Behind barbed-wire fences at this camp in northern Jordan, about 33,000 Syrians—half of them children—exist uneasily, housed in rows of rudimentary shelters that barely protect them from the winter cold.
Drinking water must be brought in daily by dozens of tanker trucks or pumped from desert boreholes that overexploit Jordan's largest groundwater basin.
As in Jordan, the world's refugee crisis, which is intimately linked with water availability both in the homelands that people escape and in the camps where they find shelter, is large and growing. Some 66 million people—a France-sized population—are displaced.
An estimated 28,300 refugees a day across the globe flee conflict and persecution, the relief agency UNHCR said. Fifty-five percent come from just three countries: Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Syria, which the World Bank says has endured the largest refugee crisis since World War II with more than half the country's pre-war population having left their homes since 2011.
Now, with many Syrians in their seventh winter of displacement, hosting and supporting 650,000 registered refugees costs the Jordanian government almost $900 million a year, according to Oxfam. To help, non-governmental organizations supply water and relief groups visit to offer aid. Celebrities and royalty tour the camps on occasion.
Zaatari is the biggest refugee camp in Jordan, opening in 2012 close to Syria's border and now housing 79,000 Syrian refugees. Azraq, 50 miles southeast, was built on unused desert land after Zaatari swelled beyond capacity just a year after opening, to more than 156,000 people. With high summer temperatures, cool winters and blowing desert sand, conditions at both camps challenge the mind and body.
Zaatari's corrugated shelters take a beating in the sun and heat while its water supply and wastewater disposal are constant concerns. The UN said at least 82 water trucks a day fill the camp's water tanks so that 950,000 liters of water a day can flow to some 76 taps. Boreholes also provide 3.2 million liters of drinking water a day, giving camp residents access to about 20 liters a day, or 5 gallons per person. This allotment is used for bathing, cooking, cleaning and drinking.
Built as a temporary camp, Zaatari now functions like a city with 12 districts, hundreds of shops, a police station, mosque, schools, and health clinics. Water and wastewater networks were constructed by the humanitarian group ACTED.
A treatment plant purifies about 80 percent of the wastewater generated in the camp. A UNICEF grant led to the upgrading of 1,300 private toilets by ACTED. Hand-washing sinks and toilets for the disabled were also built to address complaints of unsanitary living conditions.
Both camps were visited in November by the non-profit Atlantic Humanitarian Relief group led by its Syrian-American founder, Humam Akbik, a Harvard-trained pain-management specialist from Damascus now based in Cincinnati. The international group of physicians, nurses, dentists and pharmacists worked almost without stop from morning to sundown. They came at their own cost, brought their own instruments and supplies to refugee camps and clinics that sometimes lacked sinks with running water or a clean toilet. They provided free exams, minor operations, dental services, medicine, and even psychiatric help to traumatized orphans.
"Water was a big problem," said Rowena Milligan, a physician who took part in the humanitarian mission and traveled from the UK. "You couldn't wash your hands before/after examining patients so could only use alcohol gel, which isn't ideal."
At refugee camps, clinics and random camps in northern Jordan from Ajloun to the outskirts of Amman and Azraq, volunteers played with the children, painting their faces and engaging in games. Play activities "help take their mind off things," Akbik said. "Helps these kids feel like kids again."
Worrisome Trends for Climate and Migration
Security experts have warned for years that a drying climate in the Middle East, Sahel, and other mid-latitude regions will set up conditions of environmental stress for the countries least capable of managing the strain. At least 25 percent of the planet, including Jordan, will experience serious drought and desertification within three decades if attempts by the Paris agreement to curb global warming aren't met, according to the journal Nature Climate Change.
Those who choose to leave face peril on the journey. The International Organization for Migration says more than 3,100 migrants lost their lives last year drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, and 390 more from Jan. 1 to Feb. 4, 2018, compared with 257 for the same period in 2017, as they attempted the dangerous crossing from North Africa to southern Europe. It's the fourth year in a row that the death toll surpassed 3,000.
And in Asia, Rohingya Muslims have drowned trying to escape state-sponsored violence in their homeland of Myanmar. At least 670,000 men, women and children have fled to Bangladesh by boat and foot since August in what the UN calls "the world's fastest-growing humanitarian crisis."
The Rohingya crisis even prompted a UN video that ended with a plea to better address the refugees' urgent needs of clean water.
The pleas are founded on evidence of infection. At the informal Rohingya camps in southeast Bangladesh, water pumps next to open sewers have stoked fear of disease outbreaks, and led to vaccination, clean water and sanitation drives. At the Kutupalong refugee camp extension, 20 tube wells were added. So were almost 120 latrine chambers.
The World Health Organization reports that diptheria is "rapidly spreading among Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar," a city in Bangladesh. Six deaths were reported in December. Diptheria is a highly infectious respiratory disease that often appears in overcrowded areas with no proper sanitation system. Haiti endured similar cholera outbreaks in recent years related to contaminated water issues.
Sometimes small improvements in water technology can mean big lifestyle improvements for refugees.
In southwestern Algeria, Sahrawi refugees exiled by Morocco more than three decades ago are using what little water they have in newly efficient ways: growing soil-less hydroponics in solar-powered container units. At five remote camps near Tindouf, trays of barley are now grown for Sahrawi livestock in the Sahara desert through a World Food Programme project.
The Sahrawis have come a long way since eight years ago, when water was trucked in via UNHCR tankers and outhouses were crude holes beside mud-brick homes.
For those in Al Azraq, the hope is that they do not have to put down roots, that they can go home again.
Climate Crisis to Uproot Millions in the Coming Decades: Nations Need to Be Ready https://t.co/BIzjRfdD8V… https://t.co/WKqQ1g9XW9— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1513911631.0
Reporting contributed by Randall Hackley, a former AP and Bloomberg correspondent who has reported from 18 countries and visited refugee camps in Jordan, Algeria, Haiti, Peru, and the U.S.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Circle of Blue.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.