In Russia, a drying lake threatens an 'era of water wars'

Angelina Davydova in Reuters via the Thomson Reuters Foundation: In Russia's Siberian south, near the border of Mongolia, the world's largest freshwater lake is shrinking. The surrounding communities depend on Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the earth's unfrozen freshwater reserves, for their power, water and livelihoods.

But in the past four months the lake’s water level has dropped so low that experts are calling it a crisis – one they warn could lead to conflicts in Russia over water. The lake is now at its lowest level in over 30 years and experts predict it will keep dropping until melting mountain snow and spring rains begin to recharge the lake around late April or mid-May.

The problem, scientists and environmentalists say, is a combination of climate change and growing use of hydropower. During last year's unusually dry summer and autumn, the lake got only 67 percent of the freshwater inflow it normally receives; experts predict in the first quarter of 2015 that figure will fall to 50 percent.

...Lake Baikal's dramatic drying already is causing tensions between the two regions that rely on it. In the Buryat Republic, upstream of the lake, wells are running empty and the area's fishing industry is struggling with decreasing fish populations.

..."Welcome to the era of water wars in Russia," said Alexander Kolotov, Russian coordinator of the international ecological coalition Rivers Without Boundaries. "Water is becoming the country's most valuable resource."....

The village of Enkhaluk on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, shot by Аркадий Зарубин, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Ground water depletion driving global conflicts

Chris Arsenault at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Global ground water supplies, crucial for sustaining agriculture, are being depleted at an alarming rate with dangerous security implications, a leading scientist said.

"It's a major cause for concern because most of the places where it (ground water depletion) is happening are major food producing regions," James Famiglietti, a University of California professor who conducts research for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "India is the worst off, followed by the Middle East, and the U.S. is probably number three ... the Chinese, particularly on the north China plain, are more water limited than people believe."

Famiglietti's conclusions are based on his latest research paper "The global ground water crisis" published in the journal Nature Climate Change last month. The study uses analysis of satellite images to warn that ground water in many of the world's largest aquifers is being exploited at a far faster rate than it can be naturally replenished.

Farming accounts for more than 80 percent of the United States' water use, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the figures are similar globally. Famiglietti has been called to the Pentagon a number of times to discuss the potential impact of groundwater scarcity with leading military planners....

A dried up pool at Fairburn Ings, shot by Bernard Bradley, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Egypt will never give up one drop of its Nile water quota - minister

AllAfrica.com via Egypt Information Service: Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Abdel-Motleb disclosed that consultations are currently being underway with the Sudanese and Ethiopian counterparts to render successful the forthcoming ministerial meeting to be held Khartoum during the first week of January 2014.

The meeting will probe an appropriate mechanism for pursuing the technical studies required from the Ethiopian part as well as assigning an international consultative bureau to perform them, said the Minister.

Such studies will deal with the technical details of the Renaissance Dam's storage bases, storage phases and mechanism of operations all year round, he added.

The minister went on to say that Egyptian State is dealing seriously with the Renaissance Dam crisis in cooperation with the Nile basin states, noting that the meetings of the Supreme Committee for Nile Water have resulted in promoting ties with the Ethiopian side.

He added that Egypt will never give up one drop of its Nile water quota, highlighting that all parties concerned should work on reaching an agreement that serves the interest of all Nile riparian countries through a comprehensive development....

NASA image of the Aswan Dam in southern Egypt

Cost of climate change adaptation could destabilise African countries, UN warns

John Vidal in the "globaldevelopment" blog at the Guardian (UK): African countries are increasingly vulnerable to climate change and could struggle to feed and defend their people as temperatures rise, according to a major UN report.

The cost of developing drought-resistant crops, providing early-warning systems for floods, droughts and fires, and building seawalls, dykes, and wave breaks will be vast, says the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) emissions gap report, launched this week at an African environment ministers' meeting in Warsaw.

It will cost Africa approximately $350bn a year to adapt its farming and infrastructure to climate change if governments fail to hold temperatures to less than 2C and allow them to rise to about 4C, according to the report.

The higher temperatures rise, the greater the financial and human challenge to adapt, says the report, which argues that present policies point to temperatures rising to 3-4C by 2100, a turn of events it claims would be catastrophic.

..."The plight of Africa is not of our making," said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lead negotiator for the Africa group of nations. "The developed countries have caused the problem and Africa are asking for the funds to help but so far they are not forthcoming.

"One billion Africans are in harm's way. We witness instability in rainfall, diseases spreading, sea level rise and floods. One of the effects of climate change is to send Africans further and further to seek water. This brings them into conflict with other Africans. We are faced with wars on African soil that are not created in Africa."....

Egypt farmers fear water supply threat from Ethiopia dam

Seed Daily via AFP: With an economy already in tatters, Egypt's farmers fear the building of an upstream Nile dam in Ethiopia could lead to water shortages and crop failures with catastrophic effects on their livelihood.

"We don't want this dam," says Saeed al-Simari, standing on his modest land in Egypt's fertile Nile Delta region. "We want to plant our land, we need water. It's hard enough with the water we have, imagine when we don't have anymore," said Simari. "We are very worried about our crops," he told AFP.

Ethiopia is pressing ahead with construction of a $4.2 billion (3.2 billion euro) Grand Renaissance Dam, set to become Africa's biggest hydroelectric dam when completed. The announcement of the project caused a national outcry in Egypt, with politicians, media and farmers warning that the dam could pose a national security threat.

Water experts in Egypt say there is already a water deficit in the country due to the exploding population. "The average person uses 620 to 640 cubic metres (21,000 to 22,600 cubic feet) per year. With the water poverty level defined at 1,000 cubic metres, we are already below the water poverty level," says Alaa al-Zawahry, a dam expert and member of a government commission tasked with studying the downstream impact of Ethiopia's dam....

NASA image of the Nile Delta

In switch, Egypt may join Ethiopia In Nile dam project

Ayah Aman in Al-Monitor: Cairo and Addis Ababa may soon reach a truce to calm their dispute over the construction of the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Both countries have recently shown good faith and agreed to negotiate about the project. Egypt has even agreed to take part in building the dam, though without declaring its conditions for doing so.

At a news conference Oct. 7, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced that his country welcomes the participation of Egypt and Sudan in the construction of the dam and stressed that his government considers the dam to be jointly owned by Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt. Cairo viewed his statement as a positive step toward reaching a consensus on the project, despite its earlier sharp criticism of it.

In a telephone conversation Oct. 17, Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdul Muttalib told Al-Monitor: “Egypt doesn’t mind joining the Ethiopian government in building the dam for the service and development of the Ethiopian people. But we must agree on a number of items in a clear way to prevent any damage to Egypt as a result of the dam construction. The Egyptian government always opts for cooperation and participation. … During the coming negotiations with Ethiopia over the dam, we will clarify our position regarding the policy and method of operating the dam, the size of the storage lake attached to it, and how to fill it with water in times of flood and drought.” He stressed, “Egypt will definitely not participate in the construction unless these policies are agreed upon and agreements regarding them are signed.”

...Egypt gets 55.5 billion cubic meters of Nile water annually in accordance with the 1959 agreement signed between Egypt and Sudan. About 85% of that share comes from the Ethiopian plateau, in particular from the Blue Nile tributary, on which Ethiopia intends to build the Renaissance Dam to store 63 billion cubic meters of water in and generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity. The Ethiopian, Sudanese and Egyptian water ministers are expected to meet Oct. 20-23 in Khartoum to discuss the May report of the Tripartite Commission on the repercussions of the dam and how to implement the report’s recommendations for avoiding harm to any of the Nile states....

A rendering of the dam provided by Salini General Contractors, the Italian company inked to build the dam, March 31, 2011. (photo by Wikipedia/Salini)

China's response to typhoon angers residents in hard-hit Yuyao

Kathleen E. McLaughlin in the Los Angeles Times: When natural disaster hits, China’s need to maintain social order can at times overwhelm its humanitarian efforts. State security dispatched thousands of riot police and security officers to Yuyao, a badly damaged city in Zhejiang province after Typhoon Fitow hit the eastern coast last week.

Post-typhoon flooding overwhelmed the city several days after the storm, with some reports saying 70% of the streets were flooded. Roads were left so impassable that residents couldn't leave and food supplies could not get in. After a week of coping on their own, facing critical food shortages, people took to the streets as tempers flared.

Residents said two separate protests involved a total of about 10,000 people. Some Yuyao residents demanded the removal of the city’s mayor and vice mayor, while others demonstrated against a local television station, seeking truthful reporting.

“The government ignored the real needs of ordinary people,” Lao Jianfeng, 31, a primary school teacher in Yuyao said in a phone interview. “We did not get any supplies or assistance from the government.”

“Everyone was on their own trying to escape and people were also helping each other,” Lao said. “Actually there were enough supplies from donations, but we could not get any. No one sent the supplies to us.”...

Typhoon Fitow on October 6, 2013, via NASA

Preventing and resolving future climate and natural resource-related conflicts in the Zambezi Basin: A study of Bulawayo and Chinde Districts

Notice of a paper by Tigere Chagutah at the South African Institute of International Affairs: Long-term changes in climate are likely to increase a range of risks to human security, including the risk of violent conflict. The city of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, and Chinde district in the Zambezia province of Mozambique have been identified as areas that are highly susceptible to future climate-induced conflicts.

Although it is unlikely that climate change alone will be a direct cause of conflict, research points to the fact that it is a conflict threat multiplier that will intersect with countless other factors, including the quality of political governance, which could make the difference between adaptation or confrontation.

Empirical work on the causal relationship between climate change and conflict in different settings has yet to produce consensus. However, climate change can be linked to conflict in various ways, including increased competition over reduced and uncertain water supply; increased competition over agricultural land in the face of reduced crop yields, desertification and rising food prices; large-scale migration as a result of sea-level rise, weather changes and loss of land productivity; and diminished capacity of governments to provide services to their people in the face of increasing poverty.

The paper reports the findings of a study investigating the dynamic relationship between climate change, natural resource management and the likelihood of violent conflict in Bulawayo, which sits on a watershed between the Zambezi and Limpopo drainage basins, and Chinde district in the Zambezi delta. The paper also discusses entry points for strengthening local capacity for conflict management in Bulawayo and Chinde. It ends by outlining a research agenda towards improved understanding of the climate change, natural resource management and conflict nexus in the Zambezi basin...

On the street in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, shot by Radozw, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Ethiopian dam plans spark regional tensions

Rehad Abd Almohsen in SciDev.net: A group of Egyptian academics and experts have declared their opposition to the current plans for the US$4.8 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — on which work has started, and which will be Africa's largest hydroelectric power plant when completed — because they believe it will damage their country.

Egypt's Nile Basin Group was set up to assess the possible threat from the dam, which will lie close to Ethiopia's border with Sudan. Its members warn that the structure could slash the Nile's flow, especially in Egypt and Sudan, which depend on the river's waters.

Haider Yusuf Bakheit, a Sudanese hydrologist, was reported in an article in Infrastructure News as saying that the dam "will hold back nearly one-and-a-half times the average annual flow" of the Blue Nile, one of the Nile's two main tributaries, and "drastically affect the downstream nations' agriculture, electricity and water supply".

"Given the massive size of the dam, it could lose as much as three billion cubic metres of water to evaporation each year," he warned.

There was alarm in Egypt when the plan to build the dam was announced in 2011  — with some MPs talking off the record about Egypt's right to retaliate militarily — but much of the opposition now focuses on Ethiopia's decision to increase the size of the reservoir behind the dam.

"The original plan was to create a lake that would store 14 billion cubic metres of water, which is enough to generate electricity, but then the lake's capacity was increased to 74 billion cubic metres," Nader Noureddin, a member of the Nile Basin Group and professor of soil and water resources at Cairo University, tells SciDev.Net. Planned electricity output has also risen, from 5,250 to 6,000 megawatts...

A dam over the Blue Nile north of Addis Ababa, shot by Adam Jones, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Egypt, Ethiopia square off over new Nile River dam

David Arnold in AllAfrica.com via Voice of America: Egypt and Ethiopia are doing their best to lower tensions after weeks of increasingly heated rhetoric over a giant Ethiopian dam project that Cairo believes will reduce the flow of water in the Nile River. The foreign ministers of the two countries met at the beginning of the week in Addis Ababa and agreed to hold further talks and review the recommendations from a panel of experts on what's being called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD.

Construction on the dam started two years ago on Ethiopia's Abbai, or Blue Nile, river, whose basin accounts for about 75 percent of the water flowing into the lower Nile River. The project is about 20 percent complete and Egyptian officials worry that when it's finished in 2017, it will severely reduce the flow of water through the lower Nile channel and turn the arable parts of their country back into a desert.

A day after Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi visited Addis Ababa earlier this month, Ethiopia diverted the Abbai River's flow temporarily to carry out the next stage of dam construction. Even though the water diversion was a brief, news of the interruption touched off a furor in Cairo. Morsi said Egypt would not tolerate losing "one drop" of Nile water and made thinly veiled threats of military action by saying "all options are open."

The Ethiopians, apparently, were not intimidated. "I don't think they will take that option unless they go mad," said Ethiopia's president, Haile Mariam Desalegn. The foreign ministry in Addis Ababa said construction on the dam would not stop "for a second."...

Blue Nile falls in Ethiopia, shot by CT Snow, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Ethiopia, Egypt tone down talk of war over Nile dam

Reuters: Africa's second and third most populous nations have traded barbs in past weeks about Ethiopia's new hydroelectric project, which Egypt fears will reduce a water supply vital for its 84 million people, who mostly live in the Nile valley and delta.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said on June 10 he did not want war, but would keep "all options open", prompting Ethiopia to say it was ready to defend its $4.7 billion Great Renaissance Dam, which lies near the border with Sudan.

Ethiopia summoned the Egyptian ambassador this month after politicians in Cairo were shown on television suggesting they supported Ethiopian rebels and military action.

"Some pronouncements were made in the heat of the moment because of emotions. They are behind us," Mohamed Kamel Amr, Egypt's foreign minister, told a joint news conference with his Ethiopian counterpart Tedros Adhanom in Ethiopia's capital....

Blue Nile meeting the White Nile below Khartoum, shot by NASA

Water -- conflict or cooperation?

Asia Society-Northern California: “To what extent is water a factor in conflict and to what extent can we reduce water being a factor in conflict?” The question, posed by Peter Gleick, Co-Founder and President of the Pacific Institute, helped set the context for a panel discussion at ASNC on June 5 that looked at the potential security implications of water scarcity.

Gleick was joined by Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research (New Delhi), whose research has focused on water scarcity as a source of regional tensions, particularly in regions where the resource is shared. His 2012 book, Water: Asia’s New Battleground, deals at length with this topic and also won Asia Society’s 2012 Bernard Schwartz Book Award. The event was moderated by Peter Schwartz, a well-known futurist who founded the scenario planning organization Global Business Network. Schwartz is now Senior Vice President for Global Government Relations and Strategic Planning at Salesforce.com.

“Armies don’t have to march to battle to wage a water war,” argued Chellaney. “Water can be fashioned into a weapon depending on whether the state is located upstream or downstream.” He noted that international rivers create power struggles, such as when upstream countries reengineer water flows or downstream countries withhold data of their water endowments. In short, water can provide tremendous leverage among countries and can be used as a part of a larger strategy to elicit compliance among recipients.

Chellaney has spent his career focusing on emerging security issues that affect the world including climate change and energy, but believes that water scarcity will be the big issue in the coming years. This is especially true in Asia where climate change and other factors such as more demand for meat is intensifying and placing even greater strains on the region’s already finite supply of water. He argues that Asia's policy makers are not giving water the attention it deserves in public discourse. Instead “water policy is often left to hydrologists and engineers and not looked at strategically.” Integrating water in policy and planning will help to secure water over the long-term...

Water drop shot by Fir0002, Wikimedia Commons, under the following Creative Commons license:
Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0

Egypt says ‘all options are open’ in dealing with Ethiopian dam

Al-Arabiya: “All options are open” in dealing with an Ethiopian dam seen by Egypt as a threat to its historic rights to Nile waters, an adviser to Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi warned on Wednesday.

“It is Egypt’s right to defend its interests, and other people have a right to follow their own interests. But there must be assurances the Ethiopian dam will not affect Egypt, otherwise all options are open,” Ayman Ali said, according to Egypt’s media. Pakinam el-Sharkawy, another presidential adviser, told the official MENA news agency that Egypt would demand that Ethiopia cease the construction of the dam, AFP reported.

The presidency considers the dam as a “national security” issue for Egypt, Sharkawy added. “Demanding of Ethiopia to stop construction of the dam it intends to build on the Blue Nile will be our first step,” she said, according to MENA.

During a meeting on Tuesday with President Mursi several politicians proposed plans to carry out covert attacks against Ethiopia, with some suggesting the bombardment of the Renaissance Dam. The politicians made their suggestions not knowing that their meeting with the president was being aired live on television.

Egypt believes more studies are needed on the dam’s impact on its water supply which is almost entirely dependent on the Nile, although far more on the flow down the White Nile from the Great Lakes of East Africa, than that down the Blue Nile from the Ethiopian highlands....

USGS provided this satellite image of the Blue Nile in Sudan

Will climate change cause water conflict?

AlphaGalileo via the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: International researchers from 14 institutions met in Nicosia (Cyprus) on the 10th and 11th of December to present and debate the results of studies on water, conflict and security conducted in the past three years in a variety of locations in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Sahel under the CLICO research project (www.clico.org). The CLICO project explored the social dimensions of climate change and in particular, conflicts related to water, and the threats this may pose for national and human security. The project was led by the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and financed by the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) Theme of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme.

The effects of climate change on water are expected to intensify in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions in the coming years. This raises potential threats to the security of populations, particularly those most vulnerable to droughts or floods. Prominent people have talked about the danger of “water wars” and about climate change as a threat to national security. The results of the CLICO project, however, found that such discourses oversimplify a complex reality. Climate and water resource changes are important, but play only a secondary role – at least for the time being – in the causation of conflict and insecurity compared to political, economic and social factors. According to the research, countries with good institutions are unlikely to experience violence because of water, and populations in countries with strong welfare and civil security systems will suffer much less from climate disasters, compared to those in countries without.

CLICO’s final conference in Cyprus, which was held at the same time as the high-profile EWACC 2012 (Energy, Water and Climate Change) conference, presented the project’s results, established policy recommendations to raise the security of populations and proposed new ideas on public policies and institutional arrangements needed to promote peace and security under changing climate and water conditions. Among other aspects, the meeting served to debate the relation between droughts, floods and sea level rise and social conflict, the role of institutions and international agreements and adaptation policies for human security.

The CLICO studies found that political stability and the welfare state reduce the likelihood of social conflict. The vulnerability of populations stems from deeper causes which precede disaster events, such as poverty, lack of access to education, and corruption in political and administrative institutions. CLICO researchers found that development reduces violent domestic conflicts over water, though in some cases, such as with the expansion of large-scale agriculture, it might also be a source of social tensions and conflicts.

A key conclusion is that political discourses must not reiterate simplistic models which link climate change directly to social conflict and insecurity: a better distribution of wealth, greater social protection, universal access to justice and higher levels of democracy can largely help to improve human security and reduce outbreaks of social conflict....

The roads along the old moat of Chiang Mai are full of vehicles during the Songkran water splashing festival, shot by Takeaway, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate cycles are driving wars

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News: In the first study of its kind, researchers have linked a natural global climate cycle to periodic increases in warfare. The arrival of El Niño, which every three to seven years boosts temperatures and cuts rainfall, doubles the risk of civil wars across 90 affected tropical countries, and may help account for a fifth of worldwide conflicts during the past half-century, say the authors. The paper, written by an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, appears in the current issue of the leading scientific journal Nature.

In recent years, historians and climatologists have built evidence that past societies suffered and fell due in connection with heat or droughts that damaged agriculture and shook governments. This is the first study to make the case for such destabilization in the present day, using statistics to link global weather observations and well-documented outbreaks of violence. The study does not blame specific wars on El Niño, nor does it directly address the issue of long-term climate change. However, it raises potent questions, as many scientists think natural weather cycles will become more extreme with warming climate, and some suggest ongoing chaos in places like Somalia are already being stoked by warming climate.

...The scientists tracked ENSO from 1950 to 2004 and correlated it with onsets of civil conflicts that killed more than 25 people in a given year. The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, over half of which each caused more than 1,000 battle-related deaths. For nations whose weather is controlled by ENSO, they found that during La Niña, the chance of civil war breaking out was about 3 percent; during El Niño, the chance doubled, to 6 percent. Countries not affected by the cycle remained at 2 percent no matter what. Overall, the team calculated that El Niño may have played a role in 21 percent of civil wars worldwide—and nearly 30 percent in those countries affected by El Niño.

...The authors say they do not know exactly why climate feeds conflict. “But if you have social inequality, people are poor, and there are underlying tensions, it seems possible that climate can deliver the knockout punch,” said Hsiang. When crops fail, people may take up a gun simply to make a living, he said. Kyle C. Meng, a sustainable-development Ph.D. candidate and the study’s other author, pointed out that social scientists have shown that individuals often become more aggressive when temperatures rise, but he said that whether that applies to whole societies is only speculative....

Polish soldiers on maneuvers in 2008, Łukasz Golowanow & Maciek Hypś, Konflikty.pl, Wikimedia Commons

Water shortages threaten renewed conflict between Pakistan, India

Shahid Husain in AlertNet discusses the growing danger of water-based conflict in south Asia: As population growth and climate change increase competition for water around the world, India and Pakistan may find water a growing source of conflict, analysts say. The two South Asian countries have a long history of tensions over issues as diverse as terrorist attacks and rights to Kashmir. Diplomatic initiatives have helped reduced these tensions in recent years.

But given that India and Pakistan share numerous rivers, some experts think that the issue of water supplies could lead to renewed conflict, making water conservation an even more urgent priority. Water is clearly in increasingly short supply in India and Pakistan. Per capita water availability in Pakistan has fallen by nearly 75 percent over the last 60 years, in part because of rapid population growth. The country is seen as having too few dams and reservoirs to hold water supplies, and agricultural production is threatened by a lack of water.

Nasim A. Khan, an academic and former secretary of Pakistan’s Alternative Energy Development Board, sees the territorial dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir as in part a fight for water resources, and is concerned by India’s construction of dams in the part of the territory that it controls.

“The roots of the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus (rivers) are in Kashmir, and any foul play can create tremendous differences,” Khan said, referring to India’s construction of dams on these rivers over the past two decades....

River Jhelum, Srinagar Kashmir, shot by Dr. Basharat Alam Shah, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Water crisis offers chance for unity over strife

Kanya D'Almeida in IPS has a ray of optimism about water conflicts and the potential for cooperation among neighbors: As record-breaking temperature highs and rapidly melting ice caps fuel fears about impending "water wars", some experts in Washington say that the threat of full-blown conflict is exaggerated, adding that robust institutions and solid treaties could transform water crises into international cooperation.

The planet is currently home to 276 international river basins, which cover almost a half of the earth's land surface and are home to 40 percent of the global population. Many of these basins cross boundaries with no regard for the incendiary politics that divide nations, religions and peoples. In fact, a full 80 percent of the world's fresh water originates in basins shared by two or more countries.

However, while the risk of water wars has long made headlines, new research suggests that possible cooperation over shared resources would be a better, and more accurate, message. "Those of us who work on issues of international water management see only the boundaries of watersheds themselves, we see the things that unite us, that bring us together," Aaron Wolf, a professor of geography at the University of Oregon, told a panel at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington on Thursday.

...The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD), a project of Oregon State University's Department of Geosciences in partnership with the Northwest Alliance for Computation Science, carried out extensive research into the history of water-related conflict, referencing over 3,600 international treaties signed between the years 805-1997.

Rating water-related events between the years 1948-2008, the database found only 21 cases of "extensive military acts" compared to 682 instances of "mild verbal support" for treaties. The same period also witnessed the signing of 145 treaties on shared water resources....

The Cumbe Mayo Aqueduct (1500 B.C.E.) near Cajamarca, Peru. Photographer Gsd97jks has released it to the public domain

Pakistan's water shortage, and the next great war

Sarah Farid in the Express Tribune (Pakistan) paints an alarming picture of Pakistan's water security and the role it could play in relations with India: …After torrential rains and flooding occured, the mighty Indus swelled to the highest water level it had reached in 110 years. Millions were displaced and billions of dollars were lost. It is unfeasible for the country to immediately reverse the damage. An effective water management strategy is needed to store excess water and protect us against droughts or floods. This was last year’s scenario.

A repeat performance can be expected any time, this year, the next, or the year after that. Who can really predict the future? But we can prepare for it. Experts say this is only the start of a trend that is likely to continue over decades. To stem the flow of the tide and convert the threat into an opportunity, Pakistan needs to step up — fast. Complacence has a heavy price attached to its head.

…For the second time since the Indus Water Treaty was drafted in 1960, Pakistan has challenged India over its constructions of dams. Alarm and concern has been in the air alongside efforts to thwart India’s plans. Under the treaty, India gets exclusive control of the Eastern Rivers — the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi. Pakistan maintains exclusive control over the Western Rivers — the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab. The Kishanganga dam project will divert waters from the Jhelum into India’s own fields, making 5.6 million acres of land in Pakistan-owned Punjab barren. Taking this to international agencies for arbitration to stop this dam has not proved fruitful as India is proceeding with its 330-megawatt hydro-electric project.

…With the 2011 monsoon season around the corner, one can only hope for the best. The point to note here is not that climate change should be highlighted more but that for once brainstorming to produce a national strategy should be done by individuals on a level where there is a clear understanding of issues.

…Prevention is better than cure, says an old adage. Yet the Pakistani nation remains attuned to slumber until disaster shocks them into wakefulness. Preemptive attempts are lost in translation — during the overheated debates of the elite, amongst the corrupt practices of the powerful or somewhere in the grueling workload of the impoverished….

A photograph of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the River Narmada, India, showing the principal spillway and construction underway for increasing the height. Shot by AceFighter19, Wikimedia Commons

Researchers try to help prevent climate change conflict

Nico Colombant in Voice of America News: Experts say climate change is contributing to more and more conflicts around the world, especially in Africa. Researchers and aid agencies say they are doing their best to help reduce this trend.

At a panel discussion late Tuesday in Washington, Jeffrey Stark from the U.S.-based Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability described a worrisome scenario he recently encountered in the central cattle corridor of Uganda.

"We heard basically a consensus that the climate has changed in significant kinds of ways. And so we did hear repeatedly that there had been increasing temperatures, drying wetlands, less frequent but more intense rain, hail storms and most significantly unpredictable shifts in seasonal patterns," said Stark. "The pastoralists in the cattle corridor have to travel farther in search of pasture and water and they encounter cultivators who are having difficulties of their own and they often come into conflict."

Panelists said this trend was repeating itself in many parts of Africa. They said that, beyond raising the alarm on the link between climate change and conflict, researchers must now help governments, civil society groups and aid agencies prevent natural disasters from turning into war.

Stark, who is currently studying the ongoing drought in southern Ethiopia, said it is important for all affected parties to feel they are being helped equally. "Any intervention in relation to climate adaptation whether for water, or food, or alternative livelihoods has to be fully understood and explicitly acknowledged as mutually beneficial by all sides," he said. "If it is seen in any way to be favoring one group or another it will just cause conflict, so it is a very difficult and delicate situation."

Other parts of the world are not immune to climate change causing conflict. Janani Vivekananda from the British-based group International Alert has been studying the trend in eastern Nepal, where monsoon rains have been failing in recent years…

Watusi cattle in Uganda, shot by Michel Sautel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Flood insurance bringing a deluge of complaints in Michigan

Todd Spangler, Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki And Kathleen Gray in the Detroit Free Press cover an issue that we'll be seeing more in the future: …Lake levels are down all over the Great Lakes region and premiums are up for the mandatory insurance for holders of federally backed mortgages in designated flood zones. But to many, flooding in southeastern Michigan is a distant memory, even as they watched fresh scenes last week of catastrophic flooding in Arkansas and Missouri.

With the Great Lakes at low levels, many Michiganders -- including U.S. Rep. Candice Miller -- are up in arms, saying they believe they're paying for billions of losses on the gulf coast and demanding an end to the National Flood Insurance Program. Don't count on it: The insurance industry won't take on the risks, and without the protection, many waterfront properties would be unmarketable.

And just because a flood hasn't happened in decades doesn't mean there is no risk. Chances of Great Lakes flooding may be slim in 2011, but that could change with a few years of heavy snow and rain in the lakes' vast drainage basin.

"This is cyclical. It will change," said Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. "Therein is the problem: People think 15 years is a long time."
Low lake levels and higher premiums have many Michiganders steamed about flood insurance…

…And although angry Michiganders may be misguided on some points, such as believing their premiums are paying for coastal flooding from hurricanes, including Katrina and the rest from the destructive 2005 season, they have legitimate gripes. One fair allegation is that some homes with less risk are lumped with those that have more….

Frozen Lake St. Clair in Michigan, shot by MJCdetroit, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license