Water, Not Oil Could Soon Become the World’s Greatest catalyst for Conflict

Roman Kupchinsky
Oil Price

Writing about the 1967 Six Day War in his 2001 memoirs, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that “While the border disputes between Syria and ourselves were of great significance, the matter of water diversion was a stark issue of life and death.”

“People generally regard 5 June 1967 as the day the Six Day War began,” Sharon later told the BBC in 2003. “That is the official date. But, in reality, it started two-and-a-half years earlier, on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan [River].”

Throughout history, access to water has spawned and escalated both domestic and international conflicts. In recent decades, population growth and global warming have both played a major role in raising the demand for and availability of potable water. The US government has predicted that by 2015 almost half of the world’s population will be “stressed” for water. Water — rather than oil — could become the world’s next biggest catalyst for conflict.

The Water Crunch
In its 2000 “Global Patterns” report, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) predicted that, by the year 2015, “nearly half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — will live in countries which are ‘water stressed.'” According to the report, that means their populations will have less than 1,700 cubic meters each of water per year, generally considered the minimal threshold for acceptable living standards.

The water crunch will make itself felt most on food supplies. Agriculture is the world’s biggest user of water — it takes at least 2,000 liters to produce enough food for one person for one day. That translates into 730,000 liters annually per person.

A water crisis would likely impact hardest on the world’s most heavily populated regions such as China and India. Those countries are also some of the world’s fastest-growing economies and are also caught in a squeeze for energy resources. India, according to the CIA report, will become severely starved for water by 2015. And the competition with Pakistan for water in Kashmir has contributed to an ongoing conflict in the region.

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