Daily chart

Whatever happened to the water wars?

More of them have happened than most people think

Graphic detail
Nov 18th 2019

THE FORECAST that future wars will be fought over water has been made long enough for it to become both a platitude and subject to doubt. Demand for water has surged
because populations have grown and rising prosperity has enabled them to live more water-intensive lives. But supply of the wet stu is already coming under ever greater
pressure, as climate change, crudely put, makes dry places drier.

Yet the great water-based con icts that were feared—India v Pakistan, Ethiopia v Egypt, Brazil v Paraguay, China v any of the countries downstream from the Himalayas—
have not come to pass. Maybe, argue optimists, the world is better at sharing this resource than is often assumed.

This complacent argument ignores two truths apparent from the latest update to the Water Con ict Chronology, a database of water-related con icts maintained since the
1980s by the Paci c Institute, a think-tank in Oakland, California. First, for as long as human history has been recorded, water has played a role in con ict, even though it
has rarely been the sole cause of it. Second, water-related struggles are becoming far more common. Its database includes over 900 instances, and shows a clear
acceleration in recent years.

The institute distinguishes between three types of violence. Sometimes water itself can be used as a weapon, as when the Spartans poisoned the drinking water in Athens
in the second year of the Peloponnesian war, in 430BC. Or, just last year, al-Shabaab, a terrorist group, diverted water from the Jubba river in Somalia, causing a ood that
forced opposing forces to move to higher ground, where they were ambushed.

Sometimes water is the trigger. Fighting over grazing land in central Mali this year has led to massacres and the displacement of 50,000 people. Ariel Sharon, an Israeli
commander in the six-day war of 1967 who went on to become prime minister, wrote that the war really started when Israel was provoked by the diversion of the Jordan
river.
Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20
Third, water installations can also be the target of military action. The institute notes that the large number of new additions to its chronology results in part from more
Get full access to The Economist via print,
comprehensive data collection. But it also re ects a big increase in attacks ononline
civilian water systems. Indeed, almost wherever there has been warfare this year, water
and our apps.
installations have been in the cross-hairs—in Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, for example.
Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20
Topics Current edition More Subscribe Welcome Search

You are now logged in

Most water con icts are subnational disputes. But a study last year by the Joint Research Centre, a think-tank under the European Commission, used computer modelling
to rank the rivers where cross-border water disputes are most likely to are up. Its scientists listed ve: the Colorado, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Indus, Nile and Tigris-
Euphrates. In all these instances, downstream nations fear or resent the e ect on their waters of the actions of upstream countries.

So, whatever happened to the water wars? The answer is that they continued—and that repeated forecasts did nothing to reduce the risk of bigger con icts.

You’ve seen the news,

now discover the story
Get incisive analysis on the issues that matter. Whether you read each issue cover
to cover, listen to the audio edition or go behind the headlines on your phone, time
with The Economist is always well spent.

Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20

Enjoy 12 weeks’ access for €20
 Get full access to The Economist via print,
Graphic detail
online and our apps.
Nov 18th 2019

Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20

Reuse this content

About The Economist

Advertisement Advertisement

Brassed off
Donald Trump falls out with the military establishment he once wooed
The controversy over a disgraced Navy SEAL highlights a wider crisis in civil-military relations

Copper-bottomed
Mongolia seeks better terms for its vast mining project

Bartleby
Management research is clear as mud

Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20

 Get full access to The Economist via print,
online and our apps.

Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20

Daily chart
To make money, study maths or economics at a top university

Classified ads

Subscribe Group subscriptions Contact us

Help

Keep updated

Sign up to get more from The Economist

Get 5 free articles per month, daily newsletters and more.

Email address Sign up

About The Economist

Advertise Reprints

Careers Media Centre

Published since September 1843 to take part in

“a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward,
and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”

Terms of Use Privacy

Manage Cookies
Cookie Policy

Accessibility Modern Slavery Statement

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

Subscribe: 12 weeks for €20