How water shortages are brewing wars
By Sandy Milne, 8/16/21, BBC News
Speaking to me via Zoom from his flat in Amsterdam,
Ali al-Sadr pauses to take a sip from a clear glass of
water. The irony dawning on him, he lets out a laugh.
"Before I left Iraq, I struggled every day to find clean
drinking water." 3 years earlier, al-Sadr had joined protests
in the streets of his native Basra, demanding the authorities
address the city's growing water crisis.
"Before the war, Basra was a beautiful place," adds the
29-year-old. "They used to call us the Venice of the East."
Bordered on one side by the Shatt al-Arab River, the city
is skewered by a network of freshwater canals. al-Sadr, a
dockhand, once loved working alongside them. "But by the
time I left, they were pumping raw sewage into the waterways.
We couldn't wash, the smell [of the river] gave me migraines
&, when I finally fell sick, I spent 4 days in bed." In the
summer of 2018, tainted water sent 120,000 Basrans to the
city's hospitals – &, when police opened fire on those who
protested, al Sadr was lucky to escape with his life.
"Within a month I packed my bags & left for Europe," he says.
Around the world, stories like al Sadr's are becoming far
too common. As much as 1/4 of the world's population now
faces severe water scarcity at least one month out of the
year & – as in al-Sadr's case – it is leading many to seek
a more secure life in other countries. "If there's no water,
people will start to move," says Kitty van der Heijden,
chief of int'l cooperation at the Netherlands' foreign
ministry & an expert in hydropolitics. Water scarcity affects
roughly 40% of the world's population &, acc. to predictions
by the UN & the World Bank, drought could put up to
700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. People
like van der Heijden are concerned about what that could lead to.
"If there's no water, politicians are going to try & get their
hands on it & they might start to fight over it," she says.
Over the course of the 20th C., global water use grew at
over twice the rate of population increase. Today, this
dissonance is leading many cities – from Rome to Cape Town,
Chennai to Lima – to ration water. Water crises have been
ranked in the top 5 of the World Economic Forum's Global
Risks by Impact list nearly every year since 2012. In 2017,
severe droughts contributed to the worst humanitarian crisis
since WWII, when 20 million people across Africa & the Middle
East were forced to leave their homes due to the accompanying
food shortages & conflicts that erupted.
Peter Gleick, head of the Oakland-based Pacific Inst., has
spent the last 3 decades studying the link between water
scarcity, conflict & migration & believes that water conflict
is on the rise. "With very rare exceptions, no one dies of
literal thirst," he says. "But more & more people are dying
from contaminated water or conflicts over access to water."
Gleick & his team are behind the Water Conflict Chronology:
a log of 925 water conflicts, large & small, stretching back
to the days of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. It isn't, by
any means, exhaustive & the conflicts listed vary from full
blown wars to disputes between neighbors. But what they
reveal is that the relationship between water & conflict
is a complex one.
"We categorised water conflicts in 3 groups," says Gleick.
"As a 'trigger' of conflict, where violence is associated
with disputes over access & control of water; as a 'weapon'
of conflict, where water or water systems are used as
weapons in conflicts, including for the use of dams to
withhold water or flood downstream communities; & as
'casualties' or 'targets' of conflicts, where water resources
or treatment plants or pipelines are targeted during conflicts."
Leaf thru the records he & his colleagues have compiled,
however, & it becomes clear that the bulk of the conflicts
are agriculture-related. It's perhaps not surprising as
agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater use. In the
semi-arid Sahel region of Africa, for example, there are
regular reports of herdsmen & crop farmers clashing violently
over scarce supplies of water needed for their animals & crops.
But as demand for water grows, so too does the scale of
the potential conflicts.
"The latest research on the subject does indeed show water-
related violence increasing over time," says Charles Iceland,
global director for water at the World Resources Inst.
"Population growth & economic development are driving
increasing water demand worldwide. Meanwhile, climate change
is decreasing water supply &/or making rainfall increasingly
erratic in many places."
Nowhere is the dual effect of water stress & climate change
more evident than the wider Tigris-Euphrates Basin –
comprising Turkey, Syria, Iraq & western Iran. Acc. to
satellite imagery, the region is losing groundwater faster
than almost anywhere else in the world. And as some countries
make desperate attempts to secure their water supplies, their
actions are affecting their neighbors.
During June 2019, as Iraqi cities sweltered through a 50C
(122F) heatwave, Turkey said it would begin filling its
Ilisu dam at the origins of the Tigris. It is the latest
in a long-running project by Turkey to build 22 dams & power
plants along the Tigris & the Euphrates that, acc. to a
report by the French Int'l Office for Water, is significantly
affecting the flow of water into Syria, Iraq & Iran.
It claims that when complete Turkey's Guneydogu Anadolu
Projesi (GAP) could include as many as 90 dams & 60 power
plants. (See how dams such as the Ilisu are reshaping our
planet.)
As water levels behind the mile-wide Ilisu dam rose, the
flow from the river into Iraq halved. 1000s of kilometres
away in Basra, al-Sadr & his neighbors saw the quality of
their water deteriorate. In August, 100s of people began
pouring into Basra's hospitals suffering from rashes,
abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, & even cholera,
acc. to Human Rights Watch.
"There's actually 2 parts to the story in Basra," Iceland
says. "Firstly, you have the obvious discharge of wastewater
into local waterways without any treatment. But you've also
got to consider the damming at the Turkish border – with
less freshwater flowing down the Tigris & Euphrates,
saltwater is intruding further up the river (from the
Persian Gulf). Over time, it's ruining crops & it's
making people sick."
It's a complicated picture, but this ability to see links
between the seemingly disparate has informed Iceland's work
with the Dutch govt-funded Water, Peace & Security (WPS)
partnership, a group of 6 American & Euro NGOs (incl. the
Pacific Inst. & the World Resources Inst.). They've
developed a Global Early Warning Tool, which uses machine
learning to predict conflicts before they happen. It
combines data about rainfall, crop failures, population
density, wealth, agro production, levels of corruption,
droughts, & flooding, among many other sources of data to
produce conflict warnings. They are displayed on a red-&-
orange Mercator projection down to the level of adminis-
trative districts. Currently it is warning of around 2,000
potential conflict hotspots, with an accuracy rate of 86%.
(Read more about how AI can help to identify conflicts
before they happen.)
But while the WPS Tool can be used to identify locations
where conflicts over water are at risk of breaking out,
it can also help to inform those hoping to understand what
is happening in areas that are already experiencing strife
due to water scarcity.
India's Northern Plains, for example, are one of the most
fertile farming areas in the world, yet today, villagers
regularly clash over water scarcity. The underlying data
reveals that population growth & high levels of irrigation
have outstripped available groundwater supplies. Despite
the area's lush-looking cropland, the WPS map ranks nearly
every district in N India as "extremely high" in terms of
baseline water stress. Several key rivers which feed the
area – the Indus, Ganges & Sutlej – all originate on the
Tibetan side of the border yet are vital for water supplies
in both India & Pakistan, compounds the problem. Several
border skirmishes have broken out recently between India &
China, which lays claim to upstream areas. A violent clash
in May last year in the Galwan Valley, thru which a tributary
to the Indus flows, left 20 Indian soldiers dead. Less than
a month later there were reports that China was building
"structures" that might dam the river & so restrict its
flow into India.
But the data captured by the Global Early Warning tool also
reveals some strange trends. In some of the most water-
stressed parts of the world, there appears to be a net-
migration of people into these areas. Oman, for example,
suffers higher levels of drought than Iraq but received
100s of 1000s of migrants per year prior to the pandemic.
That's because Oman fares far better than the latter in
terms of corruption, water infrastructure, ethnic fractional-
isation, & hydropolitical tension. "A community's vulnera-
bility to drought is more important than the drought itself,"
says Lina Eklund, of a physical geography researcher at
Sweden's Lund U.
The link between water scarcity & conflict, in other words,
isn't as straightforward as it seems. Even where severe
drought exists, a complex mix of factors will determine
whether it actually leads to conflict: social cohesion
being one of the most important. Take the Kurdistan region
of Iraq, for example: an area which suffered thru the same
5-year drought that pushed 1.5 million Syrian farmers into
urban centers in Mar 2011. The tight-knit Kurdish community
didn't experience the same exodus, discontent, or subsequent
infighting. Jessica Hartog, head of natural resource manage-
ment & climate change at International Alert, a London-based
NGO, explains this is because the Syrian govt, aiming for
food self-sufficiency, had long subsidised agriculture,
including fuel, fertiliser, & ground water extraction.
When Damascus abruptly scrapped these supports mid-drought,
rural families were forced to migrate en masse to urban
centres bringing a distrust of the al-Assad regime with
them, fueling the bitter civil war that has torn the
country to pieces.
But if potential flash-points for conflicts over water
can be identified, can something be done to stop them
in the future?
Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to
water scarcity. In many countries simply reducing loss &
leaks could make a huge difference – Iraq loses as much
as 2/3 of treated water due to damaged infrastructure.
The WPS partners also suggest tackling corruption &
reducing agricultural over-abstraction as other key policies
that could help. Iceland even suggests increasing the price
of water to reflect the cost of its provision – in many
parts of the world, humans have grown used to getting
water being a cheap & plentiful resource rather than
something to be treasured.
Much can also be done by freeing up more water for use
thru techniques such as desalination of seawater. Saudi
Arabia currently meets 50% of its water needs thru the
process. "Grey", or waste water, recycling can also offer
a low-cost, easy-to-implement alternative, which can help
farming communities impacted by drought. One assessment of
global desalination & wastewater treatment predicted that
increased capacity of these could reduce the proportion
of the global population under severe water scarcity from
40% to 14%.
At the international level, extensive damming by countries
upstream are likely to increase the risk of disputes with
those that rely on rivers for much of their water supply
further downstream. But Susanne Schmeier, associate prof
of water law & diplomacy at IHE Delft in the Netherlands,
says that co-riparian conflict is easier to spot & less
likely to come to a head. "Local conflicts are much more
difficult to control & tend to escalate rapidly – a main
difference from the transboundary level, where relations
between states often limit the escalation of water-related
conflicts," she says.
Around the world, there's plenty of examples where tensions
are high tho – the Aral Sea conflict comprising Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan; the
Jordan River conflict amongst the Levantine states; the
Mekong River dispute between China & its neighbors in
SE Asia. None have yet boiled over into conflict. But
Schmeier also points towards one dispute that is showing
signs it might.
Egypt, Sudan, & Ethiopia all depend on inflow from the
Blue Nile & have long exchanged political blows over the
upstream Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project –
a dam built at $5 billion, & 3 times the size of
the country's Lake Tana.
When the Ethiopian govt announced plans to press ahead
regardless, Egypt & Sudan held a joint war exercise in
May this year, pointedly called "Guardians of the Nile."
It has perhaps the highest risk of spilling into a water
war of all the disputes in today's political landscape,
but there are several other hotspots around the world.
Pakistani officials, for example, have previously referred
to India's upstream usage strategy as "5th-generation
warfare", whilst Uzbek President Islam Karimov has warned
that regional disputes over water could lead to war.
"I won't name specific countries, but all of this could
deteriorate to the point where not just serious confront-
ation, but even wars could be the result," he said.
Water-sharing agreements are a common way of de-escalating
these kinds of dispute. More than 200 have been signed
since the end of WWII – such as the 1960 Indus Waters
Treaty between India & Pakistan, & an agreement between
Israel & Jordan signed before their peace treaty. But a
more than decade-long attempt by the UN to introduce a
global Water Convention on transboundary rivers & lakes has
only resulted in 43 countries agreeing to be bound by it.
Hartog says modern treaties will likely need to include a
drought mitigation protocol, to assuage downstream
countries' fears of being cut-off in a crisis & a dispute
resolution mechanism, for when things turn ugly.
In fact, that would mirror the example set by Lesotho,
South Africa, Botswana & Namibia who, after tensions bubbled
to dangerous levels over shared resources in 2000,
intensified cooperation via the Orange-Senqu River
Commission (Orasecom). In that example, the establishment
of shared watercourse agreements & enshrining the principles
of reasonable use proved enough to de-escalate the situation.
Where it becomes necessary to free up additional water,
though, the research consistently suggests that desalination
& wastewater treatment are 2 of the most efficient strategies.
Perhaps Egypt is heeding this message. The country's govt
last year brokered a number of deals to open as many as 47
new desalination plants in the country, along with the
world's largest wastewater treatment plant. Although the
Egyptian authorities have accelerated construction of the
plants, the bulk of these projects not due to be completed
until after 2030 & the country's water situation continues
to degrade. Hartog believes Egypt, Ethiopia & Sudan may
need to seek outside help if they are to avoid conflict.
"It looks unlikely that the 3 countries will find an
agreement themselves & international diplomatic efforts
need to be stepped up to avoid an escalation," she says,
adding that pressure is mounting on the increasingly-
isolationist govt in Addis Ababa. "This might well be the
best entry point for countries like the US, Russia & China
to join forces to help the riparian countries to secure a
trilateral binding agreement."
And what of internal conflict? Several smaller nations are
blazing their own trails to better manage water. Peru
requires water utility providers to reinvest a portion of
their profits into research & integrating green infra-
structure into stormwater management. Vietnam is cracking
down on industrial pollution along its portion of the
Mekong Delta, & integrating traditional-built water infra-
structure to ensure a more equitable distribution amongst
its urban & rural residents.
As climate change & growing human populations continue to
compound the problem of droughts around the world – such
solutions will become ever more necessary to stop conflict
& migration. In December last year – over 2 years after
Ali al-Sadr left Basra – fewer than 11% of households in
the city had access to clean drinking water. An injection
of $6.4 million from the Netherlands, facilitated by Unicef,
at the end of 2020 is now helping to upgrade the city's
creaking water infrastructure, but power cuts earlier this
summer shut down many of the city's water pumps amid
soaring temps.
For those al-Sadr left in the city, the wider implications
of their plight are hard to see when faced with daily
problems getting clean water and the city was hit by
further unrest in recent months. Until the situation gets
better, al-Sadr fears the angry demonstrations will continue.
"When I protested, I didn't know what was behind it all,"
says al-Sadr. "I just wanted something to drink."
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shortages-are-brewing-wars
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)