 One of the reasons being is the better canal was built in the 1990s and the U.N. sanctions regime at the time. 116 00:11:55,380 --> 00:12:01,560 The Iraqi government did not have the resources to build it in a way where it would be more efficient. 117 00:12:01,560 --> 00:12:07,950 So, for example, one thing that strikes you this is the Badr Corps before it reaches Basra City, the barracks and now is open. 118 00:12:07,950 --> 00:12:11,450 So you lose a great deal of water from evacuation the better canal. 119 00:12:11,450 --> 00:12:18,810 At this point, you see pretty solid concrete lining. This concrete lining is not repeated for the holding of the canal. 120 00:12:18,810 --> 00:12:21,780 So some parts of the bad economy are prone to collapse. 121 00:12:21,780 --> 00:12:28,290 The Americans in in 2003 spent some quite significant money trying to rehabilitate the battered canal, 122 00:12:28,290 --> 00:12:33,900 but didn't solve this sort of long term problems with the basic infrastructure not being very sound. 123 00:12:33,900 --> 00:12:40,560 Another big issue the Badr Corps now you don't see, but this picture is often clogged up with Holmwood with aquatic plants, 124 00:12:40,560 --> 00:12:43,510 which is a big problem for the water treatment plants in Basra. 125 00:12:43,510 --> 00:12:51,060 A lot of time taking out this is aquatic plant, which some people attribute actually interestingly to increased temperatures, 126 00:12:51,060 --> 00:12:59,190 increase water temperatures as a result of climatic change. So going back to the water treatment situation in Basra, 127 00:12:59,190 --> 00:13:07,330 Basra is very dependent on a quite small scale water treatment technology called compact water treatment units. 128 00:13:07,330 --> 00:13:14,550 S.W.A.T use, we use the acronym. These are kind of what we might call the water infrastructure workhorse workhorses in 129 00:13:14,550 --> 00:13:19,080 Basra because you supply over 80 percent of treatment capacity across the government, 130 00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:24,260 over 300 units and 90 percent of treatment in Basra city itself, about 198 units. 131 00:13:24,260 --> 00:13:32,430 And these have tended to be favoured by both the Iraqi state and the provincial government and international donors as a good, 132 00:13:32,430 --> 00:13:37,620 resilient, temporary technology. Why? Because they're modular and mobile. 133 00:13:37,620 --> 00:13:43,200 They were large, but you can move individual units around. You can have a water treatment plant, which might have multiple units. 134 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:47,280 You can take one unit out and the rest continue working. OK. 135 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:51,120 So this has been the preferred kind of water I can say. 136 00:13:51,120 --> 00:14:00,090 Preferred, I would say, actually enforced water treatment infrastructure technology for Basra in the past couple of decades. 137 00:14:00,090 --> 00:14:07,020 However, to work, these combat water treatment units need the regular water flow from the Badr Canal. 138 00:14:07,020 --> 00:14:12,150 And one of the things with irregular flows from the Vatican now is they're not getting the water 139 00:14:12,150 --> 00:14:19,200 in sufficient quality or quantity rather to produce reliable potable water for Basra residents. 140 00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:23,730 Now in this study, we focussed on two particular plants. 141 00:14:23,730 --> 00:14:31,290 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, 142 00:14:31,290 --> 00:14:36,480 because this is the gateway, this receives all the water from the Bladder Canal District. 143 00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:45,030 Some of the water itself and then distributes that water to residents in Basra city, but then channels other the rest of the water. 144 00:14:45,030 --> 00:14:52,770 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. 145 00:14:52,770 --> 00:14:56,310 Now the issue here is if the production now is failing. 146 00:14:56,310 --> 00:15:03,510 In terms of water flows, you have a knock on cascading failure throughout the whole system. 147 00:15:03,510 --> 00:15:10,980 This is what happened in summer 2018. The OR0, or Alaba's water treatment plant also has its own problems, 148 00:15:10,980 --> 00:15:17,430 and these are reported by in interviews with engineers and managers in terms of heavily corroded rainwater collection basins. 149 00:15:17,430 --> 00:15:26,010 Problems form, as I mentioned, from aquatic plant accumulation alongside the storage basins for the for the Osirak plant. 150 00:15:26,010 --> 00:15:37,560 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. 151 00:15:37,560 --> 00:15:43,290 So there's an issue here. There has been an issue in terms if the system suffers a shock. 152 00:15:43,290 --> 00:15:49,680 Remember, we're talking about is a system resilient. Then there's only five days capacity, only five days storage capacity. 153 00:15:49,680 --> 00:15:55,820 This is a big issue. This is one of the reasons for the failure again in summer 2018. 154 00:15:55,820 --> 00:16:04,340 Another reason is that there is extensive illegal what's called water tapping, including from the Osirak plant. 155 00:16:04,340 --> 00:16:09,260 Different estimates of this estimate from the UN agencies, about 40 percent of the water. 156 00:16:09,260 --> 00:16:18,650 I've seen estimates distributed by this plant is lost due to leakages, inefficient water sort of channels and illegal connexions, 157 00:16:18,650 --> 00:16:23,960 illegal connexions of extensive use for domestic use, for commercial use and so forth. 158 00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:30,170 So. So there's an issue not early enough war to reach the odds of a plan, if not water, 159 00:16:30,170 --> 00:16:39,270 which is the idea of a plant is enough water then getting through to the water treatment plants supplied from the OR0 plant. 160 00:16:39,270 --> 00:16:43,380 Just to go back quickly, the other water treatment plant below Typekit, 161 00:16:43,380 --> 00:16:50,430 so we look at one of the water treatment plants, which was being supplied by OR0 and the water treatment unit. 162 00:16:50,430 --> 00:16:59,310 You can see in this photograph of water shim plant called algae there, which is about 10 kilometres southwest of Azure City. 163 00:16:59,310 --> 00:17:05,070 And we were interested in looking at this beautiful water treatment plant when we were doing the research. 164 00:17:05,070 --> 00:17:09,340 All of the compact water treatment units were out of use. 165 00:17:09,340 --> 00:17:17,070 The Iraqi government had promised in the start of 2020 some major investment to rehabilitate them all out of use. 166 00:17:17,070 --> 00:17:20,010 That meant this plant was not actually treating water. 167 00:17:20,010 --> 00:17:28,750 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. 168 00:17:28,750 --> 00:17:38,060 This caused a big issue in our Zubair, forcing residents even more to go to private water alternative supply sources. 169 00:17:38,060 --> 00:17:46,340 So we see major failings in terms of water treatment capacity going back to the key observer plan. 170 00:17:46,340 --> 00:17:51,440 So we picked these two water treatment plants in terms of and we wanted to do more. 171 00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:53,540 But they were there were constraints in this research, 172 00:17:53,540 --> 00:18:02,660 as many would understand in terms of COVID the pandemic in last year and also the security situation in Basra. 173 00:18:02,660 --> 00:18:11,690 The research or the interviews from the managers and engineers states compact water treatment units should be good for at least 20 years. 174 00:18:11,690 --> 00:18:19,640 The engineers say that at least in in terms of these two plants, they require heavy maintenance after five years. 175 00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:24,260 OK, so something's going wrong in terms of the underinvestment in that basic maintenance. 176 00:18:24,260 --> 00:18:27,500 We ask why they say it is not one of the things. 177 00:18:27,500 --> 00:18:32,840 Sometimes the great literature suggests is that there were chemical shortages or perhaps energy shortages. 178 00:18:32,840 --> 00:18:37,910 The key chemical was relied on. Here are chlorine and aluminium sulphate, 179 00:18:37,910 --> 00:18:46,310 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, 180 00:18:46,310 --> 00:18:54,260 Engineer said. No, it's not the issue. The issue is spare parts and it's bureaucratic, particularly about water pumps. 181 00:18:54,260 --> 00:18:58,850 There was a big issue with water pump failure in 2018, 182 00:18:58,850 --> 00:19:07,310 when the technology was overwhelmed by the mixing of al-Bayda raw water with water from the Shatt al-Arab because the salinity, 183 00:19:07,310 --> 00:19:16,510 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? 184 00:19:16,510 --> 00:19:23,210 Are different. Different parties blame each other in terms of national government, provincial government and so forth. 185 00:19:23,210 --> 00:19:25,700 I can discuss that more, if necessary, in a discussion. 186 00:19:25,700 --> 00:19:31,820 But the key thing here, at least we were told, was spare parts something as simple as spare parts. 187 00:19:31,820 --> 00:19:40,230 This is a picture of the servicing of water pumps at the odds of a treatment plant in November 2020. 188 00:19:40,230 --> 00:19:45,420 So I'll just bring it to a close. I recognise this is quite broad brush. 189 00:19:45,420 --> 00:19:50,580 And so I'm sure there are areas if people want to follow up on particular points, 190 00:19:50,580 --> 00:19:56,220 then I'm happy to discuss those in questions now in terms of what's going on. 191 00:19:56,220 --> 00:19:59,520 One of the thing and we do mention this in the policy brief, actually, 192 00:19:59,520 --> 00:20:04,140 and this is not a surprise when anybody knows anything about Iraq or southern Iraq is the 193 00:20:04,140 --> 00:20:09,780 conspicuous lack of state authority in terms of high tech political decision making, 194 00:20:09,780 --> 00:20:14,310 decision making over water management. There's widespread illegal water extraction. 195 00:20:14,310 --> 00:20:18,120 We were told that this is something this is something the government is dealing with, 196 00:20:18,120 --> 00:20:24,180 but there seem to be little evidence of reducing or there is some prosecutions going on. 197 00:20:24,180 --> 00:20:29,940 At least this widespread illegal water extraction is continuing. One of the things that we saw in this case, 198 00:20:29,940 --> 00:20:39,810 I mentioned the term political marketplace earlier about a political system in which there's an expectation of rent seeking in Basra, 199 00:20:39,810 --> 00:20:46,080 where there's all sorts of both legal semi-legal, if you like in criminal rent seeking, 200 00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:52,140 particularly around around the port and now for underground hydrocarbon contracts. 201 00:20:52,140 --> 00:20:56,370 But here we were quite interested to find that this this when seeking behaviour, 202 00:20:56,370 --> 00:21:01,290 which is often to do with tribal militia threats against contractors or against 203 00:21:01,290 --> 00:21:06,150 water treatment plants in particular with international funding available, 204 00:21:06,150 --> 00:21:11,970 then there's some sort of got some payment made or some guarantee that people will be employed. 205 00:21:11,970 --> 00:21:15,300 Certain goods will be employed by the contractor. 206 00:21:15,300 --> 00:21:24,060 This seem to be a significant problem in weakening significantly water management capacity in Basra as a governor and the city. 207 00:21:24,060 --> 00:21:25,610 This is part of it. 208 00:21:25,610 --> 00:21:34,530 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. 209 00:21:34,530 --> 00:21:39,930 So we have we have a loss of legitimacy also for the state. The state is supposed to be the one. 210 00:21:39,930 --> 00:21:46,320 This is from a quote translated from an interview the state supposed to be to take responsibility for delivering safe drinking water. 211 00:21:46,320 --> 00:21:51,930 This is the least the state can do, which is citizens, right? Just as the state asked me to respect the law. 212 00:21:51,930 --> 00:22:01,590 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, 213 00:22:01,590 --> 00:22:06,090 which is becoming more vulnerable because of external physical shocks. 214 00:22:06,090 --> 00:22:13,530 And here we are looking at the reduction in water flow as a result of upstream dams, which I mentioned earlier, 215 00:22:13,530 --> 00:22:20,760 and issues around the sort of irregularity of water flow because of the lack of maintenance of the bad a canal. 216 00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:25,800 And in the context, also, some are saying of recent droughts and climate change. 217 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:31,340 So we have this added stress that's added to of physical environmental stress. 218 00:22:31,340 --> 00:22:38,390 Now, one of the things international donors and also the Iraqi government have hoped that there'll be some kind of single shot, 219 00:22:38,390 --> 00:22:44,090 high tech make infrastructure solution to the water management crisis in Basra. 220 00:22:44,090 --> 00:22:48,530 This has been if you go into the policy brief, we talk about some of these megaprojects, 221 00:22:48,530 --> 00:22:56,510 including the Japanese Zuiker Japanese Development Agency, a project to upgrade infrastructure, wooden projects in Basra, 222 00:22:56,510 --> 00:23:02,900 to more recent suggestions to build a massive desalination plant outfall near the port, 223 00:23:02,900 --> 00:23:11,240 which is again the idea of a single shot solution or the single shot solutions have all been delayed for all sorts of reasons, 224 00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:17,540 including allegations of contractual malpractices. It's one of one of the recommendations in the report is no. 225 00:23:17,540 --> 00:23:25,640 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, 226 00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:32,210 the one of the things you can do, which is relatively straightforward and the Iraqi government to commit to this. 227 00:23:32,210 --> 00:23:36,890 And last year is to cover the border canal, to cover the canal, 228 00:23:36,890 --> 00:23:41,810 given a decent sort of lining which would reduce significant evaporation that 229 00:23:41,810 --> 00:23:46,310 a single project admittedly expensive given the length of the Vatican now, 230 00:23:46,310 --> 00:23:50,150 if at least cover certain sections of it, would be for me anyway, 231 00:23:50,150 --> 00:23:57,650 the most efficient single actually you can do in terms at least ensuring that supply source is more efficient. 232 00:23:57,650 --> 00:24:02,600 However, it might also based likely also that desalination will also be necessary. 233 00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:08,330 So in our report, we talk about creating multiple sources for water to make the system more resilient. 234 00:24:08,330 --> 00:24:11,870 You have to improve the operational performance of water distribution networks. 235 00:24:11,870 --> 00:24:17,510 These are going back constructed in the 1970s 1980s, at least for Basra City falling apart. 236 00:24:17,510 --> 00:24:24,230 The engineers, scientists and managers say this. And one of the unfortunate things that seemed to be with with donors in the past, 237 00:24:24,230 --> 00:24:30,140 international donors tended to favour big mega infrastructure projects and not thought 238 00:24:30,140 --> 00:24:37,100 about the more routine daily sort of mundane if you like water distribution networks. 239 00:24:37,100 --> 00:24:41,570 There are examples from across the region which could also be relevant here. 240 00:24:41,570 --> 00:24:46,310 For example, increased use of wastewater recycling, particularly times you have a cultural sector. 241 00:24:46,310 --> 00:24:48,710 Very little wastewater recycling in Basra. 242 00:24:48,710 --> 00:24:53,300 And lastly, we say in terms of the report, I think and this is something international donors could perhaps, 243 00:24:53,300 --> 00:24:59,570 you know, if I do want to spend vast amounts, sums of money in Basra perhaps insist on is a need. 244 00:24:59,570 --> 00:25:05,180 I think at least we recommend of an independent review a dispassionate, impartial, 245 00:25:05,180 --> 00:25:12,710 objective review of water governance in Basra because many people are talking about the sort of crisis or the failures of governance in Basra. 246 00:25:12,710 --> 00:25:17,660 But I think there needs to be an independent sort of review which consults with the stakeholders 247 00:25:17,660 --> 00:25:22,700 on the ground as it were with the water users and those actually walked in the water treatment. 248 00:25:22,700 --> 00:25:28,570 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. 249 00:25:28,570 --> 00:25:36,440 They do incredibly kind of conscientious. And usually these parts are understaffed, so they're working very, very hard and very, 250 00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:40,700 very taboo conditions to make sure this technology keeps running. 251 00:25:40,700 --> 00:25:42,800 So there's an important thing here, I think, 252 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:49,310 to to take seriously if you want to understand why a water infrastructure management system is not failing, 253 00:25:49,310 --> 00:25:52,460 it won lessons in this report, which to me is quite a common sense. 254 00:25:52,460 --> 00:25:57,410 Thing is talk to the water engineers, talk to the water engineers, not the politicians. 255 00:25:57,410 --> 00:26:04,490 The water engineers are the ones who know what's going on in terms of everyday water management and treatment. 256 00:26:04,490 --> 00:26:09,350 I think my time is I might go maybe an apology to Michael. Oh, that's wonderful. 257 00:26:09,350 --> 00:26:13,520 Thank you very much, Michael. So I might have slipped a slide there. 258 00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:19,100 The slide on on mega infrastructure solutions. All right. Would you like to go back and say something about that, Michael? 259 00:26:19,100 --> 00:26:22,790 We have time. No problem. Yes, very quick. I mentioned this at the end. 260 00:26:22,790 --> 00:26:29,450 I don't know. I somehow skipped. This is the idea for both from the Iraqi government and from donors that there 261 00:26:29,450 --> 00:26:34,430 can be a silver bullet as the answer to the the water management deficit, 262 00:26:34,430 --> 00:26:37,340 impartial government and the Japanese fund. 263 00:26:37,340 --> 00:26:45,540 The Great Basin Water Project, which involves actually doesn't involve water infrastructure, distribution, network rehabilitation and investment. 264 00:26:45,540 --> 00:26:53,690 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 265 00:26:53,690 --> 00:26:58,340 there were serious contractual malpractices and corruption holding this project top. 266 00:26:58,340 --> 00:27:03,650 And now I've mentioned the one million cubic metre a day now for desalination plant, 267 00:27:03,650 --> 00:27:11,120 which has now gone out at a tender to a company European company in terms of the the contract management. 268 00:27:11,120 --> 00:27:17,780 And this is something that should be finished and I think with 2024, but is also dragging on in terms of arguments, 269 00:27:17,780 --> 00:27:21,290 political arguments about who should get the contract and everything. 270 00:27:21,290 --> 00:27:29,690 And basically, I think this is something I ask where whatever the good intentions of outside contractors and international donors, 271 00:27:29,690 --> 00:27:36,600 the failure to engage understand the political marketplace of Basra is something that. 272 00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:41,880 Means that these donor projects often don't sort of unfulfilled. 273 00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:46,950 And lastly, I mentioned just mentioned there's the upgrading of the of the canal would for me, 274 00:27:46,950 --> 00:27:53,190 be the single most effective infrastructure upgrading kind of media solution because it would 275 00:27:53,190 --> 00:28:00,030 double the capacity of the Armada Canal just by covering it and upgrading parts of the embankment. 276 00:28:00,030 --> 00:28:01,770 Thank you, Michael. Thank you. 277 00:28:01,770 --> 00:28:09,990 Michael, thank you very much for a remarkably comprehensive, if rather sobering account of what's happening in Basra on that. 278 00:28:09,990 --> 00:28:14,070 And it's particularly good. We hear a lot of discussion about there being problems, 279 00:28:14,070 --> 00:28:21,120 but we rarely get the sort of in-depth explanation of what is happening technically at the level, 280 00:28:21,120 --> 00:28:25,080 what the technical issues are, why precisely these problems are happening. 281 00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:31,860 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. 282 00:28:31,860 --> 00:28:38,130 So thank you very much for giving that great survey of what the situation in Basra. 283 00:28:38,130 --> 00:28:42,660 We're going to move now to the question and answer session the opportunity. 284 00:28:42,660 --> 00:28:47,470 You have to pose questions and put questions to Michael. 285 00:28:47,470 --> 00:28:53,830 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. 286 00:28:53,830 --> 00:29:00,280 Now if you press that there's is a box, you can write your question into and then that will give us an opportunity, 287 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:06,100 and I'll try and select as many of those as possible as we have time for and put them to Michael. 288 00:29:06,100 --> 00:29:10,900 And you're welcome to put your name in if you prefer to be anonymous, that's absolutely fine. 289 00:29:10,900 --> 00:29:16,930 You can alter that to anonymous and we'll try and get through of many of the questions as we can. 290 00:29:16,930 --> 00:29:20,680 I'd like to start with a question myself, Michael. You sort of won. 291 00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:25,750 You invited yourself looking at the politics of it. I think you made the very, very valid point. 292 00:29:25,750 --> 00:29:33,760 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. 293 00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:36,040 But could you say a little bit more about the politics, 294 00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:43,690 the local politics you mentioned about the political parties you mentioned about the militias and particularly something on how the local political 295 00:29:43,690 --> 00:29:51,820 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. 296 00:29:51,820 --> 00:29:55,870 But in what sort of ways? Yeah, sure. 297 00:29:55,870 --> 00:30:01,540 The political system locally, it mirrors, to some extent, the political system nationally, 298 00:30:01,540 --> 00:30:08,800 which other scholars on on the Iraqi political system I'm not a scholar on the Iraqi political system have talked about. 299 00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:14,470 This has a sort of allocation system whereby particular parties, 300 00:30:14,470 --> 00:30:21,790 particular constituencies are at least informally guaranteed sort of access to a particular government offices, 301 00:30:21,790 --> 00:30:25,610 but also as part of this also particular government funding. 302 00:30:25,610 --> 00:30:34,630 Maybe expectation of certain contractual favouritism. Now that is interesting because I think the first election 2005, 303 00:30:34,630 --> 00:30:45,730 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. 304 00:30:45,730 --> 00:30:55,120 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. 305 00:30:55,120 --> 00:31:00,580 They seem to realise each of them by themselves cannot dominate the local political scene. 306 00:31:00,580 --> 00:31:07,900 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, 307 00:31:07,900 --> 00:31:15,100 who talks about what he calls a limited access orders and how a particular governing structures in often conflict 308 00:31:15,100 --> 00:31:22,000 affected situations where natural resources are a key rental stream as they are in Iraq through frou hydrocarbons, 309 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:26,290 of course. You have a kind of what he calls north a dominant coalition. 310 00:31:26,290 --> 00:31:31,840 The dominant coalition in Basra is dominated by these, these local Shia parties. 311 00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:37,180 And so they they have this, this kind of they've sewn up, if you like the critical same, 312 00:31:37,180 --> 00:31:42,340 which has created this great gap between those who are represented not only by political 313 00:31:42,340 --> 00:31:47,350 parties and these political parties all have militias and the rest of the population. 314 00:31:47,350 --> 00:31:52,750 And when we had the 2018 protests in Basra, the water, the water situation, 315 00:31:52,750 --> 00:32:01,180 which was something very much triggered this local protesters were perceived that these these these Shia militias are very much rain, 316 00:32:01,180 --> 00:32:07,750 Iranian sort of directed and sometimes funded. And so they were they were burning headquarters. 317 00:32:07,750 --> 00:32:13,450 Think the sort of the head of the Iranian consulate in Basra. 318 00:32:13,450 --> 00:32:20,410 And if you had these local political parties, which were kind of sewed up, it's sort of the governance locally. 319 00:32:20,410 --> 00:32:24,820 And what this means is that the governor, Assad al-Adnani, 320 00:32:24,820 --> 00:32:30,940 is seen as a kind of compromise candidate is somebody who kind of cross between these different groups. 321 00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:36,100 But what it means is, I think you have this is not this is my opinion is not in the policy brief. 322 00:32:36,100 --> 00:32:47,020 You have acquired ossified local political system, which I think is based on a system of quite explicit rent seeking and patronage, 323 00:32:47,020 --> 00:32:52,330 which freezes out a large, I would argue, the majority of the population. 324 00:32:52,330 --> 00:33:00,190 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, 325 00:33:00,190 --> 00:33:03,700 we ask this at the local level and this was said, you know, 326 00:33:03,700 --> 00:33:08,380 this is still because this is not just militias, not just party militias, also tribal militias. 327 00:33:08,380 --> 00:33:15,130 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. 328 00:33:15,130 --> 00:33:19,870 Yeah. So this whole political marketplace penetrates the system. 329 00:33:19,870 --> 00:33:25,360 However, saying that and of course, it's become I'm tragically bloody. 330 00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:35,770 Since 2018, 2019, 2020, we have I have colleagues at Middle East Centre funded through this conflict research programme who've done really, 331 00:33:35,770 --> 00:33:42,640 really fantastic work. Looking in great detail at the protests in 2018, for example, 332 00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:50,650 been hoping to close his university in Denmark now done a great paper in looking at what's happening 333 00:33:50,650 --> 00:33:55,960 with the political protests and particularly some of the political assassinations since 2020, 334 00:33:55,960 --> 00:34:01,660 there's a whole swathe of civil society. Activists have been assassinated by militias. 335 00:34:01,660 --> 00:34:07,130 Militia groups and certain militia groups have been named as responsible for these assassinations. 336 00:34:07,130 --> 00:34:11,260 So it's a very bloody situation in the paper. 337 00:34:11,260 --> 00:34:12,730 I don't think it's in the report, 338 00:34:12,730 --> 00:34:21,790 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. 339 00:34:21,790 --> 00:34:25,580 So it's a very in one way this. 340 00:34:25,580 --> 00:34:27,040 So it's a long answer, Michael. 341 00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:34,840 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. 342 00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:39,310 This is madness. This is violent, you know, but it's not anarchic. 343 00:34:39,310 --> 00:34:45,100 It's an organised political kind of system that it might be what's been called a theocracy. 344 00:34:45,100 --> 00:34:50,860 It might be a particular kind of system, which, you know, we have absolutely no time for, of course. 345 00:34:50,860 --> 00:34:57,060 Yeah, but it enables itself to. And that's I think that's a key lesson. 346 00:34:57,060 --> 00:35:03,580 How can you kind of penetrate or at least think about ways in which this political system can 347 00:35:03,580 --> 00:35:11,190 least open up to discussion to civil society groups where perhaps water management is somebody? 348 00:35:11,190 --> 00:35:20,160 Nobody likes having lousy water. So maybe water management is something where you can perhaps even depoliticise it in terms of in and even 349 00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:26,280 even the local alliance or Shia parties know if you're not delivering decent water to the population, 350 00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:32,000 they're going to be out in the streets. So there's a self-interest there for them as well. 351 00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:36,870 Thank you, Michael. We cannot get into questions coming in from those of you attending. 352 00:35:36,870 --> 00:35:40,540 And thank you very much for your questions and please keep coming. 353 00:35:40,540 --> 00:35:46,930 Well, first question comes from Lucy Banish and Lucy, thank you very much, Michael, for the insightful talk, 354 00:35:46,930 --> 00:35:52,150 and Lisa's question is what are feasible financing options for the recommended improvements? 355 00:35:52,150 --> 00:36:00,800 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? 356 00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:04,580 Yeah, there were several things I think I would sit there, thank you for your question, Lucy. 357 00:36:04,580 --> 00:36:15,170 Is that a continuous source of dispute between the provincial government and the national government is its share of of hydrocarbon rents? 358 00:36:15,170 --> 00:36:20,480 And there have been disputes between al-Adnani, the governor, and the national government saying, Well, actually, 359 00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:27,350 basil government should get a fair share of the hydrocarbon rents, given that you have the concentration of oil fields in the South. 360 00:36:27,350 --> 00:36:35,240 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, 361 00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:39,490 there's no shortage of Iraqi government money or petrol dollars. 362 00:36:39,490 --> 00:36:43,880 Yeah, there's no shortage of money in terms of saying what these projects cannot happen. 363 00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:52,280 This is why last year it was announced that the Badar Canal would be finally upgraded in a way that become more efficient. 364 00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:57,680 But what happens is, I think, because the political system is at least in terms of Iraqi government money, 365 00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:01,490 the plan that we looked at the al-Shabab water treatment plant, 366 00:37:01,490 --> 00:37:10,700 we were looking at that because the OR0 plant had some international donor money and the al-Shabab plant had some Iraqi government money, 367 00:37:10,700 --> 00:37:15,380 which had been promised but didn't turn up. We couldn't even find out why didn't turn up the money. 368 00:37:15,380 --> 00:37:17,360 Yeah, they wanted money did not turn up. 369 00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:24,200 So there's an issue around government financing locally because the money tends to come down to the national ministries, 370 00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:28,310 including bottled water, to extract the perception locally. 371 00:37:28,310 --> 00:37:30,350 Is this is incredibly bureaucratic. 372 00:37:30,350 --> 00:37:37,250 In fact, the system is made deliberately bureaucratic that if you don't spend it, you have to fill out local legislator forms. 373 00:37:37,250 --> 00:37:42,410 And if you don't do that properly and don't spend your money, the national government grabs the budget back. 374 00:37:42,410 --> 00:37:52,370 So there's a very simple kind of solution here in terms of basic bureaucratic governance in terms of allocation of national government money. 375 00:37:52,370 --> 00:37:56,390 In this case with the Battle Water director. So the issue is not lack of money. 376 00:37:56,390 --> 00:38:00,290 And on top of that, you've got international donors willing to come in. 377 00:38:00,290 --> 00:38:06,710 I'm just saying that the big desalination plant and our food desalination plant is not going to be funded by donors. 378 00:38:06,710 --> 00:38:13,130 The Iraqi government are going to fund this. You know, there are millions or billions of dollars that can be used to buy. 379 00:38:13,130 --> 00:38:22,430 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. 380 00:38:22,430 --> 00:38:27,650 UNICEF came in at the last minute because the manager was screaming, Please help us somebody. 381 00:38:27,650 --> 00:38:36,860 The government is not giving us any money and said that you have this kind of reactive kind of funding from international donor agencies, 382 00:38:36,860 --> 00:38:41,420 humanitarian work. And you know, this is happening under water treatment plants. 383 00:38:41,420 --> 00:38:49,790 So I think at least in terms of international donors or humanitarian funding is often there before things get too grim. 384 00:38:49,790 --> 00:38:58,250 But there could be perhaps a more strategic financing option available which and this is I finished off saying this where you can say, 385 00:38:58,250 --> 00:39:04,640 well, the Japanese government has given hundreds of millions to to upgrade all the water infrastructure for Basra, 386 00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:12,200 but then you've got snowed up with the political system, so you must have some kind of donor payment system, 387 00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:17,810 which is somehow rendered immune from the national and the local political marketplace. 388 00:39:17,810 --> 00:39:22,160 And I think donors probably have more power here than they think. 389 00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:29,240 You know, sometimes a little bit too. They claim to have all sorts of wonderful auditing and transparency anti-corruption devices. 390 00:39:29,240 --> 00:39:32,240 But this is not working. It hasn't worked, at least in the past. 391 00:39:32,240 --> 00:39:37,370 So I think this is not rocket science to set up an international donor payment system, 392 00:39:37,370 --> 00:39:46,880 which can render the payment for water infrastructure upgrading and investment at least more resistant to the local political marketplace. 393 00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:55,740 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. 394 00:39:55,740 --> 00:40:00,840 Thank you, Michael. Next question comes from a colleague here in Oxford is Sam Hussein. 395 00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:05,490 He says, Hi, Sam actually gave us another of our lectures in our series, I think, 396 00:40:05,490 --> 00:40:13,050 in Week two and gave about an equally wonderful and equally sobering discussion and account of what's happening in Jordan. 397 00:40:13,050 --> 00:40:17,880 And he said, Could you please elaborate more on the challenges of waste water recycling? 398 00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:25,530 You referred to it very briefly. And I suppose also more degrees of normative acceptability amongst the population of treated wastewater 399 00:40:25,530 --> 00:40:31,430 for different uses because I know who Sam touched on this in his own presentation in the case of Jordan. 400 00:40:31,430 --> 00:40:36,350 Yeah, great question. It's and good to see you, I've not seen you, sometimes I get to see you. 401 00:40:36,350 --> 00:40:43,160 Good, good to hear you, and you can get your question. Now this is a caveat wasn't a cop out? 402 00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:51,260 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. 403 00:40:51,260 --> 00:40:56,780 The Bachelor is relying on an old single, massive kind of sewage plant, 404 00:40:56,780 --> 00:41:01,460 which also has its own issues in terms of upgrading and not impact from the water 405 00:41:01,460 --> 00:41:06,890 treatment because it's discharging levels of pollutants into the Shatt al-Arab, 406 00:41:06,890 --> 00:41:10,610 which increasingly the sort of toxic water in the Shatt al-Arab. 407 00:41:10,610 --> 00:41:16,070 So there's there's a separate issue in terms of the sewage network and the sewage treatment plant, 408 00:41:16,070 --> 00:41:19,790 which Miller what I said, I can't go into that into data. 409 00:41:19,790 --> 00:41:26,030 We didn't look into that in detail. But in terms of the wastewater treatment option, well, you know, 410 00:41:26,030 --> 00:41:32,300 I think almost all the water used in agriculture, for example, in Israel, is treated wastewater. 411 00:41:32,300 --> 00:41:35,000 The technology is there to use treated wastewater. 412 00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:42,680 One of the big issues in at least in Basra, is the loss of agricultural land from salinisation Farm, 413 00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:47,600 not using water and not having access to water for irrigation, for example. 414 00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:57,080 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? 415 00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:02,060 Yeah. Or I would say here is there are some really interesting work on this, 416 00:42:02,060 --> 00:42:08,570 specifically by something called the Eden Restoration Project, which is cited in our policy brief. 417 00:42:08,570 --> 00:42:17,270 And this is and this is related to the various initiatives around restoring Mesopotamian marshes of which I somehow wash. 418 00:42:17,270 --> 00:42:23,210 One of the sort of leading leading Iraqi environmentalist is involved with the restoration project, 419 00:42:23,210 --> 00:42:29,870 which is one component of this is using natural reed beds for for water treatment and 420 00:42:29,870 --> 00:42:34,790 using natural ecological systems for water treatment and showing how this is feasible. 421 00:42:34,790 --> 00:42:38,750 I think they've got the go ahead for a couple of pilot projects this year. 422 00:42:38,750 --> 00:42:45,380 And if you go look at the idea for a policy brief, you'll see the reference to their website to the demonstration project. 423 00:42:45,380 --> 00:42:48,180 They say this is possible and it's interest in the restoration project. 424 00:42:48,180 --> 00:42:55,850 Doing this in a way in which the wastewater treatment is also a way in which the at least 425 00:42:55,850 --> 00:43:03,430 the sort of the Marsh Arab villages also have a kind of cultural heritage restoration. 426 00:43:03,430 --> 00:43:08,690 The ecological restoration runs in parallel with the kind of cultural heritage restoration. 427 00:43:08,690 --> 00:43:14,920 And the idea here is that a lot is talked about about restoring the marshes, about the water flows into the marshes. 428 00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:24,050 An issue here. It's basically the sort of damming upstream, but there is the feasibility for, shall I call them, culturally sensitive, 429 00:43:24,050 --> 00:43:34,650 normatively sensible wastewater treatment kind of projects which could scale up the sort of water access availability. 430 00:43:34,650 --> 00:43:38,330 But thanks. Thanks for the question. Thank you. 431 00:43:38,330 --> 00:43:42,870 A question for another of our colleagues here in Oxford, Adeel Malik, very good to see you idle. 432 00:43:42,870 --> 00:43:50,210 Thanks for joining us. When I deal with the monster that have your view on how things have changed in Iraq and but 433 00:43:50,210 --> 00:43:57,440 specifically says only noticeable difference in water management in Basra pre and post 2003. 434 00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:02,780 And how has the introduction of sectarian allocation system changed the governance of water? 435 00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:10,600 He said a little bit about that at the local level. Perhaps you could say more, particularly looking at what has happened pre 2003. 436 00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:21,910 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. 437 00:44:21,910 --> 00:44:27,880 I would call it ideological project for the investment in public services. 438 00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:33,850 Many people call this a kind of neoliberal project. There were, and there still are to some extent, for example, 439 00:44:33,850 --> 00:44:43,630 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. 440 00:44:43,630 --> 00:44:46,720 And what this meant, and it's interesting if you go into the detail of this, 441 00:44:46,720 --> 00:44:50,740 even in terms of the British government sponsored or the British government work on here, 442 00:44:50,740 --> 00:44:55,450 they had a lot of advice from Adam Smith International think tank, 443 00:44:55,450 --> 00:45:01,840 which is very much sympathetic to kind of free market solutions, as they call them, for public services. 444 00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:04,510 So there was an expectation with water management, 445 00:45:04,510 --> 00:45:13,140 and there was a breaking up of kind of a part of the whole de-Ba'athification in 2003 is breaking up with industries, 446 00:45:13,140 --> 00:45:22,510 losing many valuable experts and go into kind of decentralised free-market philosophy for water infrastructure rehabilitation. 447 00:45:22,510 --> 00:45:28,180 Unfortunately, that played straight into the kind of when the new constitution got agreed, 448 00:45:28,180 --> 00:45:37,030 a new sectarian system into kind of the the political marketplace sectarianism because you had you were creating a whole bunch of separate, 449 00:45:37,030 --> 00:45:41,110 fragmented, decentralised opportunities to earn money. 450 00:45:41,110 --> 00:45:47,320 And these things would be picked off one by one, by particular parties, backed by particular militias. 451 00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:56,740 And even then, when there were large infrastructure projects with the Japanese zuiker and a big infrastructure investment project, 452 00:45:56,740 --> 00:46:04,990 we would assume for a very, very large project, there were protections against these kind of contractual malpractices, allegedly also with that. 453 00:46:04,990 --> 00:46:13,870 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. 454 00:46:13,870 --> 00:46:21,880 The sectarian system is basically, I think whatever the intentions of those who design the Constitution and I talked about how this sectarian system, 455 00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:22,570 at least locally, 456 00:46:22,570 --> 00:46:30,370 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. 457 00:46:30,370 --> 00:46:38,830 So the ethno religious complexion, if you like, is more constantly fixed is that that sectarian system? 458 00:46:38,830 --> 00:46:46,030 It set out the opportunity for rent seeking, including criminal rent seeking, 459 00:46:46,030 --> 00:46:53,290 in a way which perhaps if a different kind of constitutional bargain or or design had been thought about, 460 00:46:53,290 --> 00:46:59,430 which was much more attuned to thinking about crafting a public interest. 461 00:46:59,430 --> 00:47:03,210 Rather than specific sectional interests, maybe that would have happened. 462 00:47:03,210 --> 00:47:10,380 I mean, there's been some interesting work, for example, about how the Iraqi sectarian system is replicating, 463 00:47:10,380 --> 00:47:15,900 to some extent, the sort of constitutionalism which is disabling Lebanon. 464 00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:22,470 My colleague Toby Dodge talks about Iraq as a kind of really informal constitutional system, 465 00:47:22,470 --> 00:47:27,510 and we all know about these sort of failures in energy, water infrastructure in Lebanon. 466 00:47:27,510 --> 00:47:32,550 And unfortunately, these have been replicated in actually even worse, I would say, 467 00:47:32,550 --> 00:47:42,760 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. 468 00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,250 So again, long answer, I apologise. 469 00:47:45,250 --> 00:47:52,540 It's basically the I think the system, the sectarian system has amplified this, this sort of political marketplace, 470 00:47:52,540 --> 00:48:04,790 which is disabled opportunities for crafting out a kind of a functioning public, interest driven water management infrastructure. 471 00:48:04,790 --> 00:48:12,440 Thank you. Question from Marianne Lennox and Marianne says I was very involved in a multidisciplinary research 472 00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:18,230 project about the Euphrates River and analysing the effects of lack of cooperation between Turkey, 473 00:48:18,230 --> 00:48:21,980 Syria and Iraq, where Iraq was left out. 474 00:48:21,980 --> 00:48:29,120 The situation with the war in Syria hasn't improved the situation regarding water quality and access to enough water to Iraq. 475 00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:36,340 And she asked, How would you look at the future regarding allocation with a more fair water share to Iraq? 476 00:48:36,340 --> 00:48:42,120 Yes, absolutely, yes, that's quite a big question. I don't know how much time I've got. 477 00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:51,720 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. 478 00:48:51,720 --> 00:48:57,210 And I've been, I mean, a whole Bayesian approach. I mean, this sort of Euphrates and Tigris together. 479 00:48:57,210 --> 00:49:06,060 Yeah. In the the Arab geographies a thousand years ago called the Tigris Euphrates Basin Al-Jazeera, 480 00:49:06,060 --> 00:49:11,910 because it constitutes an island, an island in which the sort of swing sort of spring flows. 481 00:49:11,910 --> 00:49:16,050 The spring melts from the mountains in the north in Turkey, as it is now, 482 00:49:16,050 --> 00:49:21,750 would turned into this wonderful pulse of water down the Euphrates and down the Tigris River 483 00:49:21,750 --> 00:49:27,690 floods the kind of sort of the southern Iraqi plains and supports agriculture and so forth. 484 00:49:27,690 --> 00:49:38,790 So I think you need a whole basin approach. Unfortunately, there is no there's no transboundary water agreement involving Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran. 485 00:49:38,790 --> 00:49:41,740 There are actually some agreements on the Euphrates. 486 00:49:41,740 --> 00:49:50,160 There's a Iraq Syria agreement from 1990, which which agreed to a particular percentage share between between Iraq and Syria. 487 00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:55,920 And I think it is 42 percent say we have 58 percent Iraq in terms of entitlement to water. 488 00:49:55,920 --> 00:50:01,230 Now, however, if the water flow is decreasing, that becomes a problem. 489 00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:07,980 Yeah. If because of infrastructure in Turkey, I mean, if looking at the sort of the overall water flow, 490 00:50:07,980 --> 00:50:16,440 the urban water flow has declined markedly since the 1970s as upstream infrastructure has kind of become a more, more developed. 491 00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:25,350 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. 492 00:50:25,350 --> 00:50:36,550 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, 493 00:50:36,550 --> 00:50:39,930 being a predictable, seasonal pulse of water. 494 00:50:39,930 --> 00:50:45,180 There's more infrastructure, the more dams on the Euphrates, but increasingly more and more on the Tigris, 495 00:50:45,180 --> 00:50:52,350 the elusive dam, for example, massive Turkish dam, which which has been making Iraqi water officials very anxious. 496 00:50:52,350 --> 00:50:58,400 So there's some. I think there's a memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Iraq. 497 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:06,110 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. 498 00:51:06,110 --> 00:51:09,440 And how do you do that? I think you have to go to international water law. 499 00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:18,020 International water law has very clear provisions about equitable and reasonable use to use the sort of familiar norms of international waters law. 500 00:51:18,020 --> 00:51:25,820 And I think other basins can do this, you know, with the political will, hopefully with assistance of the international community. 501 00:51:25,820 --> 00:51:33,200 You could craft a sustainable, transboundary water agreement for the Tigris Euphrates Basin. 502 00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:39,200 And one of the reasons this is becoming more and more and more necessary is because the impacts of climate change, 503 00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:43,040 because climate change is an additional external stressor, 504 00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:50,750 which is added to I mean, I would say personally that climate change is not the principal determinant of water problems in Basra. 505 00:51:50,750 --> 00:51:54,830 Others have said Iraqi water problems because of climate change, at least not yet. 506 00:51:54,830 --> 00:51:58,640 But it's a stress which is becoming more and more significant. 507 00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:04,730 And so you have to have a a kind of basin wide agreement fit for purpose, which is able, for example, 508 00:52:04,730 --> 00:52:12,170 to factor in variability form from climate change sort of stresses is possible is possible. 509 00:52:12,170 --> 00:52:18,120 Other other watersheds have done in other countries have done it. It just needs the political will. 510 00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:23,610 Thank you, Michael. Unfortunately, the clock is against us, and we've come to the end of our session, 511 00:52:23,610 --> 00:52:27,870 but thank you very much and I apologise to all of those of you who posed questions, 512 00:52:27,870 --> 00:52:33,570 but we weren't able to answer within the time could have talked about this for quite some, given some complexity. 513 00:52:33,570 --> 00:52:39,090 No, my long answers might be no, no. The fascinating, fascinating answer is quite quite the opposite. 514 00:52:39,090 --> 00:52:44,340 Michael, thank you. It's always on a topic like this. We get a lot, a lot of questions, but thank you. 515 00:52:44,340 --> 00:52:46,770 Thank you very much, all of you, for coming. In fact, Michael, 516 00:52:46,770 --> 00:52:53,310 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. 517 00:52:53,310 --> 00:52:58,670 I know you held up. Yes, that one. What's the best way of getting it online? Go to Middle East Centre website. 518 00:52:58,670 --> 00:53:02,460 Mm-Hmm. Go to research. This is LSC Middle East Centre. 519 00:53:02,460 --> 00:53:10,320 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. 520 00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:14,670 Go to research. Go to Conflict Research Programme Iraq. 521 00:53:14,670 --> 00:53:18,540 And then you'll see the various projects in the conflict research programme Iraq. 522 00:53:18,540 --> 00:53:21,750 And this is one of them, a whole host of other stuff as well. 523 00:53:21,750 --> 00:53:23,370 I should I should plug while I'm here, 524 00:53:23,370 --> 00:53:31,470 including some really interesting papers on protest impartially on politics in southern Basra, so I can better government. 525 00:53:31,470 --> 00:53:38,550 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. 526 00:53:38,550 --> 00:53:43,710 I just contact. Maybe we have to send you one free, of course. 527 00:53:43,710 --> 00:53:45,210 Thank you very much, Michael. We would. 528 00:53:45,210 --> 00:53:52,140 I was saying to Michael beforehand how impressive the LSC Middle East Centre website was and with a lot of fascinating things on that. 529 00:53:52,140 --> 00:54:00,930 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. 530 00:54:00,930 --> 00:54:07,770 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, 531 00:54:07,770 --> 00:54:12,880 and also the solutions that, as Michael said, this is not a an anarchic situation. 532 00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:17,550 There are very, very clear reasons for why these things are happening. 533 00:54:17,550 --> 00:54:22,770 But thank you very much, Michael, and feeding the audience as well and for your questions and please get in contact with 534 00:54:22,770 --> 00:54:27,090 me if you hadn't been able to get through in this opportunity in terms of questions. 535 00:54:27,090 --> 00:54:30,030 Thank you, Michael. Thank you. Jordan, thank you all of you for attending. 536 00:54:30,030 --> 00:54:34,170 And I look forward to welcoming you next week for those who are able to attend. 537 00:54:34,170 --> 00:54:40,260 We will have Netta Cohen talking about environmental issues in the Israel-Palestine dispute, but thank you very much for this evening. 538 00:54:40,260 --> 00:54:43,620 Have a wonderful weekend and thank you very much again, Michael. Thank you. 539 00:54:43,620 --> 00:54:58,254 Bye bye.