The Arab Youth Bulge and the Parliamentarians.
Asia-Pacific, Democracy, Featured, Gender, Global, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Labour, Middle East & North Africa, Migration & Refugees, Peace, Poverty & SDGs, Projects, TerraViva United Nations, Women & Economy These challenges come amidst increasing population pressures, advancing drought and desertification, and alarming growing water scarcity, all worsening as a consequence of climate change.
More than 100 Arab and Asian legislators are set to focus on these and other related challenges in Amman, Jordan, during the Asian and Arab Parliamentarians Meeting and Study Visit on Population and Development (18-20 July 2017).
According to APDA, over the past decades, while the Arab region has shown remarkable socio-economic improvement including education and health, it has faced profound changes and challenges.
One of the most challenging issues facing young Arabs are the high-unemployment rates.
“The region has one of the highest regional youth unemployment rate seen anywhere in the world,” it warns, adding that in 2009, more than 20 per cent of Arab youth were unable to find a job, which constituted more than half of the total unemployment.
Such high youth unemployment, combined with a demographic youth bulge, provoked the Arab Spring, a civil uprising mainly by Arab youths, and regional instability, according to APDA.
“ The Youth Bulge Organised under the theme “From Youth Bulge to Demographic Dividend: Toward Regional Development and Achievement of the SDGs”, the Amman meeting aims at enhancing the roles of parliamentarians in enacting legislation to formulate policies and mobilize budget that takes population issues into account is a driver to promote socio-economic development.
The Asian Population and Development Association has supported activities of parliamentarians tackling population and development issues for 35 years.
This time, in close consultation with Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development and its Secretariat in Amman, Jordan, the event is intended to highlight and call attention of Asian and Arab parliamentarians to population perspectives in the 2030 Agenda.

Flood water in front of Renaissance Dam will not affect Egypt’s water security level: statement.
“The Blue Nile flood is known to last from June until the end of September each year.
The river receives great inflow of water and then later on in the year the flow drops,” Hossam al-Imam, spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said in a statement.
He reiterated that the quantities of water present in that lake do not represent any damage to Egypt’s water quota.
Egypt fears the dam will affect its historic Nile water share of 55 billion square meters, which it has had access to since the historic 1959 agreement with Sudan.
The dam is expected to be ready in 2017.
Ethiopians see it as is a great national project and a means of overcoming poverty.
Earlier in June, the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Ministry official spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid asserted that Egypt’s water security is non-negotiable, saying that it is considered a red line that no one can approach.
When completed, the dam will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa, and one of the largest of its kind in the world.
According to global calculators of water scarcity, Egypt is already classified as being a water-stressed country, while Ethiopia is classified as being on the brink of water stress.

A decade after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip, the living conditions for two million people in the Palestinian enclave are deteriorating “further and faster” than the prediction made in 2012 that the enclave would become “unlivable” by 2020, a new United Nations report has found.
“Gaza has continued on its trajectory of ‘de-development’, in many cases even faster than we had originally projected,” said Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, in a press release on the new report, “Gaza – 10 years later.” In an intra-Palestinian conflict, Hamas took over Gaza in 2007.
Israel has sought to isolate the group by restricting the movements of goods and people in and out of the strip.
It was also administratively separated from the West Bank.
The report, compiled by the UN country team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, took stock of some key indicators identified in an earlier 2012 UN report that predicted Gaza would become “unlivable” by 2020 unless underlying trends were reversed.
“The alternative will be a Gaza that is more isolated and more desperate,” warned the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities.
It focused on water scarcity, unavailability of materials to allow the Gazan economy, infrastructure and basic services to recover from the 2014 conflict, and electricity supply, which is as low as at 90 megawatts in recent days against the 450 megawatts needed.
Average Palestinians are trapped in a “sad reality” and their daily lives are “getting more and more wretched,” the report notes.
On the eve of the release of the report Tuesday, the UN and non-governmental organizations conducted a field visit to Gaza with nine members of the diplomatic community from Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, to witness first-hand the cumulative impact of 10 years of closures and internal divide.
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Israel and the Palestinians said Thursday they reached a water-sharing deal to bring relief to parched Palestinian communities, a modest but promising breakthrough announced during the latest visit by the U.S. Mideast envoy.
"Water is a precious commodity in the Middle East.
He said Israel would sell up to 33 million cubic meters (8.7 billion gallons) of water to the Palestinians annually at a reduced rate.
A third of the water will be delivered to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israel, the Palestinians and Jordan are discussing a number of potential water projects, including the construction of a desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan, to serve residents of both sides of the border.
"All of us in this room proved last night that water can serve as a means for reconciliation, for prosperity, for cooperation, rather than be a cause for tension and dispute," Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said.
President Donald Trump has tasked Greenblatt with kick-starting long-moribund peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israeli and Palestinian officials signed an agreement Monday to provide additional electricity to Palestinian residents of the northern West Bank.
Thursday’s announcement followed a preliminary agreement signed by Israel, the Palestinians and Jordan in 2013 to build a pipeline to channel water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and help address water scarcity in the region.
The plan calls for the construction of a 180-kilometer (111-mile) channel, along with hydroelectric and desalination plants in Jordan, with joint Israeli-Jordanian administration and financing.

Kern Center this February, the team who designed the state-of-the-art green building fully expected to get approval for its innovative rainfall-to-drinking water system.
The state Department of Environmental Protection, however, put those hopes on hold.
The problem was that the process the center used to collect and disinfect rain for its drinking water was so cutting-edge that state regulators had to update drinking water guidelines to provide relevant directions for the college to follow.
“They’ve worked really hard to accommodate what’s still an experiment,” Hampshire College President Jonathan Lash said of state regulators.
After initially saying the college could apply a certain level of UV light to kill pathogens, inspectors reversed course and said a higher UV level was needed, Chamberland said.
During that wait, the building’s planners were worried that the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency would also require them to use chlorine to disinfect the rainwater.
That’s because Hampshire College entered the Kern Center into the green building certification program known as the Living Building Challenge.
Holland and Chamberland already anticipate possible negotiations over another new practice they’d like to employ.
The dairy products were collecting in the center’s greywater system.
Urine from the zero-waste toilets quickly corroded a brass fitting in the composter system.

Environmental official warns of water waste in Iran.
TEHRAN, July 13 (Xinhua) — A senior Iranian environmental official said that some 27 billion cubic meters of water is squandered away in Iran every year, Financial Tribune daily reported on Thursday.
Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president and head of environmental protection organization, said that correcting consumption patterns in agriculture and industries is the only surefire way to reduce water loss.
Meanwhile, up to 170,000 illegal water wells have emerged as a major challenge for the government, which is pushing for rational agricultural practices.
About 92 percent of the country’s water resources are reportedly used up by unsustainable and wasteful farming and irrigating practices.
Iran’s annual water consumption tops 97 billion cubic meters, while the country only has 88 billion cubic meters of renewable sources, said Isa Kalantari, the former agriculture minister.
Further reports also blamed the water crisis in Iran on excessive damming of rivers, drought and climate change.
Moreover, low water prices encourage wasteful consumption, while some farmers and organizations have been accused of stealing water supplies for their own benefits.
Experts predict that Iran’s water scarcity will hit crisis level by 2025, when available renewable water will be less than 1,000 cubic meters per capita, down from 2,000 cubic meters in 1950.
The World Resources Institute ranked Iran as the world’s 24th most water-stressed nation, putting it at extremely high risk of future water scarcity.

An anti-corporate film is taking Netflix by storm.
There’s a new film that’s taking Netflix by storm.
And surprisingly, it’s one that also takes on corporate greed and the abuses at the very heart of the capitalist system.
The real-world Okja Okja may move a step away from reality in order to make its message subtler, but viewers don’t have to look too far to see that the film simply mirrors the real world.
While the issue of animal suffering and consciousness is complex, the fact is that the animals we eat are generally as intelligent as the ones that live in our homes (if not more so).
Indeed, the system of corporate mass production means we don’t need to think about killing the animals we eat, because someone else does it for us.
An issue of rich and poor There are dozens of facts which show meat production as a leading cause behind climate change, water waste, and deforestation.
While an average UK resident eats around 84.2kg of meat a year, a US resident eats 120.2kg.
Even if we put animal rights and the benefits of eating less meat to one side, corporate meat production has a shocking effect; on both the environment and on people who hardly even eat meat.
It’s great to have films like Okja holding a mirror up to what capitalism is doing to the world.

Could harvesting rainwater solve water shortage?.
Gungthramo, Punakha: Even as monsoon rain drips from the roof of her small hut, Tandin Beda rushes out to collect water from her neighbour to drink and wash. She has been depending on her neighbour for water for the last five years.
The water she takes back will be enough just for a day.
When there are guests and relatives at Tashimo’s, I do not get water.
It is not easy begging water in front of other people.” If the villagers knew how to harvest rainwater, it would bring much relief and the problem of water shortage eased, especially during monsoon.
None here has heard the term ‘rainwater harvesting’.
Feasibility of harvesting rainwater Some 1,049 households of 36 villages in Mongar, Samtse, Pemagatshel and Tsirang have accessed to adequate drinking water after Tarayana Foundation brought rainwater harvesting and water management projects in the communities.
The foundation, one of the most active non-governmental organisations in the country, provided the villagers with gutter, pipes, and construction materials to build tanks.
Rainwater is collected using gutter and pipe and stored in tanks to be used when there is water shortage.
After we helped them with rainwater harvesting techonoly, they now have adequate water to drink,” said Jamyang Phuntsho.

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy said Thursday Israel would supply the Palestinians with millions of cubic metres of water annually, as Washington seeks to build confidence for fresh negotiations.
Jason Greenblatt hailed an "important step forward" in a wider regional water deal, as Israel announced it would provide more than 32 million cubic metres of water to the Palestinians annually.
Israel’s Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi and Mazin Ghunaim, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, also attended.
Palestinians suffer from water shortages and say the unequal distribution of water resources favours Israel.
The deal announced Thursday is part of a wider water project involving the Red and Dead Seas to be developed over the next five years, but the Palestinians are likely to begin receiving water from it before then, Hanegbi said.
It came after Greenblatt helped broker an agreement between the two sides on the price and quantities of water, as well as where the connection points will be.
The deal is supposed to ease water scarcity in the Palestinian territories, including in the Gaza Strip, where more than 95 percent of water is undrinkable.
The deal is part of a pre-existing plan to link the Dead Sea and the Red Sea by pipes in Jordan.
In 2013, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians signed a memorandum of understanding on the water project that included plans to build a desalination plant at the Red Sea.
Greenblatt is seeking to restart peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, stalled since talks collapsed in 2014, with Trump saying he wants to reach the "ultimate deal".

Former Councillor attacked in Alipura.
Former Councillor Pratap Singh Chouhan was attacked last night following a meagre argument in Alipura.
He has received severe injuries on face and has been admitted to MB hospital.
A case of lethal assault has been filed against Adil based on Chouhan’s report.
Police are on alert in Alipura and the nearby areas and extra police force has been appointed as safety measures.
The discussions turned into heated arguments and Adil lost control and stabbed Chouhan on the spot.
As the uproar increased the gathering , Adil took to his heels.
Chouhan was taken to Emergency in MB hospital where he underwent stitches on face.
ASP Sudhir Joshi was asked to take strict action against Adil.
Police team searched for Adil s/o Abdul Majid in Alipura and nearby areas.