Potential for Water Wars in the 21st Century

Presentation to College for Seniors Lecture Series, "The World Turned Upside Down,"

April 3, 2003
Erwin E. Klaas, Professor Emeritus of Animal Ecology, Iowa State University

I will begin by reading a quote from Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union. It is from the Oct/Nov. 2000 issue of Civilization Magazine.

"Water, not unlike religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to water. People move when there is too little of it; people move when there is too much of it. People move on it. People write and sing and dance and dream about it. People fight over it. And everybody, everywhere and every day, needs it. We need water for drinking, for cooking, for washing, for food, for industry, for energy, for transport, for rituals, for fun, for life. And it is not only we humans who need it; all life is dependent upon water for its very survival."

I was fortunate to be able to attend the World Food Prize International Symposium, "Global Water Insecurity" on October 24-25, 2002 in Des Moines, Iowa. This symposium featured many prominent people from around the world who offered their perspectives on what is considered by many as the coming water crisis. This talk draws heavily on books and papers written by several of these speakers and other authorities. You can read most of the papers presented at this symposium on the World Food Prize web site, .

Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security was a keynote speaker at the symposium. Gleick authors a biennial report (e.g. "The World's Water 2000-2001." Island Press, Washington, D.C.) on freshwater resources and provides in-depth analysis and statistics on the current global status of water.

Another keynoter was Sandra Postel, formerly Vice-President of WorldWatch Institute and now Director of the Global Water Policy Project. She has published two books that are widely cited in the water literature. The "Last Oasis-Facing Water Scarcity" (W.W. Norton, Co. New York and London, 1997) was featured in a PBS documentary on water a few years ago. Another of her books is "Pillar of Sand--Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?" (Ibid, 1999).

Marq de Villiers is a South African who has traveled extensively throughout the world to research his books on water. I used his book, "Water, the Fate of Our Most Precious Resource" (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 2000) as a text for my course on water last fall in the College for Seniors. This book was published a year earlier in Canada under the title "Water Wars". His books are fascinating reads because he can relate first-hand personal experiences about the places he has visited and researched.

I've also used several internet web sites as sources of information.

Slide 1. Global map of river basins at risk. I borrowed this and the next 2 slides from Sandra Postel's talk at last fall's symposium; the map was prepared by Greg Fisk, Oregon State University, Department of Geosciences. It shows the world's major river basins. There are four that are shown in red and they represent river basins that are currently in dispute and negotiations. I'll discuss three of these in more detail later in the talk. Basins in yellow are considered to be at risk of disputes between nations. Other basins that have international boundaries are in blue.























Slide 2. Map of Asia and Europe where the land is most intensely irrigated. The dark blue areas represent the most intensively irrigated areas. India's response to the green revolution was to put more than 115 million acres into irrigation. There are two serious negative consequences of irrigation. 1. Depletion of underground aquifers, and 2. The build up of salt in the soil, a process called salination. A key lesson from history is that most irrigation-based civilizations eventually fail. While countries are bringing new land into agricultural production with irrigation, millions of acres of cropland are being abandoned in other parts of the world because of unsustainable irrigation and other practices.

China is in a real dilemma. China uses irrigation to produce 70% of its food. De Villiers (2000) says that China is not running out of water, except in places where water is needed most. Three-quarters of the water is in the south, while three-quarters of the farming is in the north and northeast. In the south, they are building the world's largest dam, called the Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze and over a million people are being displaced. One of the reasons for building this dam is for flood control. In the north, water tables of underground aquifers dropped more than 12 feet in three years. The Yellow River went dry for the first time in history in 1972. Since 1985, it has gone dry every year. In 1996, it was dry for 133 days. In 1997, it failed to reach the sea for 226 days (De Villiers, 2000).

Slide 3. Global map of river basins that have international boundaries (1998). Basins in red are considered to be in severe water stress because of the combination of low water availability and high human populations. The red areas have less than 500 cu meters of available water per person per year. The areas in blue are the least stressed areas on earth. For example, the Amazon Basin receives high rainfall and has relatively low numbers of human inhabitants. Blue areas across the northern hemisphere have abundant freshwater but much of it is frozen at least for most of the year.

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