News Roundup – December 3

International Alert, a peace-building NGO, put out a report called Climate Change, Conflict, and Fragility.  The report emphasizes the relationship between water stress and conflict, and recommends “that adaptation strategies should be more conflict sensitive, so that water management in water stressed countries was shaped by understanding the systems of power and equity: involve everyone and avoid pitting groups against each other” (IRIN News).

Construction officially began on Jordan’s Disi Water Conveyance Project.  The multi-million dollar infrastructure project will eventually bring 100 million cubic meters of much-needed water to Amman.  The project proceeds despite a controversial report published earlier this year that found the Disi Aquifer to be contamined by very high levels of radioactivity.  The report was a sad moment for environmental peacemaking; several Jordanian officials questioned the legitimacy of the report because its author is Israeli-born.

Israeli environmentalist are demanding that the Interior Ministry involve its planning team in determining the future of Pond No. 5, a salt mining pond whose level is steadily rising because of the Dead Sea sinkholes.  And as if the Dead Sea wasn’t in enough ecological danger, Zerah Oil And Gas Explorations began drilling for oil nearby

Appropriately arriving right before a major round of internatioinal climate talks in Copenhagen, MAN Ferrostaal and the German Energy Agency announced that the first solar thermal plant for warm water supply and central heating has gone into operation in Palestine.  The plant, connected to a school in Beit Jala, will reduce CO2 emissions by 57 tons each year (about the equivalent of taking 24 mid-sized cars off the road).

Image Credit:  Randy Son Of Robert