If I could travel back in time and advise a country in the Middle East on their water management I would choose Syria. Constant water problems have plagued this country since the first documented water war that occurred in Syria at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. An argument could also be made that the civil war occurring in Syria can be attributed to water problems in the country. My advise to the Syria would first be to stop depleting their freshwater aquifers. Groundwater is a renewable resource, but takes time to recharge their supply of freshwater. My next advice to Syria would be to create a system of recycling wastewater. Rather than relying on aquifers, the people of Syria should focus on recycling their wasted water to lessen the burden on their surrounding watershed and groundwater. Syria relies heavily on water coming from the Euphrates River and its tributaries; with increasing urbanization and high population growth the pressure has greatly increased the pressure on water resources. Resulting in over-pumping of groundwater that has led to pollution in many aquifers in the country. Syria has focused on more efficient irrigation systems and wastewater treatment plants, but has placed these as a higher priority than supply management. In the U.S. many states have committees dedicated to monitoring the water levels of aquifers and constantly check the quality of water to ensure over-pumping is limited. A committee such as this would benefit greatly for Syria. Currently, Syria is in a civil war and although their water problem will not disappear I believe the government has bigger tasks on making their country more stable. The ideas may have worth to the leaders of Syria, but at this time I doubt any action would be taken.

 

To better understand the problem facing Syria and creating a positive solution would require more information. I would focus on finding policies Syria implemented over the years in regards to water management. I would also look into Syria’s conflicts that are attributed to water scarcity and see what is sparking these uprisings. Another piece of crucial information would be analyzing the technologies that Syria has used to combat groundwater depletion and water scarcity. I believe I could find a majority of this information through Boise State’s online database and if further searching is needed I would use the National Archives to find primary sources.

In the past Syria knew of their high temperature climate, they might not have known how much hotter it was going to get over the years but it would have made sense to plan for a drought.  Irrigation at the time may have seemed liked a reasonable thing to do, but they needed to start adjusting when they noticed water supply decreasing.  Assuming there would be drought just focusing on water being used for citizens rather than agriculture reasons would have been wise.  It is not ideal to have to import foods and other things but sometimes it is needed for them to survive, in order to do this it would be important to keep good external and internal relationships in the country.  Irrigation takes up a lot of water that could be going to different people.  Many people established jobs as farmers because the country did not take into consideration that water might not be a supply in later years.  The country should have established a water system, close to what they have now with their underground water aquifers and made it strictly for bathing and drinking purposes.  I think if I tried to make the water sources mainly for consumption and hygiene, leaving food to be imported it would be hard to convince the leaders to do this.  I’m not sure how external relations were in the past but now it would be hard to convince them to rely on outside town and cities for their food.  Now that I think about it, that could be hard on the citizens that are oppressed in the country because their food not be accessible in the country.

 

If this topic were to be turned into a research paper I would need to know the following:

• How Syria’s political climate was in the past
• What kind of farming they were doing, and what kind of farming can be done in such climate
• How the underground aquifers work in Syria

To learn about the past in Syria, I would take to some news sources along with peer reviewed articles that I would find on Albertson’s Library website.  I’m a visual person so finding pictures of how the aquifers and what kinds of farming Syria did it would help me have more of an understanding of what they are dealing with.

https://www.engineeringthepast.com/1228-2/