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Water has always played an important role in inter-state relationships. The issue has occupied a prominent dimension in international relations recently with the end of the Cold War. Safe and clean water plays a catalyst role in ensuring good quality of life and all round development of the country. The probability of conflict becomes imminent because of interconnectedness of rivers flowing through different territories.
International basins that include political boundaries of two or more countries cover 45.3 percent of the earth’s land surface, host about 40 percent of the world’s population, and account for almost 60 percent of the global river flow. And the number is growing. Today there are 263, largely due to the “internalisation” of basins through political changes like the break up of the Soviet Union and the Balkan states, as well as access to improved mapping technology. Not only this, there are rivers where their basins touch a large number of countries. Territory in 145 nations falls within international basins, and 33 countries are located almost entirely within these basins. The high level of interdependence is illustrated by the number of countries sharing each international basin; the dilemmas posed by basins like Danube (shared by 17 countries) or the Nile (10 countries) can be easily imagined.
Many of the world’s growing industries are water intensive. It takes 400,000 litres of water to make one car. Computer manufacturers use massive quantities of de-ionized fresh water to produce their goods and are constantly searching for new sources. In the United States alone, the industry will soon be using over 1,500 billion litres of water and producing over 300 billion litres of wastewater each year. This supposedly clean industry has created environmental destruction within a short span of time. International Business Machines pumps 2.7 million square metres of water per annum. To produce its 64 megabyte microchips, the IBM factory needs very pure water such as one finds only in ancient reserves.
Increased development, industrialization, and growing affluence is expanding the per capita demand for water because increased wealth generates demand for animal protein, such as beef and chicken, which require greater quantities of grain to produce similar amounts of calories for human consumption. Not only this, the increased population requires increased irrigation and dams, and this in turn generates ever-increasing quantities of untreated pollutants, both of which can adversely affect the quality of water in a state or region. The situation becomes complex when contaminated water passed to downstream users. With increasing scarcity, owners of land rich in water have become aware of the commercial potential of the natural resource.
In California, water rights trading have become a very big business. In 1992, the US Congress passed a bill allowing farmers, for the first time in US history to sell their water rights to cities. For the first time, in the early 1990s, southern California cities and farmers were buying water directly from farmers in northern California, hoarding it, and selling it on the open market. Large-scale operators helped themselves to huge amounts of water and stored it with the Drought Water Bank until the price was right to sell. A small handful of sellers walked away with huge profits, while other farmers found their wells running dry for the first time in their lives. The results were disastrous: the water table dropped and land sank in some places. Then, in 1997, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced plans to open a major water market among the users of the Colorado River. The new system allowed inter-state sales of Colorado River water between Arizona, Nevada, and California.
Generally it is argued that water problem would be prevailing predominantly in third world countries. But even in developed countries that are mostly in temperate regions, there is no uniform availability of water. For example, while in US’s eastern sector, water quality is the major problem, western portion is having problem of quantity. Overall, the United States appears to have sufficient water, but large portions of its plains and Western Mountain and inter-basin regions are arid and have over-exploited aquifers. Rising population in the water-scarce west are exceeding sustainable water yields and creating tensions with Mexico over the quality and quantity of water from the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers. So, in this kind of situation, generalization would be hazardous because there is a possibility that even on average level, overall availability of water in a particular region might be more than sufficient but the reality is different. For example, in Cherrapunji, the world’s highest rainfall occurs but is limited to some months or at most few days of the monsoon, and this region faces chronic water shortages. The future water situation can be concluded with the prophetic words of Ismail Seradgelin, which he made in the context of West Asia years ago, that the next conflict in West Asia would be over water not over oil.
More on this in the next issue of Diplomatist...
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