*Dr. Arvind Kumar President India Water Foundation
Viewed in a broad spectrum, about one sixth of the global population currently relies on water sources that are unsafe, unreliable, or difficult to access for their daily washing, drinking, cleaning, and cooking. Nearly one third of the world’s population does not have access to basic sanitation. As a result, millions of people, most of them children, are suffering and dying annually from diseases related to poor water quality. Experts believe the scale of this challenge could double in the next two decades. Beyond the devastation of lack of access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation, often dubbed the “silent killer” of the developing world, many developed nations are also called upon to deal with poor quality drinking water, plummeting water tables, vanishing rivers and wetlands, surface water pollution, and irrigation shortfalls.
International trends in population growth, economic development, industrialization, and urbanization, among others, are pushing all of humanity toward a period marked by unprecedented, sweeping water scarcity, poorer water quality and greater sanitation challenges. By the year 2050, one in four people will live in a country experiencing chronic or recurring shortages of water (Gardner-Outlaw and Engelman 1997). By the year 2025, more people could die of water-related diseases than will perish from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These trends will have significant consequences for prosperity, stability and security at many scales unless the response to these challenges improves dramatically—starting today.
Taken together, all of these factors—from the rising imbalance of supply and demand to the devastating effects of water on human prosperity—point toward a world in which growing water challenges could ignite the underlying economic forces that may lead to conflict and war in the future. These warnings should certainly be weighed heavily, but the inevitability of conflict solely over water resources remains uncertain.
Historical data on international interactions regarding water show many more cooperative arrangements than conflicts. In fact, the last incident of full-out war over water occurred 4,500 years ago between two Mesopotamian city-states. On the other hand, from 2000-2003, 15 violent conflicts across the world involved water either directly or indirectly. Twelve of these were related to disputes over the development of shared water resources.
While history gives cause for comfort, increasing water scarcity and declining water quality across the world certainly present the threat of increased instability and conflict in the future. In the future, instability or conflict related to water supplies will likely take two forms: (1) domestic unrest caused by the inability of governments to meet the food, industrial, and municipal needs of its citizens, and (2) hostility between two or more countries—or regions.
Various instances of domestic unrest have erupted recently related to governments’ management of water resources. In April 2005, thousands of peasant farmers in China’s Zhejiang province violently protested government concessions to a local factory that had been polluting the land and water causing wide spread sickness and poor crop yields. The farmers’ pleas to Beijing and provincial authorities had largely gone unanswered. In India, riots raged through September and October 2002 over the allocation of the Cauvery River between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. On the other side of the planet, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, 30,000 protestors managed to reverse the government’s decision to privatize the municipal water utility after several days of violent protests.
In each of these instances, civil unrest was directed toward governments, but private corporations can also fall victim to public discontent. Protests have also been taking place in the state of Kerala over the alleged over-withdrawal of groundwater and pollution by Coca-Cola. The public outcry is partially organized and supported by a one-man nongovernmental organization watchdog in California, demonstrating how increased flows of knowledge and information enable any sized group to exert significant pressure on any issue across long distances. As resource scarcities increase and water quality is threatened throughout the world, many similar types of watchdog organizations could mobilize public discontent or insecurity.
Many water-related incidents of unrest arising across the world represent the consequences of rising imbalances in water availability and the failures of governments to effectively and transparently mediate the concerns and demands of various users. These dislocations illustrate the direct correlation between governance and disorder—greater stability stems from greater capacities of government institutions to reconcile the demands of urban and rural populations as well as the agriculture, industry, commercial, and domestic sectors; more instances of unrest follow lower levels of government transparency and responsiveness. Unfortunately, government transparency and responsiveness are not widespread in many regions experiencing rising pollution and increasing water scarcity.
Food security, irrigation and food production are potent issues that entail the potential of significantly impacting geopolitical stability and international relations in the coming decades. As populations grow and become increasingly urbanized, global food production will need to increase to meet demand. Today, 40 percent of food produced in the developing world relies on irrigated agriculture. This level will need to be expanded by 14 percent in order to meet demand. Such an increase becomes less viable with dropping groundwater and surface water levels. According to Sandra Postel and Aaron Wolf (2001), “China, India, Iran, and Pakistan are among the countries where a significant share of the irrigated land is now jeopardized by groundwater depletion, scarce river water, a fertility-sapping buildup of salts in the soil, or some combination of these factors.”
Some countries will have to decide to what degree they should maintain an agricultural sector at all. It takes about 900 liters of water to produce one kilogram of wheat, 1900 liters to produce one kilogram of rice, and 15,000 liters to produce one kilogram of beef. Increasing water scarcities raise questions of which crops are necessary and at what level of production to ensure food security. Studies show that when water availability drops below 1500 cubic meters per capita per year, countries begin to import food, and particularly water intense crops. Twenty-one countries fell below this threshold in 2000 and another 14 will join them by the year 2030.
However, the challenge is further complicated when geopolitical international pressures are added to the equation. Forty percent of the world’s population lives in more than 260 international river basins of major social and economic importance. According to Wolf et al. (2003), the likelihood of a cross-border conflict increases when either the physical or institutional aspect of river basin management is altered and the institutional capacities to cope with these changes are overstretched. Examples of such disruptions include the initiation of a large-scale engineering project, such as a large dam, river diversion, or irrigation scheme, without the consultation of other riparian or downstream users, or the break up of a single nation into several newly independent states. Without a treaty or other binding agreement to spell out each country’s rights or responsibilities, the situation quickly deteriorates into a “protracted period of regional insecurity and hostility, typically followed by a long and arduous process of dispute resolution.” Using these criteria – rapid change occurring in a hostile and/or institution-less basin – Wolf et al. (2003) identified seventeen river basins at risk of water conflict over the next five to ten years.
Water, like oil, is increasingly emerging as a catalyst for international instability and conflict. Water is increasingly emerging as a scarce commodity, fueled by population pressures, intensive irrigation, and erratic weather patterns brought on by global warming. According to the International Water Management Institute, by 2025 one-third of the world’s population will lack access to water. Developing countries bear the brunt of water shortages given the lack of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation in these states, which has been exacerbated by rapid development, population pressures and significant rural-to-urban migration. Developing countries are also the most likely to face water-related conflict, given the lack of cooperative management mechanisms between developing states on managing shared water resources.
Of the world’s 263 international basins, three-fifths of them lack a feasible, cooperative management framework. While water disputes alone are not likely to spark a conflict, they are likely to fuel already existent, long-standing tensions within and between states. Since 1948, close to 40 incidents of hostilities have taken place over water resources, most of which have taken place in the Middle East. In the Middle East, the Jordan River Basin and the Tigris-Euphrates Basin are the most likely regions of water-related conflict, while in Africa the Nile River, Volta River, Zambezi River, and the Niger Basin are conflict-prone zones.
In the 21st century, however, Asia may emerge as the new focal point of water-related conflict given the rapid growth of the region, which is likely to put pressure on water resources, coupled with the concentration of long-standing internal and inter-state tensions, which can act as a spark for turning water-related disputes into full-scale conflicts. Asia is home to 57 international basins, the third largest after Europe and Africa.
In Asia, three regions are the most likely candidates for water-related conflict: Central Asia, South Asia and the Mekong sub-region in Southeast Asia. Central Asia’s water fault-lines include the division of the Caspian Sea between the five littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan) and a dispute over access to water from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers between upstream states (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) and downstream states (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).
South Asia’s water tensions include the Indo-Pakistan dispute over the Wular Barrage, Indo-Bangladesh water dispute over the Farakka Barrage and the Indo-Nepal dispute over the Mahakali River Treaty. In Southeast Asia, water-related tensions arise from attempts by the six riparian states (Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) to construct dams in order to reroute the Mekong River system. While management systems have been established for these disputes — such as the Mekong River Committee (1957) and its successor the Mekong River Commission, the treaties of Sarada (1920), Kosi (1954) and Gandak (1959) between India and Nepal, the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan (1960), the Ganges Waters Treaty between India and Bangladesh (1977), and the 1998 “Agreement on the Use of Water and Energy Resources of the Syr Darya Basin” between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — they have been poorly enforced.
Furthermore, all three regions are plagued by long-standing historical animosities and internal instabilities and water disputes serve to focus these tensions. The fact that these river systems run through multiple countries — notably the Aral Sea, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Mekong Rivers are each shared by at least five states — creates the potential for regional conflict over water.
Central Asia is also home to several long-standing water disputes, which have the potential to escalate the region’s instabilities. Undoubtedly, Central Asia is rich in water resources, more than 90 percent is concentrated in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan where the region’s two main rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, originate. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are the region’s main water consumers with Uzbekistan alone consuming more than half of the region’s water resources. As such, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan control the water needed by the other Central Asian states. The upstream states, however, view water as a strategic commodity as they are poorly endowed with other resources and use water to generate much of their own power needs.
Water flow to downstream states has fallen, significantly affecting cotton production and cooling needs during the summer, while downstream states have not met the gas and coal needs of upstream states, especially during the harsh winters. The region’s growing water consumption has also reduced water levels in the Aral Sea, which is fed by the Syr Darya and Amu Darya river systems. Although the states established the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination in 1992, they have failed to implement an effective water management mechanism. Combined with interstate tensions over disputed borders, great power competition over the region’s energy resources and internal instabilities emanating from rising poverty, authoritarian rule and religious extremism, water disputes have the potential to tip the region into conflict.
The rapid pace of development, burgeoning populations and long-standing interstate and internal instabilities in different parts of the globe entail the likelihood of water-related conflicts getting escalated in these regions. The gradual pace of development of international water dispute mechanisms has also been a cause of concern. The 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses has failed to muster the 35 votes needed for it to take effect. The emerging scenario presents a sordid picture of the future of water-related international conflicts.
Article published in Third Concept/May 2008/Vol.22/No.255/P.No.7/
