The politics of water.

• Author: Postel, Sandra

Wars have been waged over oil and gold, but it is water that now poses the greatest potential for provoking conflict among nations - and the greatest need for new guarantees of cooperation.

The threat of nations going to war over oil-rich territories is nothing new, but in the coming years it may be that water sparks more political flare-ups than "black gold." In some areas of the world, water scarcity may be to the 1990s what the oil price shocks were to the 1970s - a major source of economic and political instability.

Unique among strategic resources, water not only courses easily across political boundaries, it also gives upstream countries a distinct advantage over downstream neighbors. Tensions between countries that depend on the same water sources are already running high. In a 1989 address before the U.S. Congress, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, spoke frankly of the critical importance of water to his country, which falls last in thc receiving line for the precious stuff of the Nile. "The national security of Egypt," he said, "is in the hands of the eight other African countries in the Nile basin."

Although water is a renewable resource, it is also a finite one. Nature makes only so much available in a given region each year - and supplies can drop considerably below average in times of drought. As human numbers climb, and more and more water is needed to supply farms, factories and households, nature's water bodies are becoming overtaxed. And as competition increases for ever more limited supplies, international frictions over water are worsening.

Nearly 40 percent of the world's people depend on river systems shared by two or more countries. India and Bangladesh haggle over the Ganges River, Mexico and the United States over the Colorado, and Czechoslovakia and Hungary over the Danube. An emerging hotspot is Central Asia, where five newly independent countries splintered off from the former Soviet Union now share two overused rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. It is in the Middle East, however, that water disputes are shaping political landscapes and economic futures most definitively.

The specter of a "water crisis" in the Middle East has become almost legendary. With some of the highest population growth rates in the world and heavy reliance on irrigation for their agricultural productivity, Middle Eastern countries have much at stake when it comes to dividing up the region's supplies. Enough leaders have spoken of the potential for wars over water that new warnings have lost their bite. But these repeated admonitions may, in fact, presage some pivotal events in Middle East politics. Over the next decade, water issues in the region's three major river basins - the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris-Euphrates - will lead to either an unprecedented degree of cooperation or a combustible level of conflict.

No Longer "Deep and Wide"

Water scarcity is most acute in the Jordan River basin, which is shared by Israel, Jordan, the occupied West Bank, and part of Syria (see map). Israel's annual water use already exceeds its renewable supply (the amount of water that nature makes available each year) by some 15 percent, meaning that in a typical year Israel has to overdraw its groundwater account to meet its needs. With an expected influx of up to a million immigrants from former Soviet states, Israel's yearly water deficit will only worsen.

The Jordanians use less than half as much water as the Israelis on a per capita basis. But their demands are also bumping up against supply limits, even as the country's population rises by 3.4 percent a year, one of thc highest growth rates in the world. With the nation's water use projected to increase by 40 percent during this decade competition grows keener each year. King Hussein declared in 1990 that water was the only issue that could take him to war with Israel.

As negotiators work to hammer out a peace agreement in the region, the issue of water rights looms large. Most proposals involve Israel returning some of the territory it has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war - which, since many of Israel's prime water sources are located in the disputed areas, could ultimately mean relinquishing control over substantial water supplies. Some 25 to 40 percent of Israel's sustainable water supply comes from the Yarqon-Taninim aquifer, which runs along the foot-hills of the West Bank and flows westward across the Green Line (the demarcation of pre-1967 Israeli territory) toward the Mediterranean Sea. Though Israel can tap water on either side of the Green Line, the aquifer's main recharge area lies on the West Bank. Israel has severely restricted the amount of water that West Bank Arabs can pump from this underground reserve, even as it continues overdrawing the aquifer for its own uses - an inequity that has greatly angered thc Arab population.

Another portion of Israel's water supply originates in the Golan Heights, which Israel claimed from Syria after the 1967 war and then annexed in 1981. The Golan Heights forms part of the catchment for the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel's largest surface water reservoir and the source for the National Water Carrier, a huge canal and pipeline that transports water from the north to the drier south. Control of the Golan Heights also gives Israel some rights to the Yarmuk River, the last major undeveloped tributary in the basin. So far, Israel has blocked a joint plan by Jordan and Syria to construct a dam on the Yarmuk to increase their supplies, fearing that the dam could reduce flows into the Jordan River, and thus jeopardize its water security.

A third important water source for Israel is thc coastal aquifer...