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Water affects most aspects of existence and consumption these days: plant and animal life, environment, and even industry, but even as the total amount of water on earth has remained constant for thousands of years, the types and amounts of users have increased massively.
Global changes - such as population growth, rapid urbanization, global migration, land use changes, and global warming - create competing pressures on this finite resource. As a result, the amount of water available for each person is increasingly unequal and diminishing dramatically.
Not enough clean water
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called water the world's "most precious natural resource." |
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As the World Water Forum gathered in Istanbul, Turkey, this week, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that by 2030, half the world's population could be struggling to find clean water. The OECD report warned that figure does not take into account current and future climate change, making the actual toll even greater.
The forum culminates with World Water Day on March 22, an international holiday created in 1992 by the United Nations and first celebrated in 1993.
United Nations Head Ban Ki-Moon, has warned that water wars between nations could be possible in the coming years as water shortages rise around the globe.
The forum's theme of transboundry waters focuses on water that is shared between nation states and impacts more 45 percent of the land surface of the world.
More than 75 percent of all countries, 145 in total, have shared river basins: land drained by a river or tributary that flows into or out of another country.
We all live in river basins (rain has to drain somewhere) but some nations rely entirely on other countries for clean and available water.
Water Problems in the Middle East
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This map shows the countries that compete for access to the waters of the Jordan River. |
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In some ways, water is more precious than oil in the Middle East and fuels already heated conflicts. Israel, Jordan, Palestine Syria and Lebanon share the waters of the Jordan River and attempts to use the water for different projects by different countries have resulted in constant friction.
Competition for the river was a major contributing factor to the 1967 war with Israel.
Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Water Forum and called for clean and clear water politics for the Palestinian people. He asserted Palestinians had four times less water per capita than people living in Israel, a consumption level far below the World Health Organization's guidelines for minimum daily access to water.
Water and Darfur
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Water shortages have aggravated political tensions in Darfur, and the current conflict has driven millions of people from their homes. |
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In Africa, rainfall in northern Darfur has decreased by a third over the last 80 years, increasing competition for water between tribes, according to a 2007 United Nations Environmental Program report.
“Exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal or ethnic differences,” the report said, adding that Darfur “can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse.”
Sudan is not the only African country hurting. Half a billion people in Africa lack access to adequate sanitation, and 5,000 children die daily from diarrhea, a disease that can be prevented with clean water, according to the United Nations.
Water in the American West
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The "bathtub ring" around Lake Mead shows how the water level has lowered in recent years. |
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Water crisis and drought exist here in the United States too.
California and other western states have battled since before statehood over the slim water resources in the area.
The movie "Chinatown" depicts the disputes over land and water rights in the early 1900s when the city of Los Angeles diverted water from the Owens River, angering farmers and resulting in violence in 1924. But friction between agriculture and the growing city continues.
In 2009, Shasta Lake, California’s biggest reservoir, stands less than a third full because melting snow that fed it for six decades is dwindling, forcing water rationing in affected areas. California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called on everyone to cut back their water consumption by 20 percent and is working on an expensive plan to buy water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Meanwhile, the desert city of Las Vegas is frantically digging in the desert to tap into water from the shrinking Lake Mead in the Colorado River Basin.
By 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of the city’s water. The city of Las Vegas is also looking at expansive plans to buy water and divert it, possibly from as far away as the Mississippi River.
"Water is going to be more important than oil in the next 20 years," Dipak Jain, dean of the business school at Northwestern University told Bloomberg News.
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I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
