The potential impact of water scarcity on peace and security. Water scarcity as a potential cause of global conflict – Time for the UN water strategy to investigate the complex relationship between water scarcity and international peace and security. The team analyzed different sets of empirical data and conducted three case studies: the difficult relationship between upstream Turkey and downstream states Syria and Iraq; the Pacific island states Kiribati and Tuvalu, which face constant threats of rising sea levels; and the South American Amazon region (especially, Brazil). In this last case study, there exist prevalent regional discrepancies related to drought in some areas and floods in others.

Further work examined ways to legally justify the competence of the UN Security Council within the existing legal framework. One conclusion was that a more efficient path would be to focus on existing UN mandates and procedures – for example, within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or by assigning the issue to existing UN Special Rapporteur mandates. Research results highlighted the need to reconceptualize the connection between both water scarcity and peace and security. This prompted the development of a two-factor thesis, namely that water scarcity holds both a conflict potential and a cooperation potential. Respective recommendations are thus based on a refined understanding of the relationship between water scarcity and armed conflict. Project work has been published in scientific journals and edited book collections. Findings have also been presented at several international conferences.

WATER AND WAR have provided important information on a pressing contemporary issue, producing a strong base from which relevant actors can act to mitigate the possibility of war. In Asia, water shortages—both in the form of stress and scarcity—are emerging as a major social and economic threat, especially in China and India. In China, although freshwater resources are abundant, they are distributed unevenly and hence unavailable to many regions of the country. The amount of rainfall in China ranges from 200 mm in inland desert areas up to 2000 mm along the southern tropical coast. Water shortages in China’s urban areas are especially serious. Of the country’s 640 major cities, more than 300 face water shortages.

Clean water is, moreover, becoming increasingly scarce because of an increase in domestic and industrial effluents. Every year in China, thousands of tons of pollutants from agricultural, industrial, and municipal sources are dumped into the nation’s rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, a trend that is common throughout the region. The economic consequences of water shortages in China are significant: water shortages in cities cause a loss of an estimated 120 billion yuan (US$11.2 billion) in industrial output each a government minister warned that the per capita availability of freshwater was declining due to rapid population growth and industrialization.

Many of the seminar participants noted that water scarcity is likely to worsen in Asia in the years ahead. This will have a huge negative impact on food security, as Asian agriculture is already heavily reliant on irrigation, with much of the anticipated increases in food production likely to be dependent on even higher levels of irrigation and irrigation efficiency.