Refugees, water balance, and water stress: Lessons learned from Lebanon

Hadi Jaafar,Lauren Holtmeier,Caroline King-Okumu,Farah Ahmad

doi:10.1007/s13280-019-01272-0

Abstract

The Syrian crisis caused a massive influx of displaced people into neighboring countries, with Lebanon hosting the highest per capita number of refugees (3:10). Water remains the most critical natural resource that influences the resilience of host and refugee communities. We provide a new GIS-based updated water balance and water scarcity analysis at the national and the watershed level in Lebanon by comparing current conditions to no-refugee levels. Results show a small (6%) increase in water stress in an average water year at the national level that masks hot spots of water scarcity at the local geography. While domestic water use increased by 20%, we find that refugees’ water use is only 10% of agricultural water use in summer. We also show that interventions to rehabilitate the water networks can reduce water stress to better than pre-conflict levels (3% less stress).

Highlights

Millions of refugees are migrating throughout the world escaping threats caused by violence, conflicts, or other circumstances (UNHCR 2011)
Water stress is an urgent issue in the Middle East, and rapid changes in population due to crisis put further strain on freshwater resources
This work was conducted to present an original estimate of the spatial water use at the national level in Lebanon

Summary

Introduction

Millions of refugees are migrating throughout the world escaping threats caused by violence, conflicts, or other circumstances (UNHCR 2011). While many studies have analyzed the demographic, social and political complications of the refugee crisis in Lebanon—see for example: (Refaat and Mohanna 2013; Berti 2015) on Syrian refugees, and (Roberts 2010) on Palestinian refugees—none, to the authors’ knowledge, have quantified the impact of the crisis on water stress in the country by comparing the situation before and after the refugee crisis at an appropriate spatial scale. The primary objectives of this research are: (1) to provide an updated water balance for the country, (2) to spatially quantify water stress in Lebanon following the Syrian refugee crisis, (3) to compare current conditions to a scenario where reasonable network efficiency improvements are made, and (4) to provide recommendations for policy directives and improvements. In Jordan, for example, increased groundwater pumping due to the Syrian crisis caused declines in the water table in one of the largest and highly populated camps (Abu-Allaban et al 2015; UNDP 2015). The impact of refugee crises have been studied previously in several countries such as Tanzania

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