Water Wars?


“Fierce competition for freshwater may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future”

                                                                                                                                       – Kofi Annan, 2001

The World Bank estimates that the total annual requirements to meet basic needs as well as fulfil other uses such as agriculture, energy production and industry per person is approximately 1080m3 of water, with over 92% of this being for the latter (World Bank, n.d.). 11 countries in arid or semiarid regions of Africa and the Middle East had less than the average requirement of 1000m3    of freshwater availability in 1990 and are projected to have substantially less water per person in 2025 (Gleick, 1993).  Access to safe and abundant freshwater supplies to meet the demands of the population per person is a growing issue particularly with high population growth rates concentrated in some water stressed regions and those that share a major freshwater source with other countries (Levy and sidel, 2011). What we have seen over the past few decades is a positive relationship between growing area of water stressed or scarce regions and the rate of international and national conflict over these water sources.  Levy and Sidel (2011) have noted the sharply increasing rate of conflict and even more worryingly the number of disputes that became violent conflict. Isolating water stress and water scarcity alone as a key source of water-induced conflict would be insufficient its analysis, instead much of the conflict is attributed to the origins and the  geography of water stressed or scarce regions such as low rainfall, inadequate water supply and dependency on one major water source. In addition, the socio-economic factors such as rapid population growth and hyper-urbanisation, modernisation and industrialisation particularly in the energy sector. Another underplayed factor are the historical tensions between groups of armed combat and pre-existing poor relations between countries feed into the many disputes.  

These set of factors contributing to hydropolitical issues within the East African region will be explored respectively: the quest to find the ‘right formula’ for  water provisions for rapidly urbanising cities, the expansion of the energy sector and its relation to water management and reallocation and finally the climate-induced conflict within regions where previous ethnic tensions and historic disputes have occurred, will be discussed allowing me to explore the range of cause or effect factors within hydropoltics. 

Table 1: Number and rate of conflict between 1990 and 2007 (Levy and Sidel, 2011).



Theories of water conflict

“The renewable resource most likely to stimulate interstate resource war- is river water”

                                                                                                                                 -Homer-Dixon, 1996

Frey’s (1993) definition of “two or more entities, one or more of which perceives a goal as being blocked by another entity, [and power of some sort] being exerted to overcome the perceived blockage” (pg. 55) adequately provides us with a scope for understanding the nature of water conflict and its statturoy  origins.  The water conflict- war notion is quite a compelling one, the mishandling of water resources and more so the current tensions and even violent outbreaks that have shared relations to the theories of civilisation, environmental determinism and challenge-response. In Priscoli’s (2010) analysis of the notion that “water leads to war” can be seen originally in Toynbee’s (1946) thesis and the classic argument made by Wittfogel (1956) which argue that the strive to manage and distribute water in semi-arid environments were a key source of dispute but ultimately formed civilisations and other forms of governance, referring particularly to the civilisations birthed between the Tigris-Euphrates rivers. Is the conventional environmental determinism argument outdated?  Priscoli (2010) argue that a shared natural resources do not inevitably presume tensions, threats and even localized violence; there a series of socio-political, environmental and economic factors that interplay in the nexus of water conflict, that must ultimately be considered in not only the analysis but the management and legislative changes that must occur as a result of growing tensions over water resources.

References:

World Bank Saving a Corner of the Aral Sea. Available at: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/0,contentMDK:20633813∼menuPK:258604∼pagePK:146736∼piPK:226340∼theSitePK:258599,00.html.

Frey, F., 1993. The Political Context of Conflict and Cooperation Over International River Basins. Water International, 18(1), pp.54-68.

Gleick, P., 1993. Water and Conflict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security. International Security, 18(1), pp.79-112.

Levy, B. and Sidel, V., 2011. Water Rights and Water Fights: Preventing and Resolving Conflicts Before They Boil Over. American Journal of Public Health, 101(5), pp.778-780.

Priscoli, J., 2010. Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts. Geographical Journal, 176(2), pp.180-180.


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