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 transboundaryVideo: CNN Haiti’s Clean Water Challenge

Water ConflictsKey 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?

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

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

DIFFERENT USERS?Conflicting demands

Water Conflicts

SUPPLY?Diminishing

DEMANDS?

Rising

•International conflicts i.e. basin crosses national boundaries•Internal conflicts ie within a country•Conservation versus exploitation

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.

Population growthConsumer demandIndustrial growth

Agricultural demand

Reductions because of:•Users abstracting/polluting upstream•Deteriorating quality•Impact of climate change

Water scarcity hotspotsAccording 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.

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

Egypt imports > 50% of its food because of physical

scarcity

Australia; diversion ¼ of all water away from Murray Darling Basin for agriculture

Aral Sea faces environmental catastrophe, although recent attempts to reduce impacts of river diversions for especially

cotton production

R Ganges: physical stress from pollution and over abstraction

Severe water scarcity N China, leading to South North transfer scheme-

see later slideOgallala 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

Much of sub Saharan Africa suffers from economic

scarcity from especially poverty but also lack of

infrastructural development . Some 1 bn people involved1

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

Insert Figure 2.11 page 47

River basins currently in dispute

River basins at risk in the future

Large International drainage basins

Zambezi

Orange

OkavangoLa Plata

Mekong

Ganges

Ob

Lake Chad

Nile hotly disputed between Ethiopia and Sudan ,who control its headwaters, and Egypt .

Tigris-Euphrates Iraq + Syria concerns that Turkey’s GAP project will divert their water

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.

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

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

Hydropolitics and geopolitics

•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.

• 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

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 1929 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.

Political negotiations centred on conflicts over the shared use of water sources

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