"Water Wars" a Myth, Say Experts

[rodeodance]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34467

"Water Wars" a Myth, Say Experts
Thalif Deen

STOCKHOLM, Aug 25 (IPS) - The world's future wars will be fought not over oil but water: an ominous prediction made by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the British ministry of defence and even by some officials of the World Bank.

But experts and academics meeting at an international conference on water management in the Swedish capital are dismissing this prediction as unrealistic, far-fetched and nonsensical.

"Water wars make good newspaper headlines but cooperation (agreements) don't," says Arunabha Ghosh, co-author of the upcoming Human Development Report 2006 themed on water management. The annual report, commissioned by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), is to be released in December.

In reality, Ghosh told the meeting in Stockholm, there are plenty of bilateral, multilateral and trans-boundary agreements for water-sharing -- all or most of which do not make good newspaper copy........

[Phredicles]

1. I hope this is right but I'm not over-optimistic.

It's encouraging that there are functioning agreements now, but what happens when water becomes truly scarce, such as if the glaciers that feed the reserviors melt, especially if there are even more billions and billions of us on this Earth than there are now?

[skids]

2. Condensors, my young skywalker.

It would be possible to engineer our way out of water crisis privided one thing: cheap energy. Technically we are miles ahead of where we used to be with advanced desalinization, condensation, and purification technologies.

So basically the battle over who controls the energy and how sustainable energy is ends up being is the deciding factor in whether or not we fight over water and food. As such any water or food war will just be an extension of the energy wars.

[bhikkhu]

5. possible, but are we?

aren't there 2 billion people without access to adequate clean water? Doesn't Israel, in spite of its technical brilliance, still covet the Litani River in spite of the great expense of life and treasure? I would like to think that we have made great progress, but where is the evidence of it?

In any case, treaties only mitigate conflict - they do not produce water. Look at the grain harvests this year for an extension of the problem that technology is not addressing.

[Viking12]

3. Sure there may be "plenty" of agreements, but not total agreement

Just because some neighbors will play nice doesn't mean they all will. Given the essential nature of water and the increasing demands, wars (or at least serious skirmishes) are inevitable.

[rman]

4. For-profit "water-sharing" it is

Cute, aren't they, with their progressive sounding rhetoric.

Also interesting how they don't mention - and don't counter - the arguments of those who predict these water wars: all-pervasive privatization of resources including water, the disappearance of glaciers that supply fresh water to many rural areas, and last but not least ever increasing pollution.

Experts they may be, but experts of what?