The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security - Unu-inweh ...

equitable access to water; the targeting of water systems as a weapon during military action; the manipulation of water
allocation for political reasons; the targeting of water systems by terrorists; and, development disputes in which water
systems are a source of disagreement in the context of economic and social development (Gleick, 2004).
A careful assessment of this history of conflict reveals that while water systems have been used as weapons and targets
during war, water resources in themselves have rarely been the sole source of violent conflict or war. This has led water
scholars to maintain that – since the 1940s, at least – water is more than twice as likely to be a source of international
cooperation as of conflict (Wolf, 1999). But as Peter Gleick points out, the fact that there has been widespread international
cooperation over water should not allow policy-makers to underestimate the complexity of the relationship between
water and national security (Gleick, 2004).
There are a number of factors that reduce the risk of traditional water wars, such as the presence of new transnational
institutions like the United Nations, more effective international laws, the emergence of the International Court of Justice,
more comprehensively crafted treaties, new water conservation measures and technologies, and better dispute resolution
mechanisms. This hope, however, is founded upon the anticipated stability, or rather stationarity, of both demand for
and reliable availability of global water supplies. Unfortunately, our global hydrological situation is changing rapidly (Milly
et al., 2008) and may soon no longer resemble anything that has existed on Earth before, at least in human memory.
Some 181 conflicts over water are reported to have occurred between 3000 B.C. and the end of 2007 (Gleick, 2009). Some
146 of these conflicts took place in the 5,000 years between 3000 B.C. and the year 2000. The remaining 59 conflicts
therefore occurred in this century. During that same brief decade, new forms of actual and potential conflicts over water
emerged. These include homegrown terrorist threats to water infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a foreign terrorist
threat issued by Al-Qaida in 2003 against domestic water supply systems in the United States (Gleick, 2004).
Conflicts in this century also involve tension over water privatization and the uncharacterized and unresolved water rights
of indigenous peoples. Emerging conflicts at the nexus of water and energy as is presently happening in association with
oil sands development and unconventional oil and gas activities in Canada can also be expected (Gosselin et al., 2010).
Tensions are also very high in places where the equitable allocation of limited water is at issue. Bilateral agreements
between nations in the Middle East, for example, have not arrived at fair access to precious water supplies. For example,
even though the same basin is shared between two countries, Israel uses nearly twice as much water per capita as
neighbouring Jordan. On the other hand, Palestinian communities on the West Bank and Gaza have access to only onetenth
of the water granted to Jordan (Zou’bi, 2011). While they may not be the direct cause of conflict, such disparities
add fuel to an already tense geopolitical situation.
While tensions over supply and allocation are serious matters in many parts of the world, water scarcity in itself is only
one potential trigger for conflict. The greatest threat to water security globally is humanity’s growing numbers, which
are exacerbating water scarcity widely.
3. Water and Population Growth
Most studies cite population growth as the principal driver of increases in the global demand for water. Although there
are uncertainties surrounding future population projections, research shows that the world population is likely to grow
by 30% between 2000 and 2025 and by as much as 50% between 2000 and 2050 (United Nations Secretary-General’s
High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, 2012). At a minimum, the fact that the global population is expected to grow
to projections of 9.5 billion by 2050 invites questions as to whether there will be sufficient water to support population
increases of this magnitude.
The concern becomes more urgent when it is recognized that nearly all of this growth will occur in developing countries,
many of which had inadequate or barely adequate supplies to support population levels that existed in 2000. Researchers
Jury and Vaux (2007) showed that in 1995, some 18 countries were deemed water scarce in that they did not have
adequate water supplies to meet the basic needs of their population, and 11 more were water stressed in that they did
not possess adequate water supplies to meet the needs of all of their people for at least part of the year. The combined
population of these 29 countries was over 450 million (Jury and Vaux, 2007).
12 The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue