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  • Of Note Peace over Water?
  • Tom Spoth (bio)

In their contribution to this issue of the SAIS Review, Allison Garland and Lauren Herzer discuss the mounting challenges associated with providing adequate water and sanitation to cities experiencing population explosions, particularly those in the developing world. The authors discuss growing water-related tensions between citizens and public officials in countries such as Zimbabwe and Egypt, and the difficulty of governing modern urban populations. Using this piece as a backdrop, it may be useful to more closely examine the historical relationship between water and conflict.

It has recently been somewhat fashionable to predict an imminent outbreak of water-related conflicts. Former World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin famously said in 1995 that “if the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.”1 During his tenure as UN secretary general, Kofi Annan predicted that “fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.”2 And in 2000, The Economist proclaimed that “water shortages (are) the stuff of future wars” and that “conditions are ripe for a century of water conflicts.”3

However, the fact remains that the only recorded instance in human history of a war fought over water took place 4,500 years ago. In contrast, between the years 805 and 1984, countries and nations throughout the world were able to sign over 3,600 water-related treaties.4 Historically, water has been a source of cooperation, not conflict, in the arena of international relations.

This is not to say that world leaders should take a sanguine approach to global water issues. According to the World Bank, 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion are not provided with basic sanitation.5 This failure to satisfy one of the most basic human needs has led to unacceptably high rates of illness and death from easily preventable diseases, as well as a lack of economic security for many families, as Garland and Herzer note.

The good news is that our planet still has sufficient water (and then some) to sustain the current population. Moreover, technologies [End Page 113] and policies—such as desalination, more efficient irrigation methods, reuse and storage techniques, pricing regimes, and international trading agreements—exist to get water to those who desperately need it.6 The shortage we are experiencing is not of water, but of the funding and political will needed at the local, national, and global levels in order to properly conserve and distribute this precious resource.

Luckily, we can draw on a rich history of collaboration and successful dispute resolution to accomplish this goal when interstate disagreements arise. But even if an individual nation is able to achieve an adequate supply of fresh water, the challenge remains of fairly allocating the water to its entire population. Unlike money or political power, water is a public good: the utility that it gives to one person does not diminish the utility it gives to another, as long as there is enough to go around. This characteristic makes water a sector that is uniquely suited to foster cooperation and sow the seeds for better governance. An effective plan for managing urban water resources can go a long way toward achieving Garland and Herzer’s vision of converting rapid urban growth from a challenge to an opportunity.

Tom Spoth

Tom Spoth is an Assistant Editor of the SAIS Review of International Affairs. He is a candidate for Masters of Arts in International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.

Footnotes

1. Ismail Serageldin, Global Water Partnerships. Accessed February 24, 2009 from http://www.serageldin.org/water.htm

2. Kofi Annan, Text of the Remarks of the Secretary General of the United Nations, March 1, 2001. Accessed February 24, 2009 from http://www.aag.org/News/kofi.html

3. “Water fights,” Special report: The world in 2000. The Economist, 1999.

4. Sandra L. Postel and Aaron T. Wolf, “Dehydrating conflict,” Foreign Policy, 2001.

5. www.worldbank.org/watsan

6. Peter Rogers, “Facing the freshwater crisis,” Scientific American, 2008...

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