Does the world face a future of water wars?

• Author: Bryjak, George J.
• Position: Ecology

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty, and religious expression. How much more intense will these conflicts be when antagonists fight over the Earth's most indispensable resource--water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the availability of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet's stock is freshwater, and almost two-thirds of this amount is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand--Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?, Sandra Postel outlines three converging forces that drive tension and conflict over freshwater:

Depletion of the water "resource pie." Seventy percent of the food produced in China comes via irrigation heavily dependent on aquifers that are being depleted at an unprecedented rate. (The corresponding figure in the U.S. is 15%.) Water tables on the fertile North China Plain dropped more than 12 feet in a recent three-year period, and the number of water-short Chinese cities has reached 300--almost half of that country's urban areas. In India, the world's second-most-populous nation, with over 1,000,000,000 inhabitants, the rate of groundwater withdrawal is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country.

Political scientist John Swomley outlines the dilemma that world leaders may be forced to ponder: "What are the risks to global stability when [food] suppliers must choose between China, India, Pakistan, Middle Eastern countries, and others when all require or demand grain at the same time?"

Rapid population growth in developing nations. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not an expanding one. The freshwater available today for more than 6,000,000,000 people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200,000,000. (The current U.S. population is 287,000,000.)

Global agriculture accounts for about, 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world's most water-stressed, contentious areas--the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris-Euphrates--population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of the Palestinian territory will more than double over the next generation.

Most experts agree that, because of geography, population pressures, and politics...