Will we go to war over water?

The irony in the response to rioting in southern Iraq in 2018 can’t be lost on anyone. As demonstrators took to the streets protesting about unemployment, power cuts, and water shortages, the authorities’ weapons of choice to disperse them included, get this – water cannon…

 Added to which, tear gas and live ammunition were also used, making the question in my headline somewhat redundant – because we are already at war over water in parts of the World. 

 Pope Francis predicted it would happen back in 2015, when he said all people had a right to safe drinking water, but didn’t have it. It’s hard to argue his point, any more than it is to argue that the right isn’t guaranteed, when millions are forced to drink from polluted sources. The Pope cited United Nations statistics which say a thousand children die every day from water-related illnesses. If that doesn’t focus the mind, nothing will!

Wrong priorities?

And yet we spend money on things that, in the context of dying children, seem to be pretty pointless. If I might cite just two, I’d point to HS2 and landing Perseverance on Mars. The latter is the centrepiece of NASA’s mission to the red planet, and may bring back something from there in a decade or so – the same time it could take to run trains from London to Birmingham via HS2, if Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is to be believed. And that’s even before we’ve considered the costs. NASA is spending $2.7bn on going to Mars; getting trains from London to Birmingham a tad quicker than at present could cost 55 times that – a mind-bending £107bn ($148bn), if Lord Berkeley, former deputy chairman of the government's independent review into the project, is to be believed. Little wonder wars break out.

A global problem

Writing for the World Resources Institute in December 2019 Charles Iceland described a WPS Global Early Warning Tool, where WPS stands for Water, Peace, and Security. The tool examined 2,000 administrative districts and found a risk of violent conflict over the year that followed in 14% of them – and in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Mali, to name but half a dozen, the problem was related to water resources.

Growing populations mean water resources become stretched to breaking point. I mentioned Las Vegas and Lake Mead in a previous post, but exactly the same is happening in Basra, where the population has doubled in the last two decades (though it’s fair to say that in Basra demand isn’t linked to swimming pools, cold showers, and golf courses, nor did thousands of Vegas residents end up in hospital from drinking contaminated water, as happened in Basra, but you get the picture).

But there are solutions, as Charles Iceland explains: “Solutions, while not simple to implement, do exist and can help mitigate violent conflict. In Iraq, for example, repairing and vastly expanding water and sewage systems in major cities would help address concerns about government corruption and lack of basic services. Comprehensive transboundary water-sharing agreements on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers could increase water flows into Iraq”.

One might also argue that the better living conditions that better water supplies would create could reduce the number of disaffected people, devoid of hope in their own countries, coming to others to wreak havoc and death, though Mr Iceland doesn’t go that far in his assessment…

Life in our bubbles

Now, in a global context, it boils down to this basic question. What’s the best outcome from your investment? Would you rather get to Birmingham a little faster any time after 2031 (when technology will have moved so far, you’ll probably be able to attend meetings as a 3D hologram anyway), or prevent a war by helping to provide clean drinking water today? Put that way, I hope you’d choose the clean drinking water option. The trouble is that we’re divorced from the problem, and living in our own bubbles. You no more think of supporting development of clean water supplies in Kenya, for example, than the Kenyan water porter in our picture would consider asking you for some plumbing and a pump to make his life a little easier.

And yet if providing water is all it takes to save children’s lives and prevent wars, what better reason could there be to put the minds that can land a vehicle on Mars to work on making it happen? World Water Day 2021 on Monday March 22nd encourages us to focus on a simple human need. We can’t wash our hands off the problem.

At ExpenseOnDemand, we propose to create more awareness amongst senior management and senior finance people to relook at the way their businesses are using or looking to conserve water. Write to me, if you have ideas or just want to brainstorm about this impending problem with workable solutions. Also look at water.org.

Picture: Joshua Wanyama | Dreamstime