[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WATER SHARING CONFLICTS AND THE THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL PEACE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 18, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-231
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia GRACE MENG, New York
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
TED S. YOHO, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
CURT CLAWSON, Florida
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
TED POE, Texas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Paul Sullivan, Ph.D., professor of economics, National Defense
University..................................................... 5
Amanda Wooden, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental
studies, Bucknell University................................... 23
Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D., director, Center for Gender &
Peacebuilding, United States Institute of Peace................ 34
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Paul Sullivan, Ph.D.: Prepared statement......................... 8
Amanda Wooden, Ph.D.: Prepared statement......................... 26
Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 36
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 60
Hearing minutes.................................................. 61
WATER SHARING CONFLICTS AND THE THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL PEACE
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2255 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana
Rohrabacher (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Subcommittee is called to order. This
afternoon's hearing is on the topic that I consider to be of
great importance--the sharing and management of water across
international borders. When well done, both the environment and
the people involved can prosper.
When done poorly or not at all, it can be a cause of
conflict. As a proud and longtime resident of southern
California, I know first hand the vital importance of having
access to clean water.
We drink water. We use water. We use it to generate
electricity . Some of us surf in the water. Water is required
in a wide range of industries that are essential to the well
being of the people, especially agriculture.
Water is a common staple of life, but where it is scarce it
is a strategic resource that nations compete to control.
We have before us today a panel of experts who will review
the potential for water conflict in two areas of the world--the
Aral Sea watershed in Central Asia and along the Nile River in
East Africa.
During the Soviet period, water sharing between the five
Central Asian republics was commanded by Moscow. The downstream
nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan needed vast
amounts of water, primarily for agriculture.
The upstream republics, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have a
surplus of water and would release their water from their dams
during the summer months to irrigate the crops downstream. In
exchange, the downstream nations would then send oil and gas
and other resources which they possess to the upstream nations
during the winter time for fuel and heating.
Since 1991, the Soviet era arrangement between the five
republics has broken down. The upstream nations have sought to
expand their hydroelectric infrastructure through the building
of new dams.
This has been a great source of consternation among the
other Central Asian governments, especially Uzbekistan. The
breakdown in trust and coordination between these governments
concerning water sharing has been a distraction from more
pressing issues such as economic development and thwarting
radical Islam.
What should be a source of regional cooperation and
strength is now a source of regional tension. Let me just note
beside the rise in regional strife and waste and misuse of--and
overuse of water that has had a dramatic impact--that it has
had a dramatic impact on the environment there.
The Aral Sea, which once was one of the largest bodies of
fresh water in the world, has all but disappeared. That is a
visible tragedy that should be an incentive for the governments
of Central Asia to tackle this problem.
In a different part of the world, the Nile and its
tributaries are another example of where international
cooperation is under stress. The waters that combine to form
the Nile flow through ten different countries. It is one of the
great rivers of the world and supplies 85 percent of Egypt's
water.
Ethiopia is currently executing a plan to construct the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam across the Blue Nile. The
Ethiopian Government hopes to have the dam completed by 2017.
They hope that with that accomplishment Ethiopia will
become the largest energy exporting state in East Africa. Yet,
Egypt has justifiable fears that the new dam will reduce the
flow of water that it receives.
The task of finding a solution is complex. Legal agreements
governing the control of the Nile's waters date back to the
colonial era when many of the current governments didn't even
exist.
More recently, multinational--multilateral projects, that
is, such as the Nile Basin Initiative, has had some success.
But there has yet to be a breakthrough on the largest
controversy surrounding the peaceful sharing of the water of
the Nile.
In 2013, the rhetoric between Egypt and Ethiopia hit a new
low point when then President Morsi stated in not so--it was
not so veiled threat, that is, that, and I quote, ``All options
are available.'' To respond to the building of the Renaissance
Dam it was all of Egypt's options are available and that does
sound like a veiled threat.
Since the election, the current government in Cairo, a more
positive--there has been a more positive tone and I hope the
ongoing negotiations will, at some point, lead to an
understanding between these two countries.
I am going to be asking our witnesses to update the
subcommittee on the current status of negotiations between
Egypt and Ethiopia and lay out what steps our country might
take to promote international water cooperation.
The national--excuse me, the natural resources of our
planet, including water, are gifts that we can use to improve
the lives of all the people of the world. But it is a scare
resource and dividing scarce resources is never easy.
But when nations come into conflict over such resources
what you also end up with is that you have a waste of those
resources, a waste of energy and perhaps conflict that could
cause--have a great cost for both sides in such a controversy.
So we hope today to get a little better understanding of
these potential conflicts, how they might be averted, so the
solutions and we thank our witnesses for coming. And now
Ranking Member Mr. Keating for your opening statement.
Mr. Keating. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for holding this timely hearing, and I also want to thank you
for your leadership on this. I think this committee continues
to highlight one of the most important global issues that we
are facing and I think that, hopefully, the spotlight we are
able to cast on this will result in more interest and more
emphasis on dealing with this because, Mr. Chairman, it is
indeed one of the most important issues we have to contend
with.
So I would also like to thank our witnesses, in particular,
Kathleen Kuehnast. Kathleen testified before the full committee
on the role of women in conflict prevention and I welcome her
back to the committee today. I appreciate your being here as I
do all of our witnesses.
Today's hearing topic provides us with an opportunity to
look beyond Europe and Eurasia and examine the global impact of
depleting resources, climate change, an expanding world
population and accompanying social unrest.
Last year, for the first time the Director of National
Intelligence, James Clapper, listed ``competition and scarcity
involving natural resources'' is a national security threat on
par with global terrorism, cyber warfare and nuclear
proliferation.
He also noted that terrorists, militants and international
crime groups are certain to use declining local food security
to gain legitimacy and undermine government authority, and that
is what we have to look at if this goes unchanged in the
future.
I would add that the prospect of scarcities of vital
natural resources including energy, water, land, food and rare
earth elements in itself would guarantee geopolitical friction.
Now add lone wolves and extremists who exploit these
scenarios into the mix and the domestic relevance of today's
conversation becomes clear. Further, it is no secret that
threats are more interconnected today than they were, let us
say, 15 years ago.
Events which at first seem local and irrelevant have the
potential to set of transnational disruptions and affect U.S.
national interests. At the same rate, issues of mutual concern
provide the opportunity for greater cooperation, and projects
that encourage community building and environmental awareness
at the local level are taking place and should be encouraged.
In particular, I believe that the women in communities
threatened by water scarcity will have an important role to
play in the future and should be engaged by their local
governments and international communities now.
I agree with Mr. Clapper that the depletion of resources
stemming from many factors which, above all, include climate
change has the potential to raise a host of issues for U.S.
businesses, officials and individuals abroad as well as here at
home.
For this reason, Mr. Chairman, I have long advocated for
alternative energy sources. Yet, as the representative of what
will be, hopefully, 1 day the nation's first offshore wind
farm, I deal daily with obstructive businesses and individuals
trying to get in the way of this project and others like it in
exchange for increasing their companies' profit margins.
I would like to add that, given our distinguished panel of
witnesses today and our subcommittee's jurisdiction, I am sure
we will be hearing about the tremendous energy reserves in
Central Asia and the need for diversifying energy markets.
In this regard, I would like to note that I have and will
continue to advocate for the importance of increasing
democratic governance and rule of law in that region.
Energy production can get you only so far. I would like to
hear from our witnesses on how the United States can engage
with Central Asian governments to improve governance,
transparency in the energy sector both bilaterally and through
international organizations such as the Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative.
However, as we discuss these important issues, I hope that
we can continue to keep our own country's movement toward an
energy-independent future and the obstacles on this path in our
minds.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I knew you would get global warming
in there somewhere. It is okay.
Mr. Meeks, would you like to share an opening statement
with us?
Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Inequitable access to fresh water is highly variable
between and within countries and much of the world's population
lives in places where demand for water exceeds supply.
International water shortages are a critical issue with far
fetching--far reaching effects on global security and
stability. That is why, Mr. Chairman, I am thankful to you and
the ranking member for convening such a timely hearing today to
address this very, very important topic.
An increasing prevalence of water shortages and the
subsequent threats to peace these shortages present are
fundamentally a global trend. Indeed, even here in the United
States of America we are not immune from this problem.
As some of my colleagues, and you may very well know there
was just a program on 60 Minutes, ``Out West,'' talking about
how the groundwater is being depleted even in the United
States.
So America has a stake in this issue just like every other
country and we must realize that all of our futures are
dependent upon the actions that we take now.
We have to look at this problem from a geopolitical
perspective and understand the complex relations which exist
between nations and places like East Africa and Central Asia.
Many of their disputes over water go back decades, if not
longer. We must also look at this from a human perspective
because at the end of the day it is ultimately about human
life. Every year, 2.1 million people, mainly children, die due
to illness related to dirty water, poor sanitation and poor
hygiene.
One-third of the world's population lives in water-stressed
countries, primarily in Asia and Africa. The actions we take
today hold the potential to eliminate human suffering tomorrow
and promote peace and cooperation for generations to come.
We must think long and hard about how we avoid conflict. We
must discuss ways we can advance science and put it to work in
the service of mankind.
And most importantly, we must collectively discuss how we
can use diplomacy both here in the United States as well as
abroad to promote fair, reasonable, responsible and sustainable
strategies for cooperation among our friends and partners
around the world.
For, indeed, this place that we call Earth is small and we
share it with each other and we need to preserve it for each
other. Otherwise, we are all subject to perish. So I am
grateful, again, to the chairman and the ranking member and I
am grateful to our witnesses for being here today and I look
forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses on this very,
very important matter.
Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Mr. Meeks, and I will give a
brief introduction to our witnesses, and our first witness is
Dr. Paul Sullivan and he is a professor of economics at the
National Defense University. For 6 years Dr. Sullivan taught
classes at the American University in Cairo.
He obtained his Ph.D. from Yale University, has advised
senior U.S. officials on many issues related to energy, water,
food, economics, politics and political security issues.
Next, we have Amanda Wooden--Dr. Amanda Wooden--who is an
associate professor and director of environmental studies at
Bucknell University.
She earned her Ph.D. in international relations and public
policy at Claremont Graduate University in California, nearby
my home turf. Dr. Wooden served with the organization for
security and cooperation in Europe as an economic and
environmental officer in Kyrgyzstan.
And finally, we have Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast, who is the
director of the Center for Gender and Peacebuilding at the
United States Institute of Peace. She is an expert on Central
Asia and Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan in particular
where, for over a decade, she worked as a social scientist for
the World Bank with a focus, of course, on Central Asian
conflict prevention.
So we are very, very blessed to have you with us today. We
thank you for taking your time and sharing your knowledge and
experience with us. I would ask if you could try to keep it to
a 5-minute summary.
Everything else that you would like to have in a more
developed way you could put into the record as part of your--as
part of your testimony. And with that, Dr. Sullivan, you may
proceed.
STATEMENT OF PAUL SULLIVAN, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS,
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Sullivan. Good afternoon, Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking
Member William Keating, from my home state of Massachusetts,
the honorable majority and minority members of the
subcommittee, Mr. Meeks, it is an honor and a privilege to be
giving testimony on this extremely interesting issue.
I heard national security mentioned. This is also involved
with economics, politics, geopolitics, diplomacy, possibly the
military and also human security, and without the human
security of water, food and energy security, terrorism and
other things can result.
Before I give any public presentation, I need to give the
usual caveats. These are my opinions alone and do not represent
the university--the National Defense University--the Department
of Defense, the U.S. Government, Georgetown or any other
institution I might be associated with.
I will focus mostly on the Blue Nile with the Great
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or the GERD, in Ethiopia with its
potential effects on downstream countries, especially Egypt and
the Omo River, with the Gibe Dam cascade and especially Gibe
III Dam and the effects on Lake Turkana in Kenya and also in
Ethiopia.
These dam systems are way along the way, even as these
tensions build. When water is at threat, then energy, food,
industry and more are also at threat, including peace and
stability.
Severe water shortages can breed poverty, hopelessness,
terrorism and even revolution as we saw in Syria with the
horrible droughts in 2008 through 2010, essentially sparking
off the revolution.
The GERD Dam is built on the Blue Nile, or Abbay, as it is
called in the region. Egypt uses about 98 percent of its
available water. It is already water stressed.
Water shortages in Egypt built up some tensions leading to
the revolution and beyond. Egypt has 55 cubic kilometers of the
Nile water for its allocation from a 1959 treaty which Ethiopia
does not recognize.
They and others except for Sudan have signed on to another
treaty which they recognize. Fifty-five cubic kilometers seems
like a lot of water. However, for a population close to 90
million it really is not.
They are living on a knife's edge of water security. When
the reservoir behind the GERD is filled it could contain 75
cubic kilometers of water, which is much greater than Egypt's
Nile-designated amounts.
It is also one half of the entire water in Lake Nasser,
which is the only buffer Egypt has if there is a great shortage
of water upstream. The Blue Nile gives Egypt about 60 to 70
percent of all of its water depending on seasonal water flows.
It is very important to understand that the real time to
develop water are when it rains the most--in this part of the
world it is June through September--and that will likely be
when the GERD Dam is filled up. But it is also a time, June to
September in Egypt, when it is very hot, also great needs for
electricity.
In the 1980s, there were famines and droughts in Ethiopia.
About a million people died. At the same time, the water
heading toward Egypt was cut back, and when it was cut back the
electricity production from hydro dams in Egypt was also cut
back.
There was a problem with irrigation. There was a problem
with food. Egypt and Ethiopia are intimately connected through
the Nile. What happens in Ethiopia can really affect what is
happening in Egypt.
If the GERD Dam is filled up too quickly and at the wrong
time Egypt could go beyond that knife's edge in security.
This is possibly a nightmarish situation for many
Egyptians. They are quite concerned. If they were around in the
1980s they knew what happened then. It is not clear how this
dam is going to be filled up. It is not clear from any of the
studies.
As a matter of fact, no real studies have been done of
this. A lot of ideas have been bantered about the way this
might work out but the behavior of the Ethiopian Government on
the Omo River with regard to the Gibe cascade is a giveaway.
They could care less, it seems, about what happens to Lake
Turkana in Kenya or of the tribals along the river--the Omo
River. They have essentially tossed them off their land and
there is a huge land grab happening right now.
The Ethiopians have claimed that they are not going to be
using the GERD reservoir water for irrigation. However, if
there is another famine I can guarantee you they will, and
Egypt will be in trouble.
Because just letting the water go through for electricity
is very different from using that water for irrigation. It
takes more and more of it out. There has to be some way to come
to some agreement before it gets worse, before populations
grow, before economic demands grow, before agriculture grows
along the river.
International law, in this case, is quite weak. There is no
enforcement mechanism. You have the Helsinki agreements, the
Berlin agreements. You have Article 7 of the U.N. Convention,
the Nile Basin agreement and so forth. But without an
enforcement agreement, we are really going nowhere with this.
Part of what may be needed, and this is where the United
States may walk in, is that we tried to help develop with our
allies and partners and many others in the world an enforcement
mechanism for these treaties and new treaties to take a look at
a better way of sharing water.
If we don't do that, the situation will get more tense
along the Nile and many other places in the world.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sullivan follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Dr. Wooden.
STATEMENT OF AMANDA WOODEN, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY
Ms. Wooden. Thank you. Mr. Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking
Member Keating, Member Meeks and other distinguished members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify here today.
In Central Asia, the main water disputes concern the water
energy nexus but a direct relationship between water scarcity
and interstate conflict is an unlikely scenario.
There are already existing contentious water politics
within several countries in the region and these combine and
most recently are combining with finger pointing between
Central Asian leaders who, at times, have used nationalistic
rhetoric and threats about water to implement other political
issues.
However, existing cooperation, even within the current weak
institutional regional water sharing network, means that
conflict is avoidable. So to help strengthen cooperation, the
U.S. Government should expand support for renewable energy
development and electricity distribution, help tackle
pernicious pollution problems, continue and expand support for
scientific research in and about the region and increase
support for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The most important regional water tensions and social
discontent issues are hydro electric dam development,
irrigation management, infrastructure failures, militarized
border zone water sharing and flooding potential.
Aral Sea ecosystem collapse is a significant livelihood
threat. The biggest future of water supply risks are glacier
loss and precipitation changes as well as hidden creeping
pollution problems and industrialization.
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan currently face significant
adaptive capacity limitations and all countries need to better
tackle rural vulnerabilities and deal with citizens' everyday
water challenges.
The glacier-fed rivers Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya, the main
rivers in the region, terminate in the former Aral Sea, which,
as the chairman already described, was once the world's fourth
largest lake and now is only 10 percent of its former size.
Most recent NASA images show the largest lake portion no
longer exists. I gave you an appendix of images, about 15
images, that show you the map of the region and what this
transition looks like.
The Aral Sea collapse and continuing decline of residents'
quality of life, which includes access to fresh water, soil
quality loss, shortened growing season length, could contribute
to dissent in Uzbekistan, and this is important to understand.
The ongoing disagreements between Central Asian governments
over the Syr Dar'ya and the Amu Dar'ya and seasonal tensions in
securitised cross border communities like the Ferghana Valley
are the key tension points.
There are also complex functioning relationships from the
local to the national level. When we talk about conflict it is
important to recognize that cooperation is more regular than
disagreements and tense events, although that cooperation seems
fragile at times.
So we have moments where paying attention to what can work
in cooperation and how we can enhance that is important. The
biggest conflict risks in Central Asia are political and
economic--government willingness to tackle everyday struggles
with water and power, authoritarian state treatments of
information sharing and dissent--human rights and access to
water being one of those--subsequent contention between people
and governments about their nonresponsive policies which we see
in times of drought and responses, and regional leaders' use of
nationalistic rhetoric to lay claim to waterways and
rationalize particular waterway uses are--these are the biggest
risks.
I also would suggest caution when we use danger and risk
rhetoric. This language can contribute to a difficult--already
difficult dialogue between Central Asian nations. So more
specifically, let me talk about hydro energy.
Around 90 percent of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan's energy
production--electricity production is from hydro power so both
countries are investing heavily in reviving Soviet-era plans to
expand this sector.
Kyrgyzstan is constructing the large Kambar-Ata dams I and
II and four smaller dams on the Naryn River with the completion
date target of 2019, and Tajikistan is heavily investing in the
Rogun Dam, which will displace more than 40,000 people.
The Government of Uzbekistan has seemingly engaged in
economic retribution through border securitisation and cutting
off gas supplies to both countries at various times and the
downstream countries perceive this as a direct response to dam
construction.
Southern Kyrgyzstan's gas has been cut off since spring. So
both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan continue to pressure for halting
this large-dam construction or engaging in regional evaluation
of the projects mutually.
They are concerned these dams will impact availability and
timing of flow for downstream irrigation-dependent and flood
risk communities.
However, both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan face the reality of
electricity shortages and impact of power outages on their
population's well being and popular discontent. Recent research
that I conducted in Kyrgyzstan concerns the 2010 revolution,
which was in part sparked by protest about electricity
blackouts, partial privatization of this sector, and increase
in tariffs. This year, 2014, is a very similar year to 2008 and
2009 in Kyrgyzstan.
Already blackouts are likely for the winter, tariffs are
being discussed and it is hard to imagine for Kyrgyzstan and
also Tajikistan that they would halt the controversial dam
construction projects given their severe domestic electricity
shortages.
So how do we think about tackling this? Moving forward,
there needs to be clarity about how Rogun, the new Rogun and
Naryn dams, will be operated or tensions will remain and
perhaps increase during dam construction and the reservoir-
filling period.
The CASA-1000 project to which the U.S. Government is
contributing to export electricity from Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan is another point of
contention.
Uzbekistan opposes this project as it arguably depends on
these new dams for adequate electricity export. Perhaps one way
in which the United States Government could help to improve
relations is following the International Crisis Group's
suggestion to support creating multiple bilateral agreements
instead of the current dysfunctional multilateral agreements.
So this has happened between Kazakhstan and China, between
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in the Chui-Talas River Commission,
and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan could engage in bilateral
agreements.
Of course, we would hope that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan would do the same but those are less
likely.
A key future change is projected decreases in the Tien Shan
and Pamir mountain glacier surface areas and volume over the
next few decades. The region will shift from a glacier-
dependent hydrological regime to a precipitation-dependent one,
resulting in greater variation in water levels, seasonally and
annually.
So adapting to this slow-moving process requires
significant international support. I have five key policy
suggestions.
The first is, given this tight relationship between water
and energy and regional distribution disputes as well as
household energy and security, it is most important to invest
in expansion of renewable energy sources, off grid household
energy systems and related infrastructure.
The USAID Energy Links program works on institutional
strengthening and some energy efficiency improvement. However,
much more is needed.
Second, water pollution is often missed in discussions of
conflict but it is fundamental for tackling everyday problems
residents face and consequentially for adjusting and
maintaining political stability.
For example, U.S. Government funding to help address the
uranium tailings legacy would be positively received by
multiple countries so it would be cooperation enhancing and
something we want to return to.
Large-scale industrial projects should be monitored,
especially, for example, I can mention Kumtor gold mine which
is operating on four glaciers in the Tien Shen mountains.
There are several glaciers that are actively being mined in
the operation of this gold mine facility and this is something
that should be evaluated when we talk about the EITI, for
example, that Mr. Keating mentioned.
Third, supporting Central Asian glaciology and hydrology
research and scientific monitoring is a valuable contribution,
and USAID is considering contributing to the World Bank Central
Asia hydro meteorology modernization program and I would
support this.
And, finally, glacial decline is already happening and it
will have clear impacts on regional water distribution. It is
necessary to increase funding for mitigation and adaptation,
improve and expand programs such as the USAID wheat resiliency
program and tackle this issue more broadly.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wooden follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. You are next, Doctor.
STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN KUEHNAST, PH.D., DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
GENDER & PEACEBUILDING, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Ms. Kuehnast. Thank you so much, Chairman Rohrabacher,
Ranking Member Keating, Mr. Meeks and other members of the
House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and
Emerging Threats.
Please note that the views I express today are solely my
own and not those of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which does
not take policy positions.
I want to emphasize three points related to Central Asia
and water issues. Water is a mismanaged resource, not
necessarily a scarce one. Central Asia is not a friendly
neighborhood for water management.
Given these predicaments, we can ask why there hasn't been
more conflict over water in the past and how this might change
in the future.
According to World Bank estimates, only 21 percent of water
in Central Asia is used effectively. A recent report in the
journal Nature found that on average a person in Turkmenistan
consumes four times more water than an average American and 13
times more than a Chinese citizen.
Certainly, the Soviet centralized state enforced the rules
for water allocation among the republics, regulating and
maintaining canals, pumping stations, irrigation facilities,
dams and reservoirs.
The post-Soviet era, however, brought the creation of five
Central Asian states, resulting in a predicament where 98
percent of Turkmenistan's water supply and 91 percent of
Uzbekistan's originates outside their borders.
While poor water management and wasteful practices are core
issues in Central Asia, the factors that have kept the regional
tensions over water and energy resources from spilling over may
no longer hold.
Consider the demographic challenge of Central Asia. Roughly
half the population is under 30 years of age and most of these
young people are worse off than their parents' generation, with
higher rates of illiteracy, unemployment and poor health.
Inattention to the needs of this disenfranchised age group
increases the risk of local level conflicts in the individual
countries and throughout the region, especially with known
extremist groups infiltrating these countries.
But also add a widening gap and tension between elites and
the poor, weak governance along with the prevalence of patron-
client relationships, loyalty, manipulation of formal rules.
Add an increasing fear among the local populations that
water and energy problems will be resolved at the end of a gun,
especially as the number of small arms surge, coming up from
Afghanistan.
Add the fact of the large number of labor migrants from
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan leaving empty villages
except for their labor widows, as they are often called. We
have a security problem.
The recent prediction that Central Asia will see slower
growth this next year due to the economic stagnation of
countries outside the region, and finally, President Karimov's
exit, whenever it happens, there will be a change in the
dynamics of the region.
His autocratic and oppressive governance has held the
border tensions in check. However, new leadership may bring
uncertainties with regards to containing hostilities.
In summary, I would like to highlight several points for
the U.S. Government including Congress to consider. Support
good water data collection and share information with
consumers, farmers, businesses and policy makers alike.
Engage young people through small grants and encourage
entrepreneurial social marketing and research studies to
address overuse of water by fellow citizens. Teach critical
problem solving skills in U.S. training and educational
exchange programs with Central Asian youth.
Engage women and civil society as women are often at the
nexus of daily water management. And finally, ensure effective
conflict management skills at the local and national levels.
This is where the U.S. can most effectively contribute by
education and training that offers skill-based approaches to
negotiation and conflict management.
The U.S. Institute of Peace considers conflict a normal
condition of human societies. However, much can be done to
prevent violent conflict from being the default mechanism for
solving the problem at hand.
Central Asia deserves American support for conflict
prevention. Thank you. I am happy to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kuehnast follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, thank you very much to all three of
you for your testimony. Some of the statistics that you were
quoting both about Egypt's use of water and both Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan's use of water that is coming from the outside of
their country is just a bit overwhelming from countries like
the United States that have so many of our own resources.
Let me note, in California I am not sure exactly what
percentage of California water comes from the outside, which
will lead me to a question about, I guess, is desal being used
at all, Dr. Sullivan, in Egypt?
Mr. Sullivan. It is being used in the Sinai for some of the
hotels and for some of the military bases and also on the north
coast.
But part of the problem is that about 98 percent of the
population of Egypt lives on the Nile and the Nile stretches
all the way to the Sudan from the Mediterranean and you can't
desalinate the Nile.
What you would have to do is have huge pipeline systems set
up to bring the desalinated water from either the Mediterranean
or from the Red Sea or from other parts of the----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, the--isn't Cairo near the ocean?
Mr. Sullivan. Well, it is actually many miles from the
ocean.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is interesting. Yes.
Mr. Sullivan. It is a good two and a half hour drive to get
to Alexandria from Cairo, and for that water to move from the
Mediterranean Sea to Cairo would be extremely expensive
infrastructurally and also it takes a lot of energy.
If they set up solar desalinization plants that may be a
better way of doing things. They also--they already have a
shortage of gas. They are a net importer of oil.
A country that, when I was living there in the 1990s, was a
country that was hoping for great exports of oil and natural
gas.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So the--what we are talking about is
projecting what could be but what isn't and I would say my own
observation of how close things are or how far things are away
it all depends on your perspective.
Being 2 hours from the ocean may or may not be a long way
for certain societies.
Mr. Sullivan. Well, in L.A. that is just across the corner.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is right.
Mr. Sullivan. But in Cairo the traffic is difficult but I
am talking about on a Friday morning during an Eid. It is a
long distance.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mm-hmm. We actually get our water from--a
lot of water from the Colorado River but we also now are--have
a--put a--made a lot of large investment in developing new
desal technology, which may be--have an impact on the Egyptian
problem because at least it could provide some areas that have
some access to the--to the ocean or the Mediterranean Sea or
whatever, the Red Sea as well, a means of having fresh water
because the price of desal is going down.
I am on the Science Committee and I can tell you that the
new invention by Lockheed of use of graphene in your system
will bring down the cost--of energy cost of desal and thus will
bring down the cost dramatically.
Whether or not how long that takes to put in place, that
type of desal project and with the energy level that is still
required by that may or may not come in time.
Let me--is there anyone right now involved with trying to
mediate or arbitrate a difference between Ethiopia and Egypt?
Mr. Sullivan. Well, the President al-Sisi has had many
discussions with the Ethiopians. There are conciliatory moves
including some trade deals.
The rhetoric has been calmed down, certainly since the
regime of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood which, by
the way, if water stress comes in an extreme manner to Egypt
there is a very good chance the Brotherhood will come back
because it will be a failure for General al-Sisi--President al-
Sisi. There are many people trying to find some middle ground
here.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Who--what--isn't there--is there any
international organization we have now that we can call upon to
do that?
Mr. Sullivan. Well, there is the Nile Basin Initiative and
that----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Seeking a--to mediate or to
arbitrate this dispute or is it just there to try to facilitate
communication?
Mr. Sullivan. Facilitate communication. It is also rather
toothless on this one. When you have two countries that are at
odds it is very difficult to find a middle ground.
The United States may act as a convener in some place
distant from their two countries.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So you think the United States--that we
could step forward and offer both of these countries a--to play
a mediation role or an arbitration role?
Mr. Sullivan. We could. We could, and it also may be a way
to repair some of the damage to U.S.-Egyptian relations that
occurred with the cutting back of military aid in a time when
they needed it the most and then they turned to Russia, which
right now seems to be a problematic country for the United
States.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That happened with a dam in the past,
didn't it?
Mr. Sullivan. Yes, it did. Yes, it did. That would be the
Aswan High Dam. But desalinization, getting back here, they are
not that--that doesn't seem to me to be sufficient and would
take time to ramp this thing up.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, it certainly wouldn't be sufficient
in the Central Asian republics because they are not near the
ocean at all.
Let us just note that we did convince the Ethiopians at one
point to agree to arbitration of a major dispute that they were
in with Eritrea, and I--this has happened during the last
administration so you know this is not a partisan remark.
But I thought the behavior of our Government in that whole
episode was disgraceful and has undermined our ability to be--
to arbitrate other disputes in the sense that Ethiopia--the
decision of the arbitration went against Ethiopia in their
border dispute with Eritrea and we extracted some kind of other
deal with them to help us with some sort of defense-related
deal and let them off the hook, basically said they didn't have
to follow the arbitration which meant that the message to all
of Africa was you don't--you better skip out the arbitration
because that just doesn't work.
Even the Americans are going to discard it--what the result
is. That was very sad. I would hope that we could come up with
someone who could help arbitrate between Ethiopia and Egypt on
this.
Your testimony is, from what I take from your testimony, is
that if the Ethiopians do take a longer period of filling this
dam up with water, a long period of time, it may not be
harmful.
They could--it is possible that both sides could actually
come out of this okay as long as the Ethiopians were filling
their dam in a responsible way. Is that correct?
Mr. Sullivan. When you are in a country such as Egypt which
is using 98 percent of its water, there is only a 2 percent
leeway there, and to see only 2 percent reduction is probably a
low probability event.
When they are filling this thing up, they want to fill it
up as quickly as possible. Yes, there is a possibility for
negotiating a slow fill. But in order to not damage Egypt it
would have to be over many, many years.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That should be something that maybe they
could be negotiating, perhaps.
Mr. Sullivan. Perhaps, but it also leaves Ethiopia in a
position of controlling the water tap if at any time it needs
to control that water for the next famine, for the next
drought, and then Egypt is shut off.
During the 1980s, 1984 in particular, Egypt was damaged
from this and there wasn't even a dam there. Egypt is possibly
in a much riskier situation now that this spigot is there,
which a hydro dam could be. And you add in irrigation it gets
even worse.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think that we have got to be very
sensitive to that--to make sure that that outcome does not
happen.
The Egyptian Government right now is pivotal to peace in
that region and for us to--the people have to know that the
United States--the people of the United States are on their
side in making sure that they do not wake up one morning and
find the actions of another government, whether it is Ethiopia
or whoever, has dramatically negatively impacted on their
economic well being.
So today I would just call on our Government--the United
States Government--to do what it can to make sure that the
Egyptian people are never put in that spot where a decision
made in Ethiopia or some other government will economic--bring
their economic well being down--the standard of living down
that cause suffering among their people. That is unacceptable
as an alternative.
Hopefully, the United States--our Government--will take
that as a priority and try to get and solve this problem in
some sort of role that we can play, which I will leave to you
to answer, again, on the second round.
I now--Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to compliment
the witnesses for the breadth of what they have covered in that
short period that they addressed this.
One thing that struck me, let us talk on the demand side
for a second because I think it was Dr. Kuehnast who was
mentioning the comparison between some Central Asian countries
and China, for instance, where the amount consumed per person
is 14 times what it is there and it is four times more than in
the U.S.
What areas of demand can be addressed to be helpful, if
that is the case? I understand some of that is just water
mismanagement itself but also what can be done to make those
ratios more in line?
Certainly, China has enormous challenges in this area too
and they seem to be doing better.
Ms. Kuehnast. I would clarify that each of these states are
so different and difficult to characterize them all as Central
Asia. In this case, it was Turkmenistan.
I think you know one of the problems that we are all
talking about is agricultural use and there is great demand.
You also have a legacy of the Soviet period that wanted to grow
rice in this part of the world, that does grow cotton--as you
know, takes a lot of water--grows potatoes and wheat. But all
of these are a great drain, and what you have simultaneously is
countries coming into their own economic processes and they are
needing to pivot an entire generation from agricultural
practices to service, to business, and that is taking a
generation at least because suddenly not having the Soviet
system in place for education it is like retooling everybody.
And so some of it is systemic from the Soviet legacy and
some of it is how do you help turn a country toward a forward-
looking process of business and other kinds of forms of
economic development.
Mr. Keating. You have also touched on emergencies and
disasters. Certainly, disasters--natural disasters like
earthquakes can cause problems, or terrorist acts can cause
problems as well.
What is being done on the international community to reduce
the destabilizing effects of this kind of water-related event?
Any ideas? Is there any planning on that or are we just sitting
there waiting for one of these things to happen? Dr. Sullivan?
Mr. Sullivan. There is a lot of talk--talk, talk, talk. Not
much action and no enforcement. That is the answer.
Mr. Keating. So the answer is we are at great risk to those
type of disasters and we are not prepared for that. Okay.
Ms. Kuehnast. I could add to that, if I could.
Mr. Keating. Yes.
Ms. Kuehnast. There are a number of programs for dealing
with emergency energy needs in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in
particular. So the United Nations and World Bank has a number
of programs and USAID has been connected too in supporting some
of that.
In terms of natural disaster institutional strengthening,
in Kyrgyzstan it is actually a pretty interesting case of
improvement where the Ministry for Emergency Services actually
strengthened and visibly improved its ability to monitor, map
and prevent some of those impacts from natural disasters,
mostly from landslides and from earthquakes.
Also, there is a good support and implementation from that
ministry to build the capacity in local communities and
vulnerable locations.
So I would say that that is a really--actually an
interesting impact, one of the most valuable impacts of aid in
the region and that ministry has worked to coordinate with
ministries across the wider region in mapping and monitoring
the potential impacts.
Mr. Keating. I can't let my time go without mentioning
global warming, and----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I knew it.
Mr. Keating [continuing]. And Dr. Wooden touched on this
with glacial decline. But what extent is global warming and
climate change?
What extent will they contribute to the potential for
conflict over water resources and how can countries--
countries--come together to address the larger impact of this
phenomenon? Do you have any examples?
Ms. Wooden. Well, sorry. Go ahead.
Mr. Keating. No, you go ahead because you mentioned
glacial.
Ms. Wooden. Yes. So I mean, it is interesting. The research
is pretty clear that there will be--there has been a decline in
the 20th and 21st--early 21st century in glacial coverage.
This will impact water supply. So the regional leaders know
that. Everyday people talk about it. This is kind of a known
thing there and thinking about adapting is part of the
conversation. I think it is an interesting moment for potential
cooperation over this.
Right now, it is a source of tension and concern because it
is an uncertainty. Exactly what will those precipitation
patterns look like, it is pretty unclear.
So thinking about ways in which we can engage to support
addressing that is probably one of the most important steps we
can take for the future of water supply and it is a--it is a
fear right now, right. So the discussion about climate change
in the region is about this uncertainty.
Mr. Keating. It is dynamic too because it is just not about
precipitation changes. It is also flooding and other issues
that result.
Ms. Wooden. Yes, and temperature changes. So there is--the
latest IPCC report had a number of instances, I think something
like six or seven, indicating specific changes in Central Asia
that include temperature changes that are already impacting the
growing season that interacts with what is happening in the
Aral Sea.
So the interaction--I don't think the conflict will happen
directly but as we have all outlined, the next step to
migration, for example, is one of the most important next
social impacts. Where will people move to if glaciers decline?
The fastest declining glaciers in the region are the lowest-
lying smallest glaciers closest to population centers.
That is where we see that already happening, right, and so
will people move from those locations in agricultural-dependent
communities and what will that migration mean.
Mr. Keating. We didn't touch too much on international
aquifers as an issue but I think they are another concern that
we should have and many of them are facing serious declines as
well not just with ground water decline but with contamination.
Can you just discuss what can be done and what is being
done with that, particularly in agricultural areas?
Mr. Sullivan. Well, if I might say something on the issue
that she just touched upon, think about the following 300 to
400 million people that are reliant on the Tibetan Plateau
glaciers and those glaciers might be melting. That includes
three nuclear states--Pakistan, India and China.
Now, with regard to the aquifer, there is a very
interesting aquifer in North Africa--the Great Nubian Sandstone
aquifer, which has 150 trillion cubic meters of water in it.
Muammar al-Gaddafi--you remember him? He started something
called the Great Manmade River to bring that water to the
coastline to green Libya. At the same time, Egypt was tapping
into the thoughts of water--this is 40,000- to 60,000-year-old
water--as an alternative source of fresh water.
Once you take that stuff out, it is nonreplenishable. There
is no rain. The Saudis grew wheat in the desert. The first time
I flew over Saudi Arabia was in 1980 coming back from Bombay,
India, writing my Ph.D. at the time.
I saw these green circles. What is this all about? Growing
wheat in the desert, using the underground aquifer of
nonreplenishable water. Overall, it cost about 11 times to grow
the wheat than in Kansas. That was a waste.
They figure it out. They changed the program. But when
people don't see what is underground they don't really think
about it and when water is free just take it up, when the only
cost of water to you is the diesel fuel to pump the water out
of the ground.
But on the other side of the story, being from New England
you can--you know how big New England is. We all do. Underneath
Darfur there is a huge lake of water the size of New England,
sometimes 300 meters deep.
But on top of that underground aquifer people are dying of
thirst. We have to understand the situation a lot better.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And that is interesting
because--what you just talked about, Mr. Sullivan.
I mean, what is striking to me is, as I said in my opening,
there was a presentation on 60 Minutes just this past weekend
and they were showing how deep in the ground, in California,
not in places that we are talking about where folks are
starving, but in California where the farmers are utilizing
this ground water and pumping it up, just using the same
machines as if they were digging for oil, and how the ground
water is now going down, down--I think they said a foot every
month now.
But the farmers claim that they need it and they were
drilling more holes, et cetera. But we have got places where
folks are starving and they need the water to drinks and/or,
you know, you talked about what took place in Egypt.
So how do we balance the need for preserving the water and
juxtapose it to those individuals who need water to drink--you
know, clean water to drink, and that is clearly, you know,
sanitation wise, et cetera?
How do we juxtapose we do that and working with these
countries so that they can survive? You know, it is easy for--
sometimes for folks to come from the United States and say we
can do this because we have--you know, we are feeding our
people, et cetera.
They are in a different circumstance--so that they can
survive but also understand the precious resources because we
all are interrelated in that regards. How do--how do we
differentiate between the two? Dr. Kuehnast?
Ms. Kuehnast. Well, I think a couple of things. One, we
need good data and that needs to be shared in a transparent way
from the ground level to the political elite as such.
But even more so, some of what we have to do is change
daily habits and that needs very astute social marketing
efforts and that is why I emphasize this, that we need, first,
critical problem solving skills of the people who live there.
And second, how can we market that kind of change of
behavior? Because they came out of a legacy where all things
were free, where there were no incentives to save. And you have
to change human behavior first to get at, you know, bridging
the gap between the Darfur example so eloquently laid out here
and the water underneath.
We need that bridgework--critical thinking skills,
incentive programs for young people to help solve their own
issues.
I loved what you said about, really, it is not only sharing
but preserving water for the future--how you motivate young
people to get at that problem and that helps them solve their
future issues.
Mr. Sullivan. Well, a lot of this has to do with knowledge
and data--I would agree. We really don't know what the
groundwater is like in many parts of the world.
But also how many people know what their water footprint
is? Two kilograms of beef takes 15,701 or thereabout liters of
water and yet a similar amount of protein through vegetables
would be about 1,700 liters of water.
The way we eat we have countries growing very quickly--
China, for example. They are moving toward pork and beef, more
water intensive ways of doing things. Energy systems--some are
more water intensive than others.
The worst is biofuels, by far--irrigated biofuels--
absolutely water nonsense when it comes to that, particularly
in a country with low amounts of water. Getting back to
Ethiopia, it is hydro dams causing all of this trouble. They
have massive geothermal reserves in that country which will use
less water.
They have significant solar energy potential, wind energy
potential, many other potentials in that country that could be
used without causing all of this trouble. At least seven
gigawatts of geothermal could be rolled out in the next few
years. They are on the Rift Valley.
Geothermal is a really great place when you are near hot
rocks in the ground. Just north of San Francisco in your state
there is a city that is run by geothermal, Calpine Geysers.
Geothermal in the world is a small percentage of what it
could be. Japan could turn around to geothermal. Many countries
could turn around. In this country, the biggest use of water is
not irrigation.
It is thermal electric cooling--thermal electric cooling--
and California is facing this as a big problem right now and
many countries looking to develop their energy systems the way
we did it are going to have to rethink it if they have water
stress. Nuclear power plants the same thing--how do you cool
them down? With water.
Mr. Meeks. And let me ask Ms.--I think Dr. Wooden said
this, that--I am just interested in the statement--you said
that bilateral agreements as opposed to multilateral agreements
were more effective.
You know, in my way of thinking initially was that in a
region you wanted, of course, it could be interconnected
between two and three different countries that you would want
multilateral agreements.
I was wondering if you could give me some further
clarification on why bilateral is more successful than
multilateral.
Ms. Wooden. It is interesting, in Central Asia the
relationship over these two rivers has been joined. It is part
of the Soviet legacy and in the post-Soviet period initially in
cooperation that actually was enhanced by joint concern about
the Aral Sea decline.
So actually we actually saw in the 1990s a number of high-
level meetings between leaders of the countries in the region
establishing an institutional framework that was rather complex
that united all decisions across the region and made it
difficult to separate out the individual rivers.
And so when tensions exist between two countries among the
five, and six if we include Afghanistan, this makes progress in
the rest of the basin difficult. And so that is why the
suggestion by the international community has moved toward
okay, let us break this down and work on those bilateral
relationships and some of them have moved forward.
I mentioned a couple of them like the Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan relationship and they are not perfect. They had a
little bit of a spat over water in 2010 when Kazakhstan closed
the borders after the violence in Osh and Kyrgyzstan--well,
there were some canals that were cut off for a little bit of
time and Kazakhstan then reopened the borders.
So those bilateral relationships don't always work
perfectly. But they have allowed some improvements, for
example, in funding of infrastructure improvements in
Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan, and Kazakhstan and China are
experimenting with this as well.
So there was a breaking down of the complexity of the
relationship to smaller bilateral agreements that also deal
with some of the border delimitation issues, for example, or
the enclave disputes.
And so what building cooperation also is demonstrating is
that it is possible in one part of the basin. That doesn't mean
that the future of moving toward multilateral agreements should
be avoided. That would be preferable.
But until that is functioning--yes.
Mr. Meeks. My last question would be I haven't heard in the
testimony much and I know we in the United States have to do
our part--we have to do a lot--but I didn't hear--what about
the roles of--do you think in regards to the United Nations,
the World Bank or other international efforts to address these
freshwater conflicts?
Do they have--do they have--should they play a significant
role or do we not just have confidence in them?
I haven't heard about--you know, again, it is a global
context of which we are talking and so I think that we need
help. But I wonder, you know, your positions on those.
Ms. Wooden. I can mention that when it comes to the Aral
Sea, many people are greatly disappointed in the limitations of
the international community to assist in stopping the process
of the collapse of this ecosystem.
This is--this was the focus of my dissertation--evaluating
regional engagement in the Aral Sea basin--and the most
successful efforts that actually surprised me were by USAID and
that was because the engagements were small and spending a lot
of money in a really difficult political situation is
challenging.
And I think that the efforts are also sometimes incorrect.
So, for example, the World Bank helped fund the construction of
the Kok Aral Dam, which divides the small Aral at the north
part of the sea from the larger Aral, and this was done because
of the intractability of dealing with Uzbekistan's Government
primarily and just in wider issues such as changing cotton
production for reducing irrigation use.
And so the World Bank, when appealed to by the Kazakhstan
Government, agreed to construct this dam and it worked to
increase the levels of water in the small northern part of the
Aral.
But it drastically sped up the decline of the rest of the
lake and so this summer it no longer exists in part because of
that sped up process.
So this dam is used as an example of success but it is
also--you know, when we think of--we take this whole ecosystem
and we break it up in parts. I just suggested doing so, right,
but there are ramifications of doing that.
And so continuing to make sure we understand clearly if we
engage economic growth in the textile sector what does that
mean for cotton production in the wider region? We need to be
aware of those ramifications.
Mr. Sullivan. The World Bank--excuse me. Could I--the World
Bank has been involved with this but is not involved with the
GERD because they have not received an environmental impact
statement or an economic or social impact statement, which they
require.
The GERD is actually being paid for by bonds that are being
sold to the Ethiopian public at between 1.5 and 2.5 percent.
There are NGOs that are really doing very good work in the
small. Water.org, with Matt Damon, is doing great stuff in
Africa.
Five thousand children under the age of five die every day
in sub-Saharan Africa because of dirty water. You want to make
friends and influence people? Clean up the water.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for that admonition. I
think it--we should all take that to heart. About the point you
made before that--whoever it was--about the financing of a
particular dam, who is financing the Rogun and the Renaissance
Dams?
Who is financing that? These are the--these are the two
dams where the, really, the major contention--this could end up
resulting in conflict. Who is financing those?
Mr. Sullivan. When I say the GERD, I mean the Great
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. That is the one with the bonds. So I
should have been clearer.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So the World Bank and the other----
Mr. Sullivan. The World Bank is not involved. The IFC is
not involved. USAID and the United States give Ethiopia about
$500 million a year. There is a leverage there.
It is mostly being paid for by statement of the Ethiopian
Government--by the Ethiopian Government but they are paying for
it with debt. This is a country with a $50 billion GDP and this
dam alone is $5 billion.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And who is paying--who is buying the
bonds?
Mr. Sullivan. Ethiopian expats, Ethiopians who live in the
country. China is involved with the turbines. China is involved
with the electricity system connections. But they don't have
enough money in the country, is my guess, to do what the
Egyptians did with the Suez Canal. No way.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I know I don't have to tell you that I
have--you are not giving me a certainty answer. The Ethiopian
expats are buying all these bonds----
Mr. Sullivan. And people inside the country. They have
embassy locations throughout the world. I know that sounds
odd----
Mr. Rohrabacher. It does sound odd----
Mr. Sullivan [continuing]. Because they couldn't find----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Impoverished for them to be
able to----
Mr. Sullivan. I know. I know but----
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Buy bonds.
Mr. Sullivan. But with the Suez Canal the Egyptians
collected 66 billion Egyptian pounds, about $10 billion to
build that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That seems a little more doable than the
Ethiopian people who mainly live in poverty.
Mr. Sullivan. Okay. So now you see my lack of believing in
some of the policies of the Ethiopian Government. When they are
doing something like this and they are saying this----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. Sullivan [continuing]. This is problematic.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. Well, let me--somebody is making
money on it there.
Mr. Sullivan. No kidding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, no kidding. By the way, just to
mention geothermal, however, there have been drawbacks to
geothermal and that is--we tried that in California. We have a
large amount of geothermal and they may have solve that problem
now technologically.
I would have to go back and take a look. But it destroyed
the--there was a--the pipes went through a degeneration of the
pipe and the material very quickly and geothermal wasn't--
didn't meet its promise, let us put it that way, because there
was a lot of calculation on that early on.
Now, maybe they have cured that problem without me knowing
it. But I will check into it because I should know that. About
the--a couple points.
We will do just a second round very quickly and with all
due respect I don't think we necessarily disagree on global
warming. The issue that mainly is at hand, the temperature is
what the temperature is and the impacts that people measure are
there.
The question is whether human activity through CO2 is
causing the change in the climate. We have been through climate
changes throughout the history of this planet and the only
question is is the one we are at is that caused by human
beings, and if it is my colleagues who believe that have--are
totally justified in trying to control the behavior of human
beings through government action.
If you don't think that it is human beings you end up
spending enormous amounts of money and controlling people's
lives basically when you should be trying to find ways of
dealing with the fact that you are now in a cycle of history
that will leave with less water and affect the glaciers, et
cetera.
Rather than trying to control people's lives you are trying
to remediate it--I guess, is the word I am looking for--the
effects of that impact and whether--so we are--it sounds like
we are in for some when we may face water shortages because of
one part of the cycle or something that were being caused by
having too many automobiles.
But whatever it is, it is there and when countries like
Egypt try to deal with it and Ethiopia tried to deal with it
and Central Asia, we need to put in place something, not just
the answer to how we are going to lessen the suffering that may
come from this but also perhaps weigh--that we put in place
something that will deal with the conflicts that happen between
peoples that wouldn't exist had that change in climate or the
change in the status quo not happened.
We don't seem to have that. I mean, I haven't been getting
that from you today as to there is something in place. Maybe we
need to focus on trying to have some international mediation
board or arbitration board that is signed on to any nations
that have conflict and that everybody else agrees that at that
point they will respect the rights and they will respect those
nations that go ahead and go along with whatever the decision
is.
That is one idea. Maybe there is some other ideas of how we
can help countries become more efficient in the use of water
and things such as that. If you have just one or two comments
on that and then I will let Mr. Keating finish up with his
questions.
Ms. Wooden. On the Rogun Dam question you asked about,
there are ongoing considerations--from the Tajikistani
Government--about how to attract more funding and the
government has in the past sought to collect funds, a forced
funding collection from citizens.
So there is some controversy about how the funding has been
raised and whether or not funding will be forthcoming to
complete the project. So that is definitely a part of the
discussion.
Regarding the possibilities of dealing with the conflicts
that are produced, respectfully, I think that just like in the
Aral Sea situation if we don't actually tackle the causes of
the problem, if we think about temperature changes,
precipitation changes, glacial decline, there are in the latest
IPCC report tens of thousands of academic articles evaluated to
identify pretty clearly--very clearly the pattern and the cause
of anthropogenic impact, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
on climate change.
So we know what the causes are. There is scientific
certainty and so----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me just note--let me just note for the
record that being a member--the vice chairman of the Science
Committee that is only your opinion and the opinion of others.
There is a lot of other opinions as well.
Ms. Wooden. Well, I actually don't think it is opinion.
This is scientific research, correct?
Mr. Rohrabacher. But whether or not--whether or not it is
caused by human beings or whether it is caused by a natural
cycle, as I said, I don't think that it is as relevant as would
be except you want to aim your solutions at what will have a
good impact.
Ms. Wooden. Right. I agree. Aiming the solutions of what
will have a good impact but we have to get at the heart of the
problem, and we have been asked to come here as experts in the
region and plenty of experts on climatology have evaluated the
problem.
So if we think about then how to deal with conflicts, just
like with the Aral Sea issue the Aral Sea problem was cotton
production. If we think about dealing with the problems of
water supply there are ways of changing the uses of water, the
ways of dealing with water pollution, for example, that makes
the available water all capable of use, right.
I mean, those are really important issues to tackle that we
forget when we talk about trying to increase supply in other
ways, well, we have actually have to make sure that we have
adequate quality of the water that exists.
So that is why we can talk about those kinds of causes and
address those.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And Dr. Sullivan, in his admonition to us
about, you know, if we are really concerned about people's
lives those 5,000 kids dying like that with--from bad water,
sometimes--and people have this--build these grandiose projects
with the dam in Ethiopia when I have been told if we just would
focus on making sure that people in those villages have a way
of purifying their water in sometimes very simple ways but we
have to take the initiative to go out and make certain things
available--that that would be much better than these grandiose
dam projects.
Mr. Sullivan. Couldn't agree with you more on this. There
is something called SODIS--S-O-D-I-S--out of Switzerland where
very poor people can actually use the typical plastic bottle,
filter a little bit and put it on top of a tin shack, heat the
water and get rid of most of the bacteria. And then there is
LifeStraw, which is pretty inexpensive--this could be handed
out.
But this is kind of person to person. Another way of
getting at this, particularly in remote communities is to have
solar water pumps or wind water pumps, getting the cleaner
water up from the aquifer.
The problem with dying from dirty water is that they are
digging this out of open pit wells where the donkeys and other
animals--you can take a guess at what happens and people wash
and it is happening in rivers and so forth. But there are
simple answers to this.
If you take a look at the $5 billion being used to bill
this dam and put it toward cleaning water for under-five
children in Africa you could save many American football
stadiums full of African kids every single year.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And did you have one last comment to that?
Ms. Kuehnast. Well, I would just like to underline again
that, you know, we need creative context-specific solutions.
These five countries in Central Asia all have different water
and energy dynamics.
One shoe does not fit all. But, you know, I am interested
in the fact that Dr. Wooden said USAID's project in the Aral
Sea seemed to have impact because it was locally driven, and I
think so often we are attracted by the massive engineering of a
dam or a road or whatever else that we lose track of the
everyday efforts or technology--low-level technology that could
make a difference and we need to incentivized that approach and
that is my suggestion.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well said, because the incentive now is
for some big companies to make a lot of money building these
huge projects. Mr. Keating?
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just comment
on some of the takeaways I get from today's hearing and you can
comment as you may wish to or may not.
But the one thing that seems clear is that we don't have
enough data and, to me, if we are going to work with water
management and--or mismanagement and we are going to look at--
deal with this issue, we seem to have a consensus among all
three of you that this is a primary need and without that we
are not able to move constructively.
That brings me back briefly--we won't dwell on it--to the
importance of realizing as the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change has in thousands of reports that climate
change--99 percent of all the scientists that poll agree that
climate change is manmade and without having that basic
understanding it is going to be harder to deal with that data
once we get that or even accumulate that data.
So I think it is a threshold issue we have to deal with.
But I want to tell you I feel optimistic after today's hearing
because there is so much we can do.
This thing is not a problem that is in any stretch
insurmountable or difficult if we do--if we approach it the
right way. And so I came away learning that, you know, some
fundamental issues about, you know, what you grow for
agricultural products and where you grow it, even what we eat,
are all things that have very strong impact on our water
resources in this world.
I think--I mentioned just once that the government can get
involved and the U.S. Government is involved in many ways. The
smaller project with the Millennium Challenge in Cabo Verde,
you know, we put $41 million to establish transparent water
delivery and sanitation systems for that area. And so we can,
you know, use some of our financial resources in that respect
as well.
And I will finally just comment on, and Dr. Sullivan was
stealing some of my thunder on this, but in my own district we
have a military base where there was water contamination from
the utilization of that and it was a major problem and it is
being cleaned up, and the energy to clean that up is being
generated through wind power.
So and I also have municipalities in my district that I
have gone around during this break and I have seen how they are
using solar and wind power in those communities to provide the
energy for wastewater cleanup and for even the delivery of
their own water supply.
So there is a real, you know, need, I think, because if you
are doing the tradeoffs to clean up the water and to do this
produces energy, takes energy. But we can do that if we commit
to renewables, I think, and using it for that purpose and it is
working in my district as we speak.
So I come away very hopeful on many fronts. But we do have
to start with getting the data and getting the information and
that is something one country can't do itself.
That is something that is going to need international
cooperation with in terms of access and getting our scientists
all on the same page and our engineers all on the same page and
then we can approach this.
So that is, again, getting back to my introductory remarks,
Mr. Chairman, why this committee has, I think, done a great
service by, again, bringing up this issue that not only affects
a global conflict but our survival and our assessments going
forward.
So thank you very much. If any of you want to comment on
any of those things you are free to.
Mr. Sullivan. When I think of many of the things that we
talked about today sometimes I think of the little children I
had seen in Egypt in my years living there. I wonder what is
going to happen to them.
The water gets shorter. What happens to the women and the
girls and the older people who need that water more than
others? And also, how will this affect the development of
terrorism and strife and the return of the Brotherhood?
Ethiopia really needs to commit publicly how quickly they
are going to fill up this dam, by how much and when, and have
some cooperation with Egypt and others involved to try to
resolve the tensions here.
They need to do the same with Kenya for the Omo River.
There has to be some precedents set to find a civilized
reasonable way of solving these issues without conflict because
it goes right back to the little kids in the street in Cairo.
Ms. Wooden. I would like to add on the data sharing issue
or the data collection issue that in part it is to understand
some of these processes are happening--to be able to understand
them well--for us here to understand them--for decision makers
in the region to know what is happening in the future.
But also data sharing is an important part of
intergovernmental relations, right. I mean, it is one of the
biggest problems that we have between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan that is that transparency about these processes.
Ability to predict mutually understood change and how to
adapt to it as it is happening is very important. I mean, the
understanding of how we can monitor from satellite imagery,
monitor ground water changes in California has been really
important for our ability to withstand--in a significant
drought withstand severe political ramifications, right. That
is what we are talking about happening in Central Asia.
A big part of this is just being able to make this whole
process transparent. So I think funding of research is one of
the most crucial steps we can take to tackle this and to
generate cooperation.
We have already talked about cooperation as happening more
commonly, right. So there is much to build on here in the
relationships between communities on the border and between
governments and we can really begin by just listening to
leaders but community leaders at the local level for what they
need.
Most people in the region are concerned about water as the
primary issue. We both have found this in our surveys of the
region--that water pollution and water supply are primary
concerns.
So people know what the issues are, are worried about them
and want to work together to tackle them so mainly through
improved understanding of what is happening.
Ms. Kuehnast. I would like to say that, indeed,
transparency of information is critical. But what you need is
the investment of the young people in this five-country region
with a sense of hope, with a sense that they can apply good
knowledge with excellent business and technological acumen and
help solve their problems, help strengthen and build capacity
at the local level and I think you will see more wind farms,
more solar energy, more direct person-to-person and technology
advancements that are really responsive to the issues and in
doing so you will prevent conflict because you give people the
sense that they can take care of this themselves and that they
are empowered to do so.
Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, thank you all, and just a note that,
again, I want to say very clearly that the United States is
watching Ethiopia's activities and decisions on this dam
project. We are watching very closely.
We are--we would expect, if Ethiopia is acting responsibly,
that it commit itself to publicly to a policy that will ensure
that they are not doing a project that will benefit them at the
expense of the people of Egypt but instead will try to work and
hopefully work with the Egyptians to find water solutions that
do not harm large numbers of other people who happen to live
across the border or downstream from you, and this--the
Ethiopian Government better understand that or there will be
major retaliation from this Congress on Ethiopia for that type
of hostile act toward the people of Egypt.
In terms of Central Asia, I would hope that Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan as well as these Central Asian countries will be
able to--because they all are dependent on water, I mean,
especially with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan should understand
this problem and hopefully they will work together and that
there will be a Central Asian cooperative spirit that will put
people together for--to come up with an understanding on this,
and maybe we can play a positive role in all of this by
thinking about establishing, as your organization is aimed at,
trying to find out how we can as a people serve as conflict
deterrents and how we can become active in a process of
deterring conflict by being arbiters or being people who are--
we at least could come in and get the parties together and find
ways of reaching agreements between people who have
disagreements that might lead to conflict and water is, of
course, one of those major issues.
I do believe that we should continue funding. One of the
reasons why I am upset with the focus on human activity is that
it--we have spent billions of dollars trying to determine what
will be the impact of global warming and with the idea of
justifying the expenditures on that research.
I think that we should instead have research into finding
ways that are going to make people's lives better that will
actually be able to offer some sort of impact on those people's
lives there, whether it is the water pollution devices that Dr.
Sullivan talked about or other types of technologies that will
permit people in Africa to get--to cheaply get to cleaner
water, which seems to be better than building huge dam
projects, et cetera.
So but, again, whether or not it is caused by human beings
or whether it is caused by--one last note. That 99 percent
figure has been figure has been disproven over and over and
over again.
Ninety-9 percent of the scientists do not agree that
mankind is causing this change in the climate. It is a
majority, however do agree with you and disagree with but not
99 percent.
And with that said, I want to thank the witnesses. We have
had a very good discussion and I have really always felt that
there are two major important things for people--to be able to
have a planet where ordinary people are going to live decent
lives.
We have got to have energy and hopefully clean energy and
we have got to have water, and with those two things I think
human beings and human ingenuity will be able to overcome a lot
of other things and develop the agriculture, et cetera, that we
need. But without those two fundamental things in play,
ordinary people won't live well.
So I think the United States should be committed to clean
energy and water for the world.
Thank you very much. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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