Michael Klare: Wars For Water?

For years, experts and pundits have predicted that conflicts will increase over an ever scarcer and more valuable commodity: water. The fear has been that as populations grow and development spreads, vicious battles will erupt between water-rich and water-poor nations, particularly in major river basins where upstream nations control the flow of water to those downstream. To the doomsayers, global warming will only make those battles worse by decreasing rainfall and increasing evaporation in critical areas.

The argument has a certain logic. Consider the Colorado River, a major water source for seven U.S. states and part of northwestern Mexico. Even now the Colorado can barely meet the needs of the many millions who rely on it. If water levels drop, according to Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, it “could derail the system altogether,” igniting bruising fights over ever-diminishing supplies. Things could get even uglier over the Nile (shared by Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya and Uganda), the Jordan (shared by Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan), the Tigris-Euphrates system (shared by Turkey, Syria and Iraq) and the Indus and Ganges-Brahmaputra systems (shared by India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh).

Some of these rivers have almost sparked wars before: Egypt has repeatedly threatened military action if Kenya, Uganda or Ethiopia diverted the Nile, and Iraq, the last state in the Euphrates’s journey, mobilized its troops against Syria in 1975 when Damascus cut off the tap.

Newsweek