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Water Wars in the 21st Century

Water is an essential element for sustaining all life forms and ecosystems on earth. There is no substitute for water. It is also a vital resource for national survival, from a nation's economy to the biology of it's inhabitants.

According to the UN Water for Life 2005-2025 during the 20th century, global water use increased six fold, more than twice the rate of population increase. (1). It is estimated that by 2025, factors such as population increase, environmental degradation, urbanisation, climate change and pollution will lead to approximately 2/3 of the world's population (5.5 billion people) living in areas suffering moderate to severe water stress. As populations grow and city populations explode, their demand for water escalates as more water is required for energy production, sanitation, industrial, agricultural and individual use to support increasing standards of living.

Water not only ignores the boundaries we set for ourselves, politically and socially, there are multiple and conflicting demands for its use. Globally, there are many scenarios where there are disputes over water sharing, including the current situation between Ethiopia and Egypt over the Millenium Dam project on the Nile (2), ongoing tensions between India and Bangladesh over the Farakka Barage (3)on the Ganges and closer to home, continued discord over water sharing on the Murray Darling River System.

Ismael Serageldin (former VP for sustainable Development at the World Bank) warned, in 1995 the "Many of the wars this century were about oil, but those of the next century will be over water" (4), that is of course, unless we change the way we manage water. It seems so simple, just manage water better and there will be no cause for conflict. Understanding the factors involved in water management will be an important step in avoiding conflict, but as in all conflict resolution, what will be just as important, is managing the people and their relationships.

I live in the Southern Highlands, a beautiful part of the world, about 100km south west of Sydney. During the last big drought to hit eastern Australia, which lasted nearly 7 years, our district found itself in the midst of a water war, which was ultimately resolved because it rained, not because those involved reached a fair and equitable solution. The Southern Highlands doesn't have a Nile or a Ganges flowing through it, but it does have a rather large underground water source, we now call the "Kangaloon Aquifer" . It was a dispute over this groundwater that led to our own local water war, maybe without the complexity of transnational boundaries and the possibility of armed conflict (locals may jokingly dispute that!), but with many of the same issues that surface when we have to share naturally occurring resources, of which water is the most essential.

I started my inquiries wondering about who owns water and how we reconcile our feelings of our right to water, and our responsibility to the environment and others who also share a strong claim for that same water. How can we prioritise its use and ensure its fair distribution amongst many different people who will use it in different ways, often in ways we don't approve? Water sharing is a surprisingly complex issue, perhaps it is because without it, there is no life, and this underlying fact colours how we are prepared to fight for it. The complex nature of how we share water is ideal for interdisciplinary study, as so often disputes arise as those involved see it through an often narrow but ...................................PROJECT CONTINUES