Global/Local
Water Conflict and Cooperation: From the Middle East to the East Coast
Fresh water supplies are struggling to keep pace
with growing global demand--increasing political instability, hobbling
economic growth, endangering world food markets, and constricting the
capacity to generate energy. From the Jordan
River Valley to the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, water conflicts are inherent and
increasingly disruptive whenever water crosses boundaries--be they
economic sectors, legal or political jurisdictions, cultural divides, or
international borders--setting the stage for
disputes between users trying to safeguard access to vital resources,
while protecting the natural environment. Without strategies to
anticipate, address, and mediate between competing users, water
conflicts are likely to become more frequent, more intense,
and more disruptive. Dickinson was awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant
by the U.S. State Department to train emerging leaders on strategies for
managing and mediating water conflict in the Middle East and in the
U.S.
Led by Professors Tom Arnold (Biology), Doug Edlin
(Political Science), Andrea Lieber (Religion), and Ed Webb (Middle
East Studies), this special program, entitled
Across Borders: Managing Trans-Boundary Environmental Resources in the Middle East and the United States,
supported two highly selective groups of emerging professional leaders
in developing a substantive understanding of how environmental,
economic, social, and political factors converge to influence policy and
practice in the management of trans-boundary environmental
resources. The first group, emerging professionals from the U.S.,
traveled to the Middle East to focus on competing interests in the
water-stressed Jordan River Valley; the second group, emerging
professionals hailing from Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian
Territories, traveled to the U.S. to examine competing interests among
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia in the limited and
environmentally-fragile resources of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
The program was structured around four ambitious
objectives: to demonstrate the international and interstate impact of
environmental challenges in the Middle East and the U.S.; to broaden
understanding and appreciation of the relationship
among environmental, cultural, political, economic, and policy concerns
that surround the use, development, and 
protection of environmental
resources within and between countries in the Middle East and states in
the U.S.; to assist in heightening the awareness
of these issues so that fellows would be able to assess and manage the
local and the international environmental impact of their country’s
actions on other countries; and to propose and develop specific
strategic environmental, diplomatic, and policy options,
along with conflict resolution skills and leadership development tools,
for responding to environmental concerns and challenges in these
regions.
Fellows in both groups came from an array of
professional backgrounds, including the hard sciences, law, NGOs,
academia, government, and journalism. All shared a focus on water,
natural resource management, or conflict resolution in their
present professional positions. Two Dickinson alumni, Sara (Parr)
Walker ‘06 and Adam Wickline ’06, were among the outstanding fellows
selected to participate in the U.S. group from a highly competitive
national pool.
Wickline, in particular, played an integral role in
both halves of the program. After his time as a program fellow in the
Jordan River Valley in 2011, he helped organize meetings at the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) for the 2012 fellows
from the Middle East. Additionally, Wickline, who presently serves as
Potomac River Boat Program Manager for the CBF, discussed the current
hazards facing the Bay and how CBF is fighting for the Bay’s protection
and restoration while touring the CBF’s headquarters
in the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, a LEED Platinum facility,
with the Middle East fellows.