Do nations go to war over water?
nature.com
nature.com
I think we don't fight full-scale wars because rivers are hundreds of miles long. You can't defend a river like you would an oil field. It forces people to get along.
Maybe you mean fighting along the Rio Grande, during the Manifest Destiny era? But that took place because we wanted land. The Rio Grande just happened to fall on land we wanted. That it is a large body of water was largely irrelevant.
That's the point. :) You don't fight over the river per se because it's impossible. They fought over all the land right up to the river. Presumably the riverfront on the other side is just as valuable, and total control over its water would make it more so. So why not take both sides? Because the land immediately after the river is indefensible. It's indefensible because your back is to a river.
You can fight and win a war over land but you can't normally take a river. You don't even think about it. Thus you don't "fight a war" over it, even though the land you say you're really fighting for would be useless without it.
my publishers pointed out that predicting an absence of war over water would not sell. Lesson 2: not every cool thesis/product has a market.
But, if there was to be a water war, Lake Baikal in Russia would be near the top of my list of "bodies of water to fight over." It's the largest freshwater lake, near(ish) to the Russian border, and with ~24,000 cubic kilometers of water, it has 20% of the world's surface freshwater that's drinkable.
Sorry, this isn't true - water is an issue in numerous regions of the world.
And yes, not the same thing -- But in Australia the critical Murray-Darling basin was taken over by the Federal Government (from the 3 state that were otherwise at loggerheads).
Other parts of the world lack water, but not due to the lack of freshwater sources. Just the lack of technology to access or purify what was once clean water that they have.
But even so, there still aren't wars with countries that have water over water in the areas where the lack of water is a major issue. Over other things, yes. But not water.
I live, and have lived in numerous places that have a lack of water.
Water restrictions are commonplace in Australia - most major cities are facing the real prospect of running out of water. In many cities you can't water your lawn, wash your car, fill your pool, etc, etc. Some smaller town and regions are already in total crisis.
When I mention the Murray-Darling Basin in my other comment - that's a big issue. The federal government basically had to step in and take over the control of water from the states. This might not sound like a lot, but it was a big deal, one of the biggest uses of federal muscle in Australia's history.
Even in the UK and New Zealand -- which you'd imagine as having a lot of water -- have issues with water infrastructure and population. I've heard the Bay Area is also facing the prospect of water restrictions... If you do a search on "water restrictions" it doesn't look like this issue is unique: http://www.google.com/search?q=water+restrictions&ie=utf...
Technologies such as desalination don't necessarily solve the issue. It's simply not economic or feasible in most parts of the world. Australia is already heavily invested in water saving technologies - low flow showerheads, low volume toilets, grey-water, rainwater tanks.
There are large areas of Australia that have had their ground water massively overused - causing massive issues with salination (in some places you literally have salt forming on the ground). The fresh water sources in these regions is totally collapsing.
Sorry to go on about it. But where I live, water is a real issue. I can completely imagine it becoming an issue great enough for a country to war over.
Water contributes to long term survival in so many other ways. You need water to cook, grow food, maintain basic hygiene by washing you hands. You need water to clean a wound. You need water for sanitation. You need water for industry, so you can actually work.
Even in the most basic circumstances, this is a lot more than 25oz (many, many times more). In urban circumstances it's vastly greater. And this isn't even accounting for losses, contamination, interruptions in supply.
Anyway, I can see we're not going to convince each other either way. I'd encourage you to do a search around on the topic though -- there is a lot of material on the issue.
Building on that do you have any sources for problems in the UK. I can recall a couple of occasions, perhaps in the last decade or so, when hosepipe bans were either considered or implemented but I don't recall it having any effect on our quality of life.
A big part of Australia's long-term viability problem is too much water. Your farmers over-water their fields, washing out the nitrates into the sea, leaving the fields useless for growing crops and killing coral. Farming in Australia is more like mining, strip the resource then move on. Australia's problem is that it's bad at managing water, not that it has too little (as you later say).
In the UK our problem is that our water infrastructure was built by the Victorians, who were excellent engineers, but what they built has been badly maintained (to the extent that it was maintained at all) and we lose >25% of our water through leaks.
I am confused by their figures, though. "If they were to be self-sufficient in food, they would need ten billion cubic metres of water per year. As it is, they have only about one-third of that: enough to grow 15-20% of their food." Ten billion would grow 100%, but a third of the water grows no more than a fifth of the food? It shouldn't be that some of the current water supply goes to other uses; a couple of sentences later is a note that domestic and industrial uses should find rainfall alone to be enough.
How would tripling the amount of water available allow them to increase domestic food production by five or six times?
I believe they can reuse water in irrigation systems.
I'm not particularly shocked that "water wars" aren't common: no one really wants to be the nation that thrives by denying their neighbours basic resources for human survival.
Is it just that trade in oil is more easily controlled because (1) it has few sources, and (2) the economy of a country that sells food is itself hugely dependent on those sales? (that is, symbiosis is the best foreign policy?)
Although there might be some other issues as well.