“Wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are over oil today.” (Blue Gold: World Water Wars. 2008)
Over the course of this blog i will use a range of Academic literature, Movies and News articles to help me discuss the topic of the increasing pressure placed on politicians to secure water supplies for their country. Furthermore, the strain this pressure is putting on international relations between countries sharing water supplies. The ability for nations to peacefully resolve conflicts over internationally distributed water resources will increasingly be a factor in stable and secure international relations. It is becoming evermore important, as the water crisis for many increases, to stop propagating threats of “water wars” and aggressively pursue a water peacemaking strategy for equitable water sharing between countries.
This table (Figure 1) shows a number of international basins, that are trans-boundary water supplies, and with how many countries those basins are shared between. In this Blog, I will focus especially on the Zambezi, the Nile and the Congo, all of which run through over nine countries and have complicated hydro-political discussions surrounding them, which i will investigate further.
(Figure 1)
To introduce my blog to you here is a short video which gives some background on Water Scarcity as it, increasingly, becomes one of the main global problems facing the world today. The UN predicts by 2025, 1800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. Wasted, Polluted and misallocated water while the worlds population grows at an exponential rate has led to demand exceeding the supply of water in many countries. This increasing demand has led some governments to go to ever greater lengths to secure this precious commodity, even to the point where military control and war is considered.
