1. Overview - Water Resources
Water, like energy, is a fundamental need but not evenly distributed
Factors influencing geography of supply:
Physical-surface, groundwater, desalinisation
Human: demand, management, mismanagement
Increasing demand not matched by supply= WATER GAP
Implications for human well being- which is why it is named in the MDGs
Demand from various users
Water resources are often transboundary

2. Water Conflicts Key Questions
How do water conflicts arise?
Where are the world’s worst water hotspots?
How can disputes over transboundary waters be resolved?
What actors influence decisions about water use and management?
What is the future of water?

3. Water Conflict Potential conflicts=both local & international
Resource use often exceeds recharge capacity leading to long term degradation
Future is in doubt because of unsustainable use+ climate change
Vulnerable populations most at risk
Management strategies to ensure supply require cooperation of many different players = changes in way water is valued & used

4. Abundance of Transboundary Waters
148 countries include territory within one or more transboundary river basins
39 countries have more than 90% of their territory within one or more transboundary river basins
21 lie entirely within one or more of these watersheds
Source: UNESCO

5. Water Conflicts SUPPLY? DEMANDS? DIFFERENT USERS? Diminishing Rising
Reductions because of:
Users abstracting/polluting upstream
Deteriorating quality
Impact of climate change
Population growth
Consumer demand
Industrial growth
Agricultural demand
SUPPLY?
Diminishing
DEMANDS?
Rising
PRESSURE POINT- ie need for management.
This is shown spatially as a ‘hotspot’ of conflict, see map on next slide.
Pressure and hence tension and conflict may be over surface flow and/or groundwater supplies
Dams and diversions and loss of wetlands are particularly contested.
DIFFERENT USERS?
Conflicting demands
International conflicts i.e. basin crosses national boundaries
Internal conflicts ie within a country
Conservation versus exploitation

6. Water scarcity hotspots
According to the International Water Management Institute environmental research organisation global water stress is increasing, and 1/3 rd of all people face some sort of water scarcity. Agricultural uses dominate in the growing need for food.
Aral Sea faces environmental catastrophe, although recent attempts to reduce impacts of river diversions for especially cotton production
Severe water scarcity N China, leading to South North transfer scheme-see later slide
Egypt imports > 50% of its food because of physical scarcity
R Ganges: physical stress from pollution and over abstraction
Ogallala aquifer provides 1/3 all US irrigation water, but is seriously depleted: the water table is dropping by about 1m/yr.
As a ‘fossil’ reserve, formed probably from past glacial meltwater flows, it is effectively a finite resource
Australia; diversion ¼ of all water away from Murray Darling Basin for agriculture
Much of sub Saharan Africa suffers from economic scarcity from especially poverty but also lack of infrastructural development . Some 1 bn people involved1
Little/no water scarcity
Physical water scarcity- not necessarily dry areas but those where over 75% river flows are used by agriculture, industry or domestic consumers
Economic water scarcity- less than 25% rivers used, and abundant supply potential but not reaching the poorest people .
Approaching physical water scarcity – More than 60% river flows allocated, and in the near future these river basins will have physical scarcity

7. Present and potential water conflict hotspots
As water supply decreases, tensions will increase as different players try to access common water supplies
Many conflicts are transboundary in nature, either between states or countries
River basins currently in dispute
River basins at risk in the future
Large International drainage basins
Tigris-Euphrates
Iraq + Syria concerns that Turkey’s GAP project will divert their water
Colorado: disputes between the 7 US states and Mexico it flows through. The river is so overused, that it no longer reaches the sea!.
90% abstracted before reaches Mexico Ob
The Aral Sea, an inland drainage basin, once the world’s 4th largest inland lake has shrunk since the 1950s after the 2 rivers feeding it: the Amu Dayra and Syr Darya were diverted for irrigation.
By 2007 the sea was 10% of original volume and split into 2 lakes. The ex soviet states are in conflict: Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan and Kazakstan.
Lake Chad
Mekong
Ganges
Insert Figure 2.11 page 47
Okavango
Zambezi
La Plata
Orange
Note: although there have been rising tensions globally, many areas demonstrate effective management to diffuse the situation and create more equitable and sustainable demand-supply balance, such as the Mekong River Committee,& the Nile River Initiative
Nile hotly disputed between Ethiopia and Sudan ,who control its headwaters, and Egypt .

8. History of hydropolitics in Nile Basin
Hydropolitics and geopolitics
Political negotiations centred on conflicts over the shared use of water sources
The Nile is the world’s longest river , 6,500kms, 2.9km2 catchment,10% of Africa, running through 10 countries with 360 million people depending on it for survival.
Growing issues of desertification & salination and increased evaporation linked to climate change
About 85 % water originates from Eritrea and Ethiopia, but 94 % is used by Sudan and Egypt.
History of hydropolitics in Nile Basin
tensions due to the dominance of Egypt
civil wars in Sudan & Ethiopia
tensions from Egypt’s treaties dating back to the and 1959 Nile Water Agreements.
Upstream states increasingly challenging Egypt’s dominance.
Ethiopia wants to use the Nile River for HEP plants and industrial development.
Evidence of more effective co-operation
The Nile Basin Initiative, system of cooperative management which started late 1990s
All countries except Eritrea working with The World Bank and bi-lateral aid donors .
Community level involvement.
Managers visited Colorado River recently to see how effectively the 1922 River Water Compact and its ‘law of the river’ works
1996 Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers - regulating how transboundary rivers and groundwater are managed
The Nile Basin is an example that ‘Water Wars’ may be averted 8