[iwar] [fc:Dehydrating.Conflict]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-25 09:38:41


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Dehydrating.Conflict]
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Dehydrating Conflict

Remember the last time two nations went to war over water? Probably not,
since it was 4,500 years ago.  But today, as demands for water hit the
limits of a finite supply, conflicts are spreading within nations.  And
more than 50 countries on five continents might soon be spiraling toward
water disputes unless they move quickly to strike agreements on how to
share the rivers that flow across international boundaries. 

By Sandra L.  Postel and Aaron T.  Wolf

Talk of water wars reverberates around the globe these days.  United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last March that "fierce
competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and
wars in the future," and a recent report of the U.S.  National
Intelligence Council concludes that the likelihood of interstate
conflict will increase during the next 15 years "as countries press
against the limits of available water."

Some dismiss these warnings as alarmist, and history seems to be on
their side.  The only recorded incident of an outright war over water
was 4,500 years ago between two Mesopotamian city-states, Lagash and
Umma, in the region we now call southern Iraq.  Conversely, between the
years 805 and 1984, countries signed more than 3,600 water-related
treaties, many showing great creativity in dealing with this critical
resource.  An analysis of 1,831 international water-related events over
the last 50 years reveals that two thirds of these encounters were of a
cooperative nature.  Nations agreed, for example, to implement joint
scientific or technological work and signed 157 water treaties. 

Others argue, however, that when it comes to water the past will not be
a reliable guide to the future.  A renewable but not infinite resource,
fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce: The amount available to the
world today is almost the same as it was when the Mesopotamians traded
blows, even as global demand has steadily increased.  Just since 1950,
the renewable supply per person has fallen 58 percent as world
population has swelled from 2.5 billion to 6 billion.  Moreover, unlike
oil and most other strategic resources, fresh water has no substitute in
most of its uses.  It is essential for growing food, manufacturing
goods, and safeguarding human health.  And while history suggests that
cooperation over water has been the norm, it has not been the rule.  One
fourth of water-related interactions during the last half century were
hostile.  Although the vast majority of these hostilities involved no
more than verbal antagonism, rival countries went beyond name-calling on
37 recorded occasions and fired shots, blew up a dam, or undertook some
other form of military action. 

Lost amidst this perennial debate over whether there will be water wars
has been a serious effort to understand precisely how and why tensions
develop, beyond the simplistic cause-and-effect equation that water
shortages lead to wars.  First, whether or not water scarcity causes
outright warfare between nations in the years ahead, it already causes
enough violence and conflict within nations to threaten social and
political stability.  And as recent events in the Balkans and
sub-Saharan Africa demonstrated, today's civil conflicts have a nasty
habit of spilling over borders and becoming tomorrow's international
wars.  Second, water disputes between countries, though typically not
leading to war directly, have fueled decades of regional tensions,
thwarted economic development, and risked provoking larger conflicts
before eventually giving way to cooperation.  The obsession with water
wars begs more important questions: What are the early signs and likely
locations of water-related disputes, and what can governments and
international agents do to prevent the eruption of violence and
political instability?

Internal Stress

On July 6, 2000, thousands of farmers in the Yellow River basin of
eastern China clashed with police over a government plan to recapture
runoff from a local reservoir for cities, industries, and other users. 
The farmers had long relied on that runoff to irrigate their crops, and
a bad drought had made the supply more critical than ever.  The incident
took place in Shandong, the last province through which the Yellow River
runs before reaching the sea.  The location is noteworthy because the
geography of water-related tensions is beginning to show a pattern:
Disputes are erupting within countries in the downstream regions of
overtapped river basins.  China's Yellow River has been running dry in
its lower reaches on and off since 1972, and the dry spells have
lengthened markedly in recent years, including a record 226 days in
1997.  Likewise, water disputes seem to be brewing between Thailand's
northern and southern regions as Bangkok's main river supply, the Chao
Phraya, dwindles.  And there is intensifying friction in the lower
portions of the Indus River, where Pakistan's Punjab and Sind provinces
have been feuding over water for several years.  This past April,
protests in Karachi turned violent as demonstrators shouting "Give us
water" clashed with police. 

These incidents should not be dismissed as isolated and unrelated. 
Water stress is spreading as populations increase [see map].  By 2015,
nearly 3 billion people-40 percent of the projected world population-are
expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to
mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic
needs of their citizens.  This scarcity will translate into heightened
competition for water between cities and farms, between neighboring
states and provinces, and at times between nations. 

The largest and most combustible imbalance between population and
available water supplies will be in Asia, where crop production depends
heavily on irrigation.  Asia today has roughly 60 percent of the world's
people but only 36 percent of the world's renewable fresh water.  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.  Groundwater depletion alone places
10 to 20 percent of grain production in both China and India at risk. 
Water tables are falling steadily in the North China Plain, which yields
more than half of China's wheat and nearly one third of its corn, as
well as in northwest India's Punjab, another major breadbasket. 

As farmers lose access to irrigation water and see their livelihoods
deteriorate, they may not only resort to violent protest but migrate
across borders and to restive and already overcrowded cities.  Such has
been the case in Pakistan, where falling agricultural output has
prompted a massive rural migration to large urban centers, leading to
renewed outbreaks of ethnic violence. 

Internal water stresses will also shift international political
alliances and add to the burden of humanitarian crises.  Countries
commonly adapt to water stress by importing more of their food, provided
they have the foreign exchange to do so.  It takes about 1,000 cubic
meters of water to grow one ton of grain.  By importing wheat and other
staples, water-stressed countries can allocate more of their scarce
fresh water to cities and industries, which generate far more economic
value per liter than agriculture does.  Israel, for example, has done
very nicely with this approach.  Currently water-stressed countries in
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East account for 26 percent of global grain
imports.  As an additional billion people are added to water-stressed
countries over the next 15 years and as more countries join the ranks of
food importers, demand for international grain will increase.  A good
portion of that increase may come from China, India, and Pakistan-all
currently grain self-sufficient, but unlikely to remain so for reasons
of water and land scarcity.  Their governments will inevitably form
stronger alliances with the nations from which they choose to import
food.  For those nations without sufficient foreign exchange to turn to
imports, notably those in sub-Saharan Africa, higher world grain prices
will likely mean greater hunger and more calls for humanitarian aid. 

Finally, a new cause of water-related tensions has surfaced in just the
last few years-the transfer of water system ownership and/or management
from public authorities to private multinational corporations.  Driving
privatization is a confluence of forces: the mounting costs and
political liabilities of providing urban water services, increased
pressure on governments from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank to reduce water subsidies and public-sector debt, and the
growing power of private corporations seeking to profit from the sale of
water and related services.  Especially where privatization takes place
in the presence of poverty and inequality, which is to say in most of
the developing world, it can lead to civil protest and violence. 


Recent events in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city, underscore
these risks.  Following the privatization of Cochabamba's water system,
which had been plagued by corruption and mismanagement, water rates
skyrocketed-resulting in water bills for some residents equal to a
quarter or more of their income.  Months of civil unrest culminated in
April 2000, when the La Paz government sent soldiers into Cochabamba,
where some 30,000 protesters had amassed in the central plaza.  Several
days of violence ensued, leaving one person dead and more than a hundred
injured.  The conflict abated only when the water system returned to
public control. 

Cochabamba is an extreme but not isolated case.  Activists in Colombia
and South Africa likewise have opposed the privatization of water and
other municipal services.  Meanwhile, IMF loan agreements with at least
half a dozen countries last year called for some degree of water system
privatization.  The number of urban dwellers worldwide is projected to
nearly double-to 5 billion-by 2025.  Unless governments and lenders
strengthen municipal water agencies and steer private-sector involvement
toward equity as well as efficiency and toward social justice as well as
shareholder profit, more violence like that in Cochabamba may be
forthcoming. 


Dam Unilateralists

Some 261 of the world's rivers are shared by two or more countries. 
These international watersheds account for about 60 percent of the
world's freshwater supply and are home to approximately 40 percent of
the world's people.  Despite the absence to date of full-scale water
wars, unresolved tensions over water have persistently irritated
relations, fueled other hostilities, and occasionally led to military
action that risked provoking a larger conflict. 

Yet, the overarching lesson to draw from the basins of the Jordan, the
Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and other regions of water
dispute is not that worsening scarcity will lead inevitably to water
wars.  It is rather that unilateral actions to construct a dam or river
diversion in the absence of a treaty or institutional mechanism that
safeguards the interests of other countries in the basin is highly
destabilizing to a region, often spurring decades of hostility before
cooperation is pursued.  In other words, the red flag for water-related
tension between countries is not water stress per se (as is the case
within countries), but rather a unilateral attempt to develop an
international river, usually by a regional power.  In the Jordan River
basin, for example, violence broke out in the mid-1960s over an
"all-Arab" plan to divert the river's headwaters (itself a preemptive
move to thwart Israel's intention to siphon water from the Sea of
Galilee).  Israel and Syria sporadically exchanged fire between March
1965 and July 1966.  Water-related tensions in the basin persisted for
decades and only recently have begun to dissipate. 

A similar sequence of events transpired in the Nile basin, which is
shared by 10 countries-of which Egypt is last in line.  In the late
1950s, hostilities broke out between Egypt and Sudan over Egypt's
planned construction of the Aswan High Dam.  The signing of a treaty
between the two countries in 1959 defused tensions before the dam was
built.  But no water-sharing agreement exists between Egypt and
Ethiopia, where some 85 percent of the Nile's flow originates, and a war
of words has raged between these two nations for decades.  Along with
civil war and poverty, such verbal threats have likely inhibited
Ethiopia's water development, leaving the Horn of Africa more vulnerable
to drought and famine.  Meanwhile Egypt, the regional power, has
continued to pursue large-scale river basin schemes unilaterally.  As in
the case of the Jordan, only in recent years have the Nile nations begun
to work cooperatively toward a solution. 

Similar scenarios have unfolded in a number of other river basins. 
India unilaterally constructed a barrage during the 1960s and early
1970s on the Ganges River at Farakka, near the border with Bangladesh,
in order to channel more river water to the port of Calcutta.  This
diversion left Bangladesh with significantly less water for irrigation
during the dry season.  A 20-year period of intermittent hostility and
instability ensued, including increased migration of desperate
Bangladeshis across the border to India. 

These conflicts share a common trajectory: unilateral construction of a
big dam or other development project, leading to a protracted period of
regional insecurity and hostility, typically followed by a long and
arduous process of dispute resolution.  A two-year study of conflict and
cooperation within international river basins by researchers at Oregon
State University found that the likelihood of conflict increases
significantly whenever two factors come into play.  The first is that
some large or rapid change occurs in the basin's physical setting
(typically the construction of a dam, river diversion, or irrigation
scheme) or in its political setting, especially the breakup of a nation
that results in new international rivers.  Secondly, existing
institutions are unable to absorb and effectively manage that
change-i.e., when there is no treaty spelling out each nation's rights
and responsibilities with regard to the shared river nor any implicit
agreements or cooperative arrangements.  Even the existence of technical
working groups can provide some capability to manage contentious issues,
as they have in the Middle East. 

Looking ahead, then, which river basins are ripe for the onset of
tensions or conflict over the next 10 years? Where are dams or
diversions planned or under construction that may hurt other countries
and where there is no mechanism for resolving resulting disputes? The
accompanying map shows the location of 17 such basins, along with the
four in which serious unresolved water disputes already exist or are
being negotiated.  These basins at risk encompass 51 nations on five
continents in just about every climatic zone.  Eight of the basins are
in Africa, primarily in the south, while six are in Asia, mostly in the
southeast.  Few are on the radar screens of water-and-security analysts. 

Consider, for example, the Salween River, which rises in southern China,
then flows into Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand.  Each of these nations
plans to construct dams and development projects along the Salween, and
no two sets of plans are compatible.  China, moreover, has not lately
been warm to notions of water sharing.  It was one of just three
countries that voted against a 1997 U.N.  convention that established
basic guidelines and principles for the use of international rivers. 
Add in other destabilizing factors in the Salween basin-including the
status of Tibet, indigenous resistance movements, opium production, and
a burgeoning urban population in Bangkok-and the familiar conflict
trajectory emerges.  Without a treaty in place, or even regular dialogue
between the nations about their respective plans, there is little
institutional capacity to buffer the inevitable shock as construction
begins. 

Consider, too, the Okavango, the fourth largest river in southern
Africa.  Its watershed spans portions of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and
Zimbabwe, and its vast delta in northern Botswana offers a
world-renowned wildlife habitat-the "jewel of the Kalahari." In 1996,
drought-prone Namibia revived colonial plans to divert Okavango water to
its capital city of Windhoek.  Angola and especially Botswana object to
the scheme because of its potential harm to the people and ecosystems
that depend on the Okavango's flow for their existence.  The main
institution that can help manage the dispute is the fledgling Okavango
Commission, formed in 1994 to coordinate plans in the basin.  The
commission has recently received renewed support from the Southern
Africa Development Community, the U.S.  Bureau of Reclamation, and other
agencies, but the water dispute continues to simmer. 

Several river basins are at risk of future disputes more because of
rapid changes in their political settings than any specific dam or
development scheme.  The breakup of the Soviet Union resulted in several
new international river basins almost overnight, and, not surprisingly,
institutional capacity for managing water disputes in them is weak.  The
watershed of Central Asia's Aral Sea, for instance, spanned five Soviet
republics that are now independent countries.  Tensions among the young
nations quickly arose both over how to share the Amu Darya and Syr
Darya, the two rivers that feed the Aral Sea, as well as how to
ameliorate the human and environmental tragedy caused by the sea's
dramatic shrinking-a result of 40 years of river diversions masterminded
by Moscow to grow cotton in the Central Asian deserts.  With assistance
from international agencies, these young governments have taken
tentative steps toward trying to resolve their water dilemmas. 

Other recently internationalized basins are only beginning to establish
channels of cooperation.  The Kura-Araks river system, for example, runs
through the politically volatile Caucasus, including the newly
independent countries of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.  The river
system is the source of drinking water for large portions of these
nations, but millions of tons of untreated sewage and industrial waste
regularly push the level of water pollution to 10 to 100 times
international standards.  On top of the pollution problems, some
forecasts project severe water shortages within 10 years.  These water
strains exacerbate, and are exacerbated by, relations over other
contentious issues in the region, notably those of Nagorno-Karabakh and
the proposed pipeline to transport Caspian crude oil across the region
to Turkey. 


Reducing Water Pressure

History supports the hopeful notion that fresh water may foster
cooperation more often than conflict in the years ahead.  Water sharing
has regularly brought even hostile neighboring states together.  But the
unprecedented degree of current water stress is creating more zero-sum
situations-in which one party's gain is perceived as another's loss-both
within and between countries.  The challenge to governments and
international bodies is to recognize the new geography and causes of
water-related conflict and to embrace three guiding principles as they
act to promote water security. 


First, efforts to increase the productivity of water use-output per unit
of water-are key to defusing tensions as water stress worsens.  Measures
such as drip irrigation (a highly efficient technique that delivers
water directly to the roots of crops), shifts in cropping patterns,
recycling and reusing wastewater, and water-thrifty household appliances
enable cities and farming regions to do more with less water.  Since
agriculture accounts for two thirds of water use worldwide, and 80 to 90
percent in many developing countries, increasing the productivity of
irrigation water is particularly critical.  Several water-short urban
areas, including greater Los Angeles and Beijing, are investing in
conservation improvements on nearby farms in exchange for the water
those investments save.  The farmers stay in production, the city
obtains additional water supplies at a reasonable cost, and cooperation
replaces competition.  Moreover, where water conservation and
productivity improvements eliminate the need for a new dam or river
diversion, or allow a big project to be scaled down in size, they also
address a major source of tension and conflict.  As the costs of
desalination decrease, the desalting of contaminated aquifers and of
seawater may generate new drinking water supplies and thereby ease
tensions in water-scarce regions as well. 


Second, stronger policies are needed in most countries to regulate
groundwater use, to price irrigation and urban water in ways that
encourage thriftiness instead of waste, and to protect rivers and lakes
from degradation.  Greater assistance to governments from international
agencies in carrying out these policy and management reforms could help
lessen the likelihood of future water conflicts.  Letting globalization
loose in the form of poorly regulated privatization of water services or
unconstrained private funding of dam construction will likely cause more
problems than it solves.  In this regard, the 2000 report of the
independent World Commission on Dams, which establishes recommendations
for more socially responsible planning and assessment of dams, is an
important step forward.  Among other things, the report calls for an
open decision-making process that includes all those affected by a
proposed dam; a thorough examination of the full range of alternatives
to determine if a dam is really the best choice; negotiations with and
adequate compensation for those adversely affected by dam construction;
and, where international rivers are concerned, regional cooperation and
collaboration.  While some governments have publicly endorsed the
commission's recommendations, others-India, for instance-have disavowed
them. 

Third, governments and international organizations must act early and
constructively.  Some of the most tense water disputes of the 20th
century simmered for decades before the rival parties resolved their
differences.  After three decades of tension in the Jordan basin, Israel
and Jordan included a water-sharing provision in the peace treaty they
signed in 1994.  Tensions among the Nile basin countries are finally
easing, thanks in part to unofficial dialogues among scientists and
technical specialists that have been held since the early 1990s and more
recently to a ministerial-level "Nile Basin Initiative" facilitated by
the United Nations and the World Bank.  India and Bangladesh ended a
20-year dispute in 1996 with the signing of a treaty that sets out
specific terms for sharing the dry-season flow of the Ganges. 

The prevailing ad hoc pattern-implementing agreements, sometimes decades
after a crisis emerges-is not only risky and inefficient, but in many
cases preventable.  The key is establishing a process of cooperation
early in the trajectory before serious hostilities erupt that make it
difficult for nations to sit around a negotiating table together.  The
Indus basin offers a good example.  After their independence in 1947,
India and Pakistan nearly went to war over the waters of the Indus,
which were awkwardly divided by the new political borders.  World Bank
President Eugene Black used his good offices to mediate the dispute, a
long but ultimately successful effort that culminated in the 1960 Indus
Waters Treaty. 

Strong institutions make a difference.  Treaties that provide for
effective monitoring and enforcement are often remarkably resilient,
holding even when the signatories are engaged in hostilities over
non-water issues.  The Indus Waters Treaty survived two wars between the
signatories and allowed each to pursue its agricultural and economic
plans without risking the ire of the other.  Long-term programs of joint
fact-finding, technical cooperation, and other initiatives that
establish a climate of cooperation among countries can pave the way for
resolving disputes when they do arise.  The U.S.  State Department,
other donor countries, and a number of U.N.  agencies have established a
Global Alliance for Water Security aimed at coordinating assistance in
priority regions, which may help countries get ahead of the crisis
curve. 

Most of humanity's long history with water management has focused on
developing ways to capture and deliver water in ever greater quantities
to people, industries, and farms.  We have more or less mastered the
technologies that enable us to bend nature to our will.  This success,
however, has not created a water-secure world.  Together, more effective
technologies, policies, and international institutions can help prevent
and resolve water disputes.  But the stresses on rivers and water
supplies are now so great and so widespread that we cannot wait for
these measures to gradually evolve.  We must implement them before long
periods of verbal threats, hostilities, environmental degradation, and
human suffering engulf more regions of the globe. 

Sandra L.  Postel directs the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst,
Massachusetts.  She is also a senior fellow with Worldwatch Institute
and a visiting senior lecturer in environmental studies at Mount Holyoke
College.  Aaron T.  Wolf is an associate professor of geography at
Oregon State University's Department of Geosciences, and director of the
Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database project. 

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