In the past Syria knew of their high temperature climate, they might not have known how much hotter it was going to get over the years but it would have made sense to plan for a drought.  Irrigation at the time may have seemed liked a reasonable thing to do, but they needed to start adjusting when they noticed water supply decreasing.  Assuming there would be drought just focusing on water being used for citizens rather than agriculture reasons would have been wise.  It is not ideal to have to import foods and other things but sometimes it is needed for them to survive, in order to do this it would be important to keep good external and internal relationships in the country.  Irrigation takes up a lot of water that could be going to different people.  Many people established jobs as farmers because the country did not take into consideration that water might not be a supply in later years.  The country should have established a water system, close to what they have now with their underground water aquifers and made it strictly for bathing and drinking purposes.  I think if I tried to make the water sources mainly for consumption and hygiene, leaving food to be imported it would be hard to convince the leaders to do this.  I’m not sure how external relations were in the past but now it would be hard to convince them to rely on outside town and cities for their food.  Now that I think about it, that could be hard on the citizens that are oppressed in the country because their food not be accessible in the country.

 

If this topic were to be turned into a research paper I would need to know the following:

• How Syria’s political climate was in the past
• What kind of farming they were doing, and what kind of farming can be done in such climate
• How the underground aquifers work in Syria

To learn about the past in Syria, I would take to some news sources along with peer reviewed articles that I would find on Albertson’s Library website.  I’m a visual person so finding pictures of how the aquifers and what kinds of farming Syria did it would help me have more of an understanding of what they are dealing with.

https://www.engineeringthepast.com/1228-2/

Hey y’all Pete here. In Pakistan they use the Moslem water principles at the local level in order to allocate and distribute water to agricultural users. They still use the British Canal and Drainage Act of 1873 as a rule of law when it comes to the governmental level, where water management is a provincial matter, in three of the four provinces. This is one of the world’s oldest and largest irrigation systems and it has been suffering from decay for the past 50-80 years. Salinity is damaging crop production to thousands of acres of land every year. The main problem they have is at the farm level there is improper management and also lack of coordination between the provinces.

If I could rewind time, traveling back to the past to advise Middle Eastern leaders about water resources, here is what I would advise them to do. I would tell them that they need to create a better administrative system which would be comprised of tribunals of irrigators in each irrigation community, like that of Valencia, Spain. This would help to narrow and pinpoint the decision making when it came to deciding on what should be done about water allocation and distribution. The meetings and decisions of these tribunals should be public and verbal, with the decisions being made being written down and recorded in a record book. This would make the system simple and equal. The problem of inequality and social classes battling against the actual people who need the irrigation would almost cease to exist and the change would help to prevent it from happening in the future. I would keep the water structures, such as the qanats and waterways, the same because they already go to where they need to, but I would add some norias, or water wheels, along with more tanks so that when a drought came, some water would be stored for future use.

I believe these leaders would think that these ideas would be worth implementing because they are simple, they bring more equality to the irrigation community, which would result in greater efficiency and production, and it would create a much better system since the people who use the water would actually be in charge of it. They know how much water they need and how to disperse it across the land better than the ruling elite, so it makes a lot of sense to hand them the power that they deserve.

The first piece of information that I would need from the past in order to write a formal research paper about my recommendations is who the exact ruler(s) were during the time period that I choose. The second piece of information that I would need is what time period I would be researching. The third piece of information that I would need is some of the actual laws that were written and implemented during that time period and by those rulers. I would look for this information on the past either a) the Academic Search Premier, b) Albertson’s or Boise Public Library, or c) A credible internet source such as an article that is scholarly or peer-reviewed.

Pete

draft

If you could rewind time, traveling back to the past to advise Middle Eastern leaders about water resources,

what would you advise them to do? Be specific;

name the country or countries you are talking about, and reference particular engineered structures and systems. What would you keep the same, and

what would you recommend they do differently?

Based on what little you have learned from course readings of the various cultures in the region and the political situations there, do you think the leaders would view your recommendations as worth implementing? Explain your reasoning.

The middle east is already a place were people have to adapt to survive there well, water is a crucial part in being able to survive in these difficult climates. From the inception of the countries water conversations should have been one of the most important focuses. instead many

(insert examples of countries here) water reserves have been used till they dried up or contaminated leaving farmers with out the abilities to maintain crops and cities with out the means to live.

(insert engineered structures/systems that cause this)

(what would you keep the same?/how would you change the problem?)

More info. needed:

(Where would you look to find this information about the past? Again, be as specific as possible.)

– what were past regional weather patterns like? what is the norm for the area’s ?

– population growth and how it attributed to the rate of water consumption both for people and use

-historically what other methods have been used for water ? were they more effective than the systems that lead to the current water state?