Richard Schofield Department of Geography

LGA Workshop, 11ith January 2016

Geography of the Middle East

Scheme of today’s slide presentation y Over to you guys – what are your interests in attending today? y Conflict, borders and mobility – the depressing defining themes of the last year y What and where is the Middle East? More than the Arab world plus Israel, Iran

and Turkey? y Themes in how geographers have covered the ME (show some books) y The natural environment – desert, rivers and mountains y Human identities – ethnography and religion, modern confessional divides y The making of the political map – colonialism and beyond y Modern boundary and territorial disputes y Oil and gas: location, supply and security of supply y Minorities ,stateless and emerging nations y Conflict: from the northern Gulf to the Levant and Yemen, 1980-2015 y The Gulf states: international labour migration and non-national majority states

2 Types of water – blue and green 3 National sustainable productivity 4 Farmer-services in food supply chains

24

Russian Near Abroad

25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_the_European_Union

European Neighbourhood

26 http://www.businessinsider.com/eurasian-union-map-2013-12?IR=T

European Union * Eurasian Economic Union

Sykes-Picot map (1916)

Britain and Russia ended up mapping a zone

Laying down a line would be troublesome!

Assessing the historical in Middle Eastern trans-boundary resource disputes: Richard Schofield

Assessing the historical in Middle Eastern trans-boundary resource disputes: Richard Schofield

Where and what is this?

Assessing the historical in Middle Eastern trans-boundary resource disputes: Richard Schofield

Territorial disputes and conflict: The Shatt al Arab boundary (1975)

“Security Walls” & Partitions

Israel’s security wall gets zonal at Qalundiyyah (near Ramallah), September 2005

Securitised border dysfunction

Assessing the historical in Middle Eastern trans-boundary resource disputes: Richard Schofield