New publication: Community Based Problem Solving on Water Issues – Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) September 2012

This publication describes the efforts of the Good Water Neighbors project team to identify environmental challenges and provide feasible solutions for “Priority Initiatives” in the participating communities.

Project Briefs outline the current state of affairs with respect to threats and opportunities to the environment and water supply, the objectives that each proposed response aims to achieve, and the steps required to advance each Priority Initiative. Each Project Brief is designed as a roadmap to guide the efforts of stakeholders through project activities and as a tool for informing government decision makers and international donor organizations about the Priority Initiatives.

“In 2001, EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) launched the “Good Water Neighbors” (GWN) program to raise awareness of the water problems shared by Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis. The program identifies cross-border communities whose mutual dependence on shared water resources is utilized as a basis for cooperation on sustainable water management. The project has created real improvements in the water sectors of participating communities. A decade ago, the project struggled to identify 11 communities who would agree to work together. Today, it boasts 28 communities with further expansion requested but limited by financial constraints. Communities are grouped not only by a shared stream or spring, but also according to larger shared watersheds and aquifers, with 14 communities sharing the Jordan River / Dead Sea Basin, and 14 communities sharing the Mountain and Coastal Aquifer and Coastal Streams Watersheds.

“FoEME works with municipal staff and residents in each GWN community to identify and address sources of pollution advocate for increased water supply, and to find ways to answer the needs of our cross-border communities through projects that protect the shared environmental heritage. The GWN project’s constituency of community residents, including adult and youth activists, mayors, and municipal staff, exerts enormous ‘bottom-up’ pressure on national decision makers in order to generate the political will needed to advance solutions at the national and regional level…..

“Over the last ten months, FoEME staff reached out to stakeholders, decision makers and funding bodies to identify the priority projects needing advancement in each community. In the first stage of this process, FoEME brought together a core group of veteran adult activists in each community with other stakeholders to identify Priority Initiatives that respond to the most immediate water and environmental challenges facing the community. Special consideration was given to issues relating to cross-border water and environmental concerns and Initiatives that are likely to reduce sources of tension between neighboring communities and which promote efficient management of shared water resources.”