Awaiting Calmer Waters

Water resilience has emerged as a pivotal concept and approach for our time and can serve as a unifying force in policies, investment, equity, and our relationship with ecosystems. Until a few days ago, two members of the AGWA secretariat had been preparing to leave on separate trips designed to honor and support governments, NGOs, and individuals working in Palestine, Jordan, and Israel on environmental peacebuilding. We were honored to be asked to support both an intergovernmental technical water initiative and a regional NGO that has pivoted towards bottom-up approaches to water and resilience. We’ve seen a real maturation of climate resilience for governments to see a connection to peace and security – new audiences, with new solutions for emerging problems.

We also don’t want to overstate our role; we were hoping to provide support, insight, and advice. We want to be helpful if we can. In part, the future of the Middle East will hinge on how we use and, especially, share water resources in a dynamic climate.

Over the last few days we have received notice that these meetings have been canceled. We hope they are only deferred, and that these issues return again to the forefront. We look forward to rekindling conversations about a shared future for all of the people of this region and how water can enable that future.

Right now, today, we are worried for our friends and partners and colleagues there, for their families, and for their communities. We hold all of their communities close to our hearts during these trying times.

Resilience — as we use the term in AGWA — is a powerful concept, and water is the medium for resilience. Anticipating change, ensuring readiness, recognizing connections and managing systems, and preparing for uncertainties are powerful and practical actions, and they require calm, deliberation, and a common vision. Resilience extends beyond a concept for planners and engineers to whole communities. Resilience is not conducted through people with weapons. Resilience perhaps finds its most profound meaning among parents, worried for the world their children may inherit. None of us is eager for violence for our children, only abundance and prosperity.

Many risks can drive us to respond with fear that separates us from our neighbors. Digging our moat, raising our walls, and even mobilizing to grab what we believe to be essential, scarce, and contested. In AGWA, we have come to believe that these latter actions are not resilient but socially and politically brittle. Acting in isolation and from selfishness is prone to failure and collapse.

Here, far from the region, we are waiting to venture out when we see calmer waters for the region. God willing, when the time comes again, we stand ready with active support, however small. May that time come soon.

- The AGWA Secretariat