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  • Caselist.CitesClass[23]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[24]

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Caselist.CitesClass[23]

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1		-2016-10-22 22:36:36.10
	1	+2016-10-22 22:36:36.0

Caselist.CitesClass[24]

Cites

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	1	+Nuclear desal is necessary to address increasing water demand
	2	+Al Sabbagh 4-6 Nabegh Al Sabbagh (is a New York-based independent analyst of energy issues in the Middle East.—Works For Security Council), 4-6-2016, "The Case for Developing Nuclear Energy in the Middle East," Atlantic Council, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-case-for-developing-nuclear-energy-in-the-middle-east NB
	3	+The Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts an increase in the demand for energy in the region of 7 percent over the next 10 years. Increases in demand for electricity will add 281 GW of new production, of which nuclear energy is expected only to contribute 7 GW (2.5 percent of total demand). Nuclear energy nonetheless presents a strong case as an important energy source. The World Health Organization recently reported that Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, and UAE suffer from some of the worst air pollution indicators globally. Iran and Saudi Arabia also contribute some of the highest CO2 emissions. If an environmental approach is not a convincing case, the Middle East’s water resource woes, low levelized cost of energy (LCOE, or the average cost of energy over time) for nuclear power amid a reduction in hydrocarbon subsidies, and plummeting national oil revenues should inspire an efficient approach to energy consumption. Nuclear reactors can contribute significantly to water desalination. The concentration of desalination plants in the Middle East—70 percent of the world’s total plants—highlights the problem facing the region. Nuclear desalination is a tested technology, notably in Kazakhstan, which boasts a 750 MW plant. In the Middle East the combination of a facility that produces both electricity and desalinates water can address both resource deficits. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) support the technology of a combined utility plant. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) argues that the SMRs can desalinate water, generating 5-300 MW of energy. High water salinity and high regional temperatures represent a barrier for transitioning to reverse osmosis desalination. The energy intensive process forces Middle Eastern countries to look for alternatives, prompting attempts at introducing solar powered plants. Yet transitioning into solar powered desalination has also had its barriers. The scarcity of fresh water against an annual 8 percent increase in demand for desalination requires a diversified approach towards desalination, considering the Middle East’s states dependence on fossil fuels for desalination.
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	5	+Renewables insufficient- need nuclear as a baseload power
	6	+Al Sabbagh 4-6 Nabegh Al Sabbagh (is a New York-based independent analyst of energy issues in the Middle East.—Works For Security Council), 4-6-2016, "The Case for Developing Nuclear Energy in the Middle East," Atlantic Council, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-case-for-developing-nuclear-energy-in-the-middle-east NB
	7	+Saudi Arabia recently announced an investment of $133 billion towards its power sector projects. This policy reflects the wider trend in the region where governments turn to investment to meet public demand. Divesting away from fossil fuels toward nuclear energy would allow countries like Saudi Arabia to meet the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over 24 hours (known as “baseload generation”), producing a stable baseload source that would address blackouts across the region. The increasing demand in energy ensures that the reserve margin capacity is never high enough to rely completely on solar panels. If solar panels are not supported by a reserve margin capacity, which nuclear energy can provide, the high seasonal demands will create blackouts. This is a constant issue facing utility providers in the Middle East during the summer—as seen in Muscat, Riyadh, and other major cities. Poor security and coordination in Arab countries—take Egypt and Jordan, for example—highlights the vulnerability in the current dependence structure. Al-Arish station, located in the Sinai Peninsula, has suffered repeated sabotage, causing disruptions to the flow of gas and liability disputes. Nuclear energy would provide a reliable domestic baseload technology, but would require more than the expected 7 GW contribution to address recurrent problems. The high capital expenditure commitment challenges region-wide implementation given recent strains on national budgets. Furthermore, the stagnating economics of nuclear power and electricity demand has led to many plants being decommissioned globally, among other pressures on the industry. However, SMRs could compete with other economically viable options. They can decrease the gap between the capital commitment and resource pool available and provide energy both to urban centers and remote areas.
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	9	+Brink of water wars especially in the Middle East- it’s a survival concern and will escalate
	10	+Ahmed 15 Nafeez Ahmed (PhD, is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author who tracks what he calls the 'crisis of civilization.' He is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian reporting on the intersection of global ecological, energy and economic crises with regional geopolitics and conflicts. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.) , 3-19-2015, "New age of water wars portends 'bleak future'," Middle East Eye, http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/new-age-water-wars-portends-bleak-future-804130903 NB
	11	+New peer-reviewed research published by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows that water scarcity linked to climate change is now a global problem playing a direct role in aggravating major conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. Numerous cities in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia are facing “short and declining water supplies per capita,” which is impacting “worldwide” on food production, urban shortages, and even power generation. In this month’s issue of the Journal of the AWWA, US water management expert Roger Patrick assesses the state of the scientific literature on water scarcity in all the world’s main regions, finding that local water shortages are now having “more globalised impacts”. He highlights the examples of “political instability in the Middle East and the potential for the same in other countries” as illustrating the increasing “global interconnectedness” of water scarcity at local and regional levels. In 2012, a US intelligence report based on a classified National Intelligence Estimate on water security, commissioned by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, concluded that after 2022, droughts, floods and freshwater depletion would increase the likelihood of water being used as a weapon or war, or a tool of terrorism. The new study in the Journal of the AWWA, however, shows that the US intelligence community is still playing catch-up with facts on the ground. Countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where US counter-terrorism operations are in full swing, are right now facing accelerating instability from terrorism due to the destabilising impacts of unprecedented water shortages. Thirsty people, failing states The UN defines a region as water stressed if the amount of renewable fresh water available per person per year is below 1,700 cubic metres. Below 1,000, the region is defined as experiencing water scarcity, and below 500 amounts to “absolute water scarcity”. According to the AWWA study, countries already experiencing water stress or far worse include Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Yemen, India, China, and parts of the United States. Many, though not all, of these countries are experiencing protracted conflicts or civil unrest. The AWWA is an international scientific association founded to improve water quality and supply, whose 50,000 strong membership includes water utilities, scientists, regulators, public health experts, among others. AWWA operates a partnership with the US government’s Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for safe water, and has played a key role in developing industry standards. Study author Robert Patrick, formerly of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, is a government consultant and water management specialist who has worked on water scarcity issues in Jordan, Lebanon, New Mexico, California and Australia. His Journal of AWWA paper explains that the grain price spikes that contributed to Egypt’s 2011 uprising, were primarily caused by “droughts in major grain-exporting countries” like Australia, triggered by climate change. Patrick points out that such civil unrest could signal an Egyptian future of continuing unrest and conflict. He highlights the risk of war between Egypt and Ethiopia due to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, threatening to restrict Egypt’s access to the Nile River, which supplies 98 of Egypt’s water supply. As Egypt’s population is forecast to double to 150 million by 2050, this could lead to “tremendous tension” between Ethiopia and Egypt over access to the Nile, especially since Ethiopia’s dam would reduce the capacity of Egypt’s hydroelectric plant at Aswan by 40. Water wars and the ‘war on terror’ The nexus of countries in the Middle East and North Africa where the United States is currently leading a multi-year military engagement against the “Islamic State” (IS) all happen to be drought-stricken. Before Syria erupted into ongoing civil war, Patrick reports, 60 of the country went through a devastating drought that led over a million mostly Sunni farmers to migrate to coastal cities dominated by the ruling Alawite sect, fuelling sectarian tensions that culminated in unrest and a cycle of violence. A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has provided the most compellingresearch to date on how climate change amplified Syria’s drought conditions, which in turn had a “catalytic effect” on civil unrest. But Patrick’s concern is that the Syria crisis could be a taste of things to come. Citing the findings of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) sponsored by NASA and the German Aerospace Centre, he notes that between 2003 and 2009, the Tigris-Euphrates basin comprising Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and western Iran “lost groundwater faster than any other place in the world except northern India”. A total of 117 million acre-feet of stored freshwater was lost due to reduced rainfall and bad water management. If this trend continues, “trouble may be brewing” for the region. Yemen is also consuming water far faster than it is being replenished, Patrick observes, an issue that has been identified by numerous experts as playing a key background role in driving local inter-tribal and sectarian conflicts. Syria, Iraq and Yemen are currently subjected to ongoing US military operations under the rubric of fighting Islamist terrorists, yet the new AWWA study suggests that the rise of Muslim extremist movements has been indirectly fuelled by regional water crises. The ravaging impact of climate change in these countries has devastated local agriculture, heightened community tensions, and stoked already entrenched political grievances. With huge quantities ofmoney pouring into the region to Islamist militant networks from the Gulf states, this is an ideal recipe for violent radicalisation. As US meteorologist Eric Holthaus points out, the rapid rise of the “Islamic State” (IS) last year coincided with a period of unprecedented heat in Iraq, recognised as being the warmest on record to date, from March to May 2014. Recurrent droughts and heavy rainstorms have also played havoc with Iraq’s agriculture. With water supplies dwindling, and agriculture waning, the Iraq’s US-backed Shiite-dominated government has largely failed to address these burgeoning challenges, even as IS has moved quickly to exploit these failures, for instance by using dams as a weapon of war. Escalating trend But water scarcity does not make conflict inevitable. While water has played a role in Israel’s conflicts with its neighbours in the past, Patrick argues that through a combination of efficient water management methods and desalination technologies, Israel has been able to successfully cooperate with Jordan on their shared water resources for many years. This is, of course, a one-sided picture. While Israel does not want for water, the UN has warned that Gaza could become “unlivable” due to its worsening water crisis. Ongoing water shortages throughout the Occupied Territories are rooted in discriminatory policies of resource theft by the occupying power, including Israel’s effective forced privatisation of the Palestinian water supply. These disparate cases show that while, theoretically, efficient water management and distribution methods can offset crises and continue to meet local needs, government mismanagement combined with regional power inequalities and repressive policies can be a precursor to social breakdown and violent conflict. The AWWA study’s findings have been backed up by other recent studies. One from this January in Global Affairs, the journal of the European International Studies Association, argues that all four of the world’s most significant hotspot regions for major conflicts – the Sahel, the Middle East, Central Asia, the coastal zones of East, South and Southeast Asia - are increasingly unstable due to constellations of “water scarcity; loss of land; and food insecurity”. The paper, which calls for greater European support to these regions to mitigate trends of environmental degradation, is authored by Hartmut Behrend, a climatologist with the German military’s Agency for Geo-information. The symbiotic link between modern agriculture and water consumption poses the biggest global risk, according to Roger Patrick. Water scarcity is driven predominantly by the increasing use of groundwater in agriculture. Yet across most of the world’s major food basket regions, including the Central Valley in Cali¬fornia, northern China and the Upper Ganges in India and Paki¬stan, “demand exceeds their aqui¬fers’ sustainable yields,” by some estimates 3 and a half times as much. By 2035, global water consumption is predicted to increase by 85. Much of this growth will be driven not just by agricultural expansion, but also by greater demand for energy. Biofuels are particularly water intensive, but hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for unconventional oil and gas also uses large amounts of water.

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	1	+2016-10-22 22:36:36.567

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	1	+Other

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	1	+Other

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	1	+7

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	1	+Quads

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	1	+Lexington Balachundhar Neg

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	1	+SEPOCT- DA- Middle East Desal

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	1	+Bronx