Syrian Refugees, Water Scarcity, and Dynamic Policies: How Do the New Refugee Discourses Impact Water Governance Debates in Lebanon and Jordan?

Hussam Hussein,Baha Hamadna,Abed Al Kareem Yehya,Alberto Natta

doi:10.3390/w12020325

Hussam Hussein, Baha Hamadna + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/w12020325

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Abstract

Since the Syrian crisis and the so-called “Arab Spring”, new discourses have been created, sparking the discursive water governance debates around water scarcity and hydropolitics. In Lebanon and Jordan—where most water resources are transboundary, and where most Syrian refugees have flown in—new discourses of climate change and especially of Syrian refugees as exacerbating water scarcity are emerging, shaping water governance debates. The aim of this paper is to engage in comparative discourse analysis about narratives of water crises and refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. This study is novel because of the focus on the new discourse of refugees in relation to water governance debates in both Lebanon and Jordan. This paper finds that in both countries the new discourses of refugees do not replace previous and existing discourses of water crisis and scarcity, but rather they build on and reinforce them. This paper finds that the impact these discourses had on the governance debates is that in Lebanon the resources mobilized focused on humanitarian interventions, while Jordan focused on development projects to strengthen the resilience of its water infrastructure and its overall water governance system.

Highlights

In the past decade, especially within environmental politics, there is a growing interest in, and concern for, the ways in which discourses are constructed, used and misinterpreted in public political debate about shared water resources [1,2]
Lebanon is hosting 947,063 registered Syrian refugees [31], and about 500,000 unregistered Syrian refugees [32]. It hosts the highest number of refugees per capita worldwide (according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)) 173 refugees per 1000 inhabitant); more than one-fourth of the population living in Lebanon is Syrian [32]
Concerning the second aspect of our analysis, which according to our theoretical comparative framework, focuses on identifying what discourses are dominant in the water governance debates in Lebanon concerning the water crisis after the Syrian War; we found that the mainstream dominant discourse we have registered in interviews with academics from institutions based in Lebanon and in the public declarations of governmental officials, shows a narrative that focuses on population growth, especially due to the sudden influx of refugees

Summary

Introduction

Especially within environmental politics, there is a growing interest in, and concern for, the ways in which discourses are constructed, used and misinterpreted in public political debate about shared water resources [1,2]. There is renewed interest in discourse theory and discourses’ employment in analyzing how they shape water governance debates [3,4,5], as previously done in the region [6,7,8] This research brings these issues together, and applies them to an original and timely case-study focused on the impact of discourses of refugees on water governance debates in Lebanon and Jordan. As discourses are a key vehicle to shape people’s understandings and policies, it is necessary to understand how they are constructed and deployed, and the policy solutions they open (or close) This is the core of what discourse theory investigates [9]

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