Keeping in mind they are talking about the end point. Along the way there can be a whole bunch-o-bellicosity.
From Horizons (the Swiss research magazine) September 5, 2024:
Water is the elixir of life. When it becomes scarce, suffering and conflict are often not far away. But this doesn’t escalate into war, says Thomas Bernauer. He’s a political scientist, and for years now he’s been analysing how countries argue over water resources – and how they usually manage to reach a compromise.
War has been raging in the Gaza Strip for almost a year. There have been repeated claims that Israel is using water as a weapon. Is water a cause of war, here and in other areas of conflict?
There are two issues here. The first is whether an armed conflict is triggered by the distribution of water resources, in other words, whether water is the prime cause. Here, research is pretty clear that the answer is no. The idea of ‘water wars’ is a myth. The second touches on the role that water resources play in armed conflicts that have arisen for very different reasons. And here, the answer is that they can indeed play a role. For example, Russia has destroyed a large dam in Ukraine that is important for its water supply. There were strategic military considerations behind this act of destruction. Russia wants to inflict economic damage on Ukraine, and by causing flooding it makes it more difficult for Ukraine to embark on a counterattack. In Gaza, the Israeli military is turning off the water supply in order to intensify the suffering of the local population. This is also a means of warfare. But in both cases, water is not the cause of conflict.
But back in 1985, the then General Secretary of the UN Boutros Ghali said: “The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics”.
That prediction was wrong. There’ve been several armed conflicts in the region since 1985: in Iraq, Syria and now Gaza. And there’s practically a permanent, low-threshold war ongoing in Lebanon. But none of these wars is really about water. Perhaps Boutros Ghali was thinking more of his home country of Egypt when he said that. Many have suggested that if there is ever a war over water distribution, it will be over the Nile.
Focusing on cooperation over freshwaterThomas Bernauer is a professor of political science at ETH Zurich. He was the founding director of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) and is a lead author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His research is focused on environmental policy, and he recently co-authored an article for Nature Sustainability that offers an overview of research into conflict and cooperation between nations with regard to cross-border freshwater resources, revealing that cooperation is in fact the norm.What’s that about?
Ninety-seven percent of Egypt’s surface water comes from outside the country – that’s more than for almost any other nation in the world. In these circumstances, it’s obvious that when another country builds large water infrastructure in the upper reaches of the Nile, it’s going to create a very delicate situation. This is exactly what Ethiopia has done with its Great Renaissance Dam. But no war has broken out there either.
So why doesn’t water trigger open conflict?
The most plausible answer is that there are all kinds of opportunities for compromise when it comes to utilising these resources. People always find solutions on a technical or political level. For example, a reservoir in the upper reaches of the river might be filled more slowly, meaning that more water remains for the countries in the river’s lower reaches.
Have Egypt and Ethiopia been able to reach an agreement on it?
Egypt hasn’t yet concluded any formal agreement with Ethiopia, but negotiations have been going on for a long time and agreements have been made on an informal basis. In any case, Ethiopia is filling its reservoir slower than it actually could, and it’s operating the dam in a way that means Sudan and Egypt are still getting enough water....
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