2 - Water wars, water reality: Reframing the debate on transboundary water disputes, hydropolitics, and preventive hydrodiplomacy

Summary

Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.

– Kofi Annan, March 2001

But the water problems of our world need not be only a cause of tension; they can also be a catalyst for cooperation. … If we work together, a secure and sustainable water future can be ours.

– Kofi Annan, January 2002

Before delineating appropriate measures for water conflict prevention and management, we first need to address the larger issues between people and their environment – that is, who affects whom? It is quite clear that people affect their environment, but to what extent is the opposite true: just how deep is the causal relationship between environmental stresses and the structure of human politics? This relationship is at the heart of understanding the processes of environmental conflict prevention and resolution. If, as the large and growing “water wars” literature would have it (see, for example, Cooley, 1984; Starr, 1991; Bulloch and Darwish, 1993; Remans, 1995; Amery, 2002), the greatest threat for water conflicts is that water scarcity can and will lead directly to warfare between nations. This lends itself to diversion of a potentially huge amount of resources, in attempts to arrest these processes at the highest levels. If the processes are actually both more subtle and more local in nature (as suggested by, among others, Elhance, 1999; Marty, 2001; Chatterji, Arlosoroff, and Guha, 2002; Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano, 2003b; Carius, Dabelko, and Wolf, 2004) then so too are the potential solutions.