Water Wars or Water Peace?
Washington, January 20, 2004 -- Water resources throughout the world are becoming scarce, and water sharing agreements are crucial to avoiding conflicts among nations in the future, Geoffrey Dabelko, Director of the Environmental Change and Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told the spring 2004 IRP Fellows.
"There are some very real problems with water," Dabelko said. "The trends are going in the wrong direction." In 1995, a half billion people in 31 countries were living in areas where water supplies were either stressed or scarce. Researchers predict that number will nearly quadruple by 2050, when four billion people in 54 countries will face scarce water supplies.
Dabelko said he believes these shortages could serve as a crucible for conflict. But he stressed that all-out war over water supplies is rare, and that rather than emphasize "water wars," the international community should look at models of cooperative arrangements for sharing water resources.
The Nile Basin Initiative facilitated by the World Bank and the United Nations is one negotiation model that has taken the Nile out of the realm of conflict and moved it into a conversation about development and how everyone can benefit, Dabelko said. Ten countries from Ethiopia to Egypt depend heavily on the Nile river for water and electricity. Through private negotiations, Egyptian and other regional leaders are cooperating to balance development along the Nile with meeting water demands.
In Southern Africa, negotiations concerning water use in the vast Okavango delta, the world's largest delta wetland, is another model for cooperative water agreements, Dabelko said. Local and grassroots leaders in Angola, Namibia and Botswana are working together to reach a water-sharing arrangement.
Dabelko noted that major tensions still exist over whether to privatize water supplies, a hot-button issue in many countries. At the World Bank's urging, Bolivia tried to privatize its water supply in 2000 but abandoned the plan in the face of violent public protests after water prices doubled. Dabelko said more conflict could spring from major dam building projects such as China's Three Gorges Dam, which, when finished, will displace 1.5 million people and have extensive impact on the local environment. But Dabelko said he believes the tools exist to manage water conflicts before they escalate into water wars.
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