'Hydro-diplomacy' needed to avert Arab water wars

Alister Doyle in Reuters: The United Nations should promote "hydro-diplomacy" to defuse any tensions over water in regions like the Middle East and North Africa where scarce supplies have the potential to spark future conflicts, experts said on Sunday.

They said the U.N. Security Council should work out ways to bolster cooperation over water in shared lakes or rivers, from the Mekong to the Nile, that are likely to come under pressure from a rising world population and climate change. The Middle East and North Africa are the regions most at risk of conflict over scarce water supplies, they said, but history shows "water wars" are very rare.

"We think that water is an issue that would be a appropriate for the U.N Security Council," Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water, told Reuters ahead of a meeting of experts in Canada this week to discuss water and security….

Khabur river, Syria, near Tell Halaf, Ras al-Ain, shot by Bertramz, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license