Israeli water use patterns: Resource conservation and transboundary security

Abstract

This chapter proposes that a successfully implemented water conservation management policy can play a role in Israel's ability to increase physical, human and environmental transboundary security. Fresh water reliability is critical to the security of any country, especially those which are arid and semi-arid in nature. In such regions annual rainfall is predictably unreliable and droughts are the norm. Thus, when water resources become additionally scarce due to compounding societal pressures, they may become a point of tension between riparian neighbors who find themselves in competition for increasingly scarce resources. Israel is tied by treaty, hydrology, and infrastructure to the water use of its riparian neighbors - Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians - and has some minor hydro-political ties to Egypt as well. As such, any analysis of Israel's water policy must consider domestic and transboundary security concerns. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.