Water: A Source of Conflict or a Pathway to Peace?

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Comment by Annika Kramer, Binayak Das

a river in the desert of Iraq from above
© River in the desert of Iraq, shot by NASA/unsplash

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"Water for Peace" is the theme of this year's World Water Day. Despite widespread media reports and studies cautioning about potential future conflicts over what has been dubbed the “gold of the 21st century”. Indeed, the historical competition for water resources dates back millennia, tracing its roots to the settlement of human communities. Our language reflects this: "Rivalry" comes from the Latin word "rivalis," meaning "one who uses the same river." 

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Even today, conflicts occur between nomadic herders and settled farming communities, often escalating into violent and even deadly encounters. For example, in the inner Niger Delta in Mali, in Kenya, and in Ethiopia, the rural populations compete for scarce water and land resources. Similarly, states or provinces that lie along the same river often compete over shared water—whether it be issues of withdrawing quantities, pollution concerns, or the detrimental impacts of downstream flooding. These issues and resulting conflicts maybe aggravated by climate change impacts on water availability and the occurrence of severe floods and droughts. 

Cooperation despite Conflict

However, prolific wars over water are yet to materialize. Where violent conflicts occur, they are almost always rooted in pre-existing political, ethnic, or religious conflicts that are reflected in unjust water distribution. What’s more, research has shown that even in regions affected by water scarcity, cooperative approaches to water problems prevail. Examples range from joint technical working groups for exchanging crucial water data, to agreements on water distribution, or the construction of multifunctional dams benefiting all riparian states involved, and institutions to jointly manage shared water resources, such as in the Senegal River basin. Water cooperation can be found even between otherwise conflicting parties. Some of the most hostile countries in the world have signed water agreements with each other. The institutions established to implement these agreements often prove remarkably stable. Water is simply too important to stop necessary cooperation during crises. For example, the Indus Commission, which regulates the distribution of river water between India and Pakistan, has survived wars between more than two countries. And technical working groups between Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian water authorities continued to meet regularly even during the second Intifada and communities in the region have met over joint water projects even though unjust water allocation remains a highly contentious issue in the region.

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Confluence of the Indus (right) and Zanskar (left) rivers
© Veda Nimkhedkar/unsplash
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Using water cooperation for peacebuilding has pre-conditions

Therefore, water is also seen as a potential entry point for peacebuilding. But peace doesn’t come naturally from water cooperation. If joint resource management and water diplomacy are to contribute to improved relations between riparian states or user groups, involved actors, such as communities, non-governmental organisations, diplomats, or the international community, must carefully craft such peace-promoting measures:

Approaches to technical water cooperation must be accompanied by efforts to foster political will for broader cooperation. For this, technical measures need to be better integrated with other peace efforts and diplomatic initiatives so that trust at the technical level can also spill-over into other policy areas.

Power imbalances between conflicting parties should not be reflected in initiatives intended to foster peace through water cooperation. In addition to building technical capacities, involved actors need to ensure that politically less powerful parties are strengthened in their negotiating positions, for example, in negotiations over the division of costs and benefits of shared dam projects.

Where they exist, distribution injustices and inefficient water use by conflicting parties must be addressed directly. This must include the opportunity to critically question the claims of politically powerful water users. For example, Egypt's historical water rights on the Nile, Israel’s water allocations to Palestinians, or the inefficient water use for agriculture in many regions of the world.

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Water as a pathway to peace and global development

Where water cooperation goes beyond data exchange and actually achieves fair and sustainable resource utilization, it can contribute to more peace between conflicting parties. However, water will make the greatest contribution to global peace when it ensures food security and access to clean drinking water for the poorest parts of the world's population. This requires significantly more engagement from the international community in providing the necessary financial resources and in defending these basic needs against commercial interests in water and the agricultural goods that are produced with it.

This article first appeared in Frankfurter Rundschau on 21st of March 2024.

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