Executive Summary
In 2010, the United Nations declared safe drinking water and sanitation essential human rights that all other human rights were predicated. Strong competition over water resources leads to two possible outcomes; the environment suffers and people find clean water increasingly difficult to obtain. As water and sanitation become increasingly difficult to find, a government may provide fewer services for its people. When that happens, terrorists and revolutionaries find their necessary footholds to expand. Over time, national security may force at risk governments to enlist the aid of others. When transboundary waters are the root issue, governments often ultimately, work together or go to war. While there is evidence the Israeli “Six-Day War” was a “water war,” the historical debate continues. What is clear, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel now controls most of the region’s water supply and has no intention of giving it up. Other countries, equally mistrustful, like India and Pakistan, have overcome historical animosities to peaceably work out differences over transboundary water rights, but only after employing a trusted third party. Still other countries came to agreements on their own. A primary example are the countries associated with the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC). Over the last fifty years, more than sixty civil wars, coup d’ tats, and international skirmishes have threatened that water alliance, but the continues to work on basin wide initiatives to save Lake Chad from near certain destruction. These three case studies illustrate how basic criteria must be met before international agreements can be forged. First, there must be trust. Trust must exist between sovereign nations as well as the arbitrator ultimately employed. Without trust, no long term agreements will work. All agreements must be justified by, and predicated on, a perceived unifying threat or issue. Without that amalgamate, no agreement will last. Short of war, regime change, or some biblical event, regimes in control of limited resources cannot be compelled to assist their neighbors. Instead, policy makers must be peaceably encouraged to “do the right thing” for their neighbors. If done properly, sharing resources like water may ultimately bring lasting peace to areas historically embroiled in conflict.
On July 28, 2010, the United Nations proclaimed safe and clean drinking water and sanitation an essential human right necessary for full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. The proclamation called on United Nation Member States and international organizations to offer funding, technology, and other resources to help poorer countries provide clean, accessible, and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone. Although the Assembly’s resolution received 122 votes in favor with no votes against, it nevertheless had forty-one countries abstain from making their voices heard. So while the idea of water being a basic human right had merit for most, it seems not everyone agreed.The disagreement may stem from concerns over national security. Past examples exist that demonstrate people and nations fighting to keep or to get water.
Strong competition over water resources lead to two predictable outcomes: The environment suffers, and poor people increasingly have trouble getting water they need. Whenever shortages exist, the chance to make a substantial profits sometimes result in conflicts as poor people no longer can get the water they need. The resulting violence then makes economic development more difficult. As foreign investment decreases in conflicted areas, people and industries in those areas fail to thrive. Sovereign nations then find themselves unable to provide the basic services their people need. Terrorist organization, like Hamas, then provide the services the sovereignty cannot. The area becomes a breeding ground for terrorist organizations and revolutionaries and the government finds itself struggling to survive. Wherever water security is an issue, the problem often becomes too big for one nation to go it alone. Therefore, sovereign nations increasingly find it necessary to cooperate with one another; making water security not only an international issue, but a unifying force.
Transboundary water sources are especially vulnerable. Global climate changes, make international water security even more difficult. Choices must be made that effect large areas, often crossing boundaries. “Going it alone,” often is no longer an option. Instead, many nations finding themselves being forced work together, but some resist. Countries wanting to join forces could only do so after fulfilling certain criteria. If the criteria of mutual trust, a perceived unifying threat, and a mutually agreed upon moderator cannot be found, no how agreement on water security can be formed. Three case studies illustrate the point. In the first, several countries directly affected by Lake Chad created, without outside help, an international commission to deal with the problem of sustaining Lake Chad. In the second, because of mutual distrust, Pakistan and India could not agree how to best use the Indus on their own. Only after finding a trusted third party to arbitrate, did any agreement come about. In the third, because there is no perceived unifying threat, Israel sees no advantage in working with it neighbors on water issues. Examined together, these three case studies demonstrate what criteria must be met before water security agreements can ultimately work.
Over the previous four decades, water has been disappearing from Lake Chad at an alarming rate. According to the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), if nothing is done, within twenty years more than twenty-million people will be at risk of not having the water they need to survive without migrating away from the basin. The basin itself spreads over seven countries: Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Chad, and covers approximately one-eighth of Africa. The LCBC mandate, created in 1964, covers the entire basin area, not just the lake itself. Since the 1970s, the Lake Chad region has experienced a series of devastating droughts. Even at its fullest, Lake Chad only averaged an average depth of seven meters. Therefore, even though it was one of Africa’s largest freshwater lakes, the combination of natural events and man-made mistakes and mismanagement led to the lake shrinking to just one-twentieth its size in just thirty-five years. Now, with Sudan joined as an observer, the LCBC struggles to refill the lake because with irrigation projects now abandoned or left completely dry, people living in the area are increasingly at risk. Recently, the LCBC announced a bold new plan to refill Lake Chad using water that would otherwise have flowed into the open ocean.
In 2004, the LCBC came up with a novel plan to harness the Congo to refill Lake Chad. The idea was to divert 80 million acre feet of water every year from the Chari River and have it flow almost 1500 miles northwards into Lake Chad. According to Adamou Namata, Niger Water Minister and Chairperson of the LCBC, “If nothing is done, the lake will disappear.” In 2002, several governments met in the rain-forests of Central Africa and signed an agreement on sharing the waters of the Congo. They had hoped to raise five billion dollars for dams and waterworks that would first barricade the Ubangi River, at Palambo in the Central African Republic, and then reroute approximately thirty percent of the water north towards Lake Chad, instead of directly out to sea.
After the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, agreed to pay $2.5 million for a feasibility study of the project, a Canadian research group, CIMA-International, began the study.
In February 2013, CIMA-International released its final report. The CIMA agreed that if nothing is done to save Lake Chad, the lake would probably disappear altogether by 2025. However, while the CIMA International agreed the lake could be saved, it would cost a minimum of 14.5 billion dollars, not the five billion earmarked for the venture. Furthermore, the scheme will only work if regional cooperation continues between the countries in the Congo Basin and the Lake Chad Basin unimpeded.”
Even if proposed financing solutions work as intended, Lake Chad basin faces many challenges including: ecological, socioeconomic, institutional, political origins, variable and unreliable rainfall pattern. Additionally, the considerable variability of soil types promote droughts, desertification, and human-caused environmental degradation, and must be considered with the problems that result from deforestation and dam construction. Additionally, historical conflicts may re-erupt producing political issues over sovereignty and other security concerns. However, because of the large number of people who already completely depend on Lake Chad for their water needs, any major failure to the new water project will deprive critical water, and pose a huge and significant security risk to the entire regional population.
The LCBC acknowledges that additional concerns remain even if the project is completed without other issues. For example, people relying on a single water project for all their needs could be deprived of the water because there are no available substitutions. This could become a major issue because, “The complexities and the cascading failures and resulting disruptions among infrastructures will decrease the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts during man-made, natural, or technological hazards, or may result in common cause failures that leave planners and emergency response personnel unprepared to effectively deal with operational continuity and the impacts of these disruptions."
Historically, safeguarding the people in and around the Lake Chad Basin has been a major problem. Since the 1960s, when the main countries solidified their independence from the colonial powers, every one of the basin countries have had civil wars of some degree and some countries remain unstable. According research by Stucki and Niasse, since the 1960s, twenty-six coups and sixteen cases of civil unrest occurred in the region. Additionally, while the area has been relatively calm since 2002, the possibility of a sudden change continues to be possible because several of the countries remain relatively weak. Additionally, the war-torn countries also suffer from financial shortcomings. LCBC member states, that were supposed to provide yearly disbursements to the commission, had not been doing so. So the LCBC seems to be fully dependent on outside donor financing for the project. Those outside influences will affect the LCBC ability to maintain its work once the vast amount of money starts flowing and encourage international criminal groups and terrorists to fully integrate themselves into the region.
The LCBC is an example of a multidimensional international agreement that continued to work even as disputes like civil wars and violence historically plagued the area. The reason the LCBC has worked is that the problem of water security for every country in the area was greater than any one nation could solve on its own. Therefore, the water security issue was a uniting force and an example of how river system led to overcoming territorial disputes because of trust and need. However, this does not work everywhere. Instead, sometimes an outside trusted moderating force is needed. The conflict between Pakistan and India over the Indus is just such an example.
The international water conflict between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank is well documented. Because India controls the Indus headwaters and continues to build dams, and Pakistan does not trust India to stand by their word to allow the water to flow unimpeded, the unresolved disputes continue. Furthermore, attempting to control and profit from the Indus increasingly jeopardizes the water resource as diminishing Himalayan glacial runoff quantities shrink, add to tensions between India and Pakistan over water. As Pearce states, this could potentially lead to the world’s first nuclear exchange being triggered between India and Pakistan “because of events in the Himalayas . . . over water.” It is not totally unthinkable. Since 1947, India and Pakistan have had three armed conflicts since the two states formed the subcontinent. India created the first conflict when it cut the flow of Indus tributaries which Pakistan relied. Pakistan, fears that India repeat those actions if pressed, and so a delicate balance of international relations over trust and water rights remains.
Geographically, the Indus seven tributaries begin in the Himalayas and flows through India, through Pakistan, and almost two thousand miles later, into the Arabian Sea.
Today, Pakistan remains a “hydraulic civilization” relying on the waters and tributaries of the Indus River for its irrigation. To continue, Pakistan must overcome a series of challenges. Although Pakistan has harnessed the Indus to create the world’s largest continuous irrigation system, divesting effects of water-logging and salinity have led to extreme national floods. Therefore, each Pakistan success had led directly to new problems. For example, Pakistan faces the prospect that global warming is melting glaciers. As the snow and ice melts continue, less water will enter the Indus. What water entering the system is increasingly being trapped behind more Indian dams built upriver on the Indus tributaries. While India claims the dams only trap the water long enough to create electricity, many in Pakistan, who remember Indian, in 1948, stopped the water flowing into Pakistan. This resulted in Pakistan being “hit hard by the water shortage.” Therefore, the Pakistani’s fear the Indian’s may use the dams as a way to potentially coerce the Pakistanis, should a new crisis emerge. Therefore, besides water, a lack of trust remains a major issue too. However, Pakistan has other issues too.
Internally, Pakistan problems including trying to reconcile growing urban, irrigation, and the environmental demands of the Indus River, with diminishing quantities of available water. Therefore, Pakistan finds itself in the classic position of a downstream states, “At the mercy of others for its most basic resource,” India, however debates this by claiming Pakistan blames India and others for its reliance on the Indus, and further states Pakistan is getting all the water they needs, but because Pakistan water needs remain “spectacularly inefficient” because there is currently no penalty to be efficient.
Historically, the 1960 treaty between India and Pakistan, moderated by the World Bank became an example of successful negotiation when the President of the World Bank brought Pakistan and India together by getting them to agree they had common interests. This starting point led to a willingness to compromise. The World Bank argued that continued disputes would create a world view that foreign investments in the two territories would be too dangerous. Therefore, once it became clear that the issue of water rights had to be resolved before large amounts of foreign investments would take place in either country, the Indus Water Treaty was signed. However, that clarity took time. Three separate phases of conflicts and resolutions took place before the 1960 treaty was signed. Furthermore, it was only after the original Pakistani government was overthrown by a coup d'état that brought General Ayub Khan to power, that Pakistan agreed to the World Bank’s moderation. Pakistan developed the Pakistan Water Development Authority to work with India. In turn, India agreed to complete engineering works required by the World Bank’s proposal. In return, the World Bank agreed to financially contribute to the works. After decades of negotiations, the brokered 1960s Indus Waters Treaty bound both territories to share the flow of the river, each taking from three, out of the seven individual tributaries, with a major one, the Chenab, shared jointly.
The Chenab remains the largest source of water for the Punjab. It flows from India’s Kashmir to Pakistan. In 1999, India announced plans to build a large dam on the Chenab. In 2006, Indian engineers began building the dam in southern Doda, just before it crosses the boarder into Pakistan. According to Pakistan, the 525 foot high, billion dollar dam was a clear violation of the 1960 treaty. India disagrees, and states since the dam is only intended to generate hydroelectricity and will not remove water from the river, it is within India’s right to build the dam. However Pakistan continues to claim that since the dam could potentially stop water from flowing into Pakistan, that dam threatens Pakistan’s security. Therefore, Pakistan demanded the issue be arbitrated by the World Bank, but since India denies any breach to the treaty, India refused to submit the Chenab dam to adjudication and instead, continued to build. Eventually, the World Bank agreed with India, that the dam was not provocative and lent India money to complete the project. It is important to point out the World Bank continues to exercise power over India and Pakistan by either lending, or by threatening to refuse to lend money to India and Pakistan. If the World Bank either can no longer lend money, or if Pakistan or India no longer need the money, a very different dynamic could erupt. However, even if the World Bank ceased to be a major influence in relations between India and Pakistan, outside influence continue to moderate their international relations. For example, India sees China as direct threat to the region. Much of the water from the Indus originates in Tibet, part of which is now claimed by China in an ongoing boarder dispute. Any armed direct conflict between India and Pakistan could therefore potentially result in China entering the conflict because China’s long term goal is to become the entire region’s security force, similar to the United States role in the West. Therefore, India’s diplomatic policy remains to consistently avoid armed conflict unless being directly threatened with military action.
Even so, water continues to be a major issue in the region. Other examples contributing to area tension include wells near Islamabad and Rawalpindi falling more than 2 meters a year; groundwater wells near Gujarat, India needing to be dug more than a kilometer deep to reach potable water; over-pumping aquifers leading to salinization as sea water encroaches. In China, continuing collapse of the “Asian Water Tower” has led to China encroaching on waters traditionally claimed by Pakistan and India. Indian now has more than 4,300 large dams and has a plan to link thirty-seven rivers through a new series of dams and canals. Since China is the world’s most prolific dam builder, in 2008 China helped build 97 dams in 39 mostly developing countries, it would not seem unreasonable that China may “offer” help and guidance in any new dams being built in the disputed territory of Kashmir, even as China has increasingly become entrenched in water resources elsewhere. So while Lake Chad is an example of international cooperation coming from within, even as internal strife threatened to rip apart the coalition, and the Pakistan-India water treaty remains an example of water being shared through outside coercion, Israel is a primary example of a sovereignty citing vital national security concerns for refusing to relinquish water resources, and is willing to fight a war over water, if necessary.
Many scholars state a war over water will never happen. Some even claim that, “Since a water war has never actually occurred, the case supporting the war scenario is rapidly losing credibility.” However claiming water wars have never happened ignores the historical record. Throughout history, “Various irritants have fueled water wars” all over the globe. Numerous examples in the United States include range wars fought during the latter half of the nineteenth century and farmers in Twentieth Century California blowing up a water pipeline because water originally being used in fields was designed to be sent to Los Angeles. In other cases, farming protests led to violence and death along the Cauvery River in India, protests in Pakistan along the Indus, and in China over the proposed construction of the Three Gorge Dam. In 1992, twenty-five people died during water riots in Bangalore. In October 2002, after the worst drought in forty years, and India’s Supreme Court ruled against farmers in the Karnataka region, protesters there caused the local government to close schools and colleges. Nationally, the government suspended the trains. With the trains not running, businesses closed and many thousands more rioted. Police eventually restored order using tear gas before being forced to surround the main dams to keep angry farmers from physically attacking the dams.
While those cases cannot be considered wars in the traditional sense, Israel’s Six-Day War should be considered a water war. Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, wrote “The Six-Day War really began on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan . . . While the border disputes were of great significance, the matter of water diversion was a stark issue of life and death.” Sharon then quickly pointed out it was Syria, not Israel, who committed the first offensive act on the Jordan River. In other words, Syria’s effort to divert water from Israel directly affected Israel’s national security. Sharon’s statements prove the Six-Day War was a at least partially a war over water. Furthermore, as a result of the war, Israel’s “hydraulic geopolitical position” improved. Israel “acquired two of three of the Jordan headwaters, riparian access to the entire Jordan River, and access to the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank.” Therefore, the Six-Day War would rightly be called, by almost anyone’s definition, “a water war.” Since then, Israel got used to having ample water. Now, it has no intention of giving up the Golan Heights its water. Evidently, President Obama did not understand those implications when he suggested that, as did Clinton before him in 2000, that in the interest of building better relations with its neighbors, Israel should reconsider returning the Golan Heights. Of course Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused. Instead, Netanyahu flatly replied there would be no returning to the Pre-1967 war boundary lines.
While Netanyahu’s tone may make it appear that he was simply being stubborn, Tindall argues Netanyahu view was correct; returning the Golan Heights to Syria would have lessened, and not improved, Israeli national security. Not only does the Golan Heights play a strategic role as an important military buffer, but also because it provides important water resources. Concerning peace, one Israeli political scientist, Martin Sherman, wrote that some people state Israel should not give an inch if it meant “Implementation of proposed peace initiatives” would transfer seventy percent of Israel’s water supply to the Arabs.” Another pro-Israeli American pressure group argued, “Either Israel has sole control of her national water resources or its very survival is threatened.”
Today, Israel has three main sources of water. One aquifer runs from the Haifa in the north to Gaza in the south. Over pumping allowed Mediterranean saltwater to fill the porous rocks and while the water continues to be used for some applications, it is too salty to drink. A desalination plant is planned to help take care of that problem. The second source, the Western Aquifer is beneath the West Bank. The third source is the Jordan River. It currently provides the most water for Israel. While "the fate of the coastal aquifer is a private matter for Israelis, the fate of the West Bank aquifer is a matter of intense dispute between Israelis and Palestinians." Some Israeli’s claim “ceding water for peace” is a viable option, but others disagree.
The peace debate over water raises questions about Israeli Water Commissioner Shimon Tal’s claim that even with current plans to increase recycled sewage and increasing the number and capacity of desalination plants, it will not be enough. Furthermore, “Redistribution of existing water resources to the Palestinians is not an option.” Tal states Israel’s own water needs will soon outstrip the available resources as its own population and manufacturing grows. However, some of Tal’s own hydrologists disagree. They say no such rise in demand needs to occur. Instead, “It is patently ridiculous for Israel to use two-thirds of its water to irrigate crops that generate less than two percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.” Arie Issar, one of Israel’s most vocal hydrologists states, "People talk about water wars, but water can also be the basis for peace." As Issar noted, “We Israelis use too much drinkable water for irrigation when farming is no longer important for our economy. We do crazy things like turning fresh water into oranges and exporting them. The Arabs need that water. They should have it." Other Israeli hydrologists also agree, but for obvious reasons, Israel needs to keep its agriculture. Instead it just needs to be smarter about how it farms. For that reason, Israeli hydrologists argue that once desalination plants are developed and built on the large scale, recycled drinking water as treated sewage placed on farmland, “Would solve the problem.”
Whatever the final answer concerning Israel’s water issues, one thing is certain, until Jordan, Palestine, and Syria, formally give diplomatic recognition of Israel’s right to exist, Israel sees itself as having no moral obligation to aid its hostile neighbors. Furthermore, until a trusted third party member can be found to negotiate agreements, no successful transboundary will likely be found either. Last, unless Israel discovers some sort of legitimate reason why it should work with its neighbors, or to give up some of its cherished water, it will not.
In conclusion, Lake Chad, the Indus, and Israel’s water security, confirm how a clear threat to water security must exist before individual nations will accept a common solution for their collective water security concerns. If that threat is perceived as too large for a single nation to hand, as in Lake Chad disappearing, even civil wars and regional strife can be overcome. However trust must be present before agreements can be made. Although India and Pakistan both agreed that economic development of the Indus River would be a beneficial, mutual distrust hampered its development. Therefore, before any agreements could be reached, that issue of trust had to be resolved first. The Indus also demonstrates how employing a third party may help, but should be sought out by the parties themselves, and not simply thrusted upon them by outsiders. Furthermore, any arbitrator must be first be trusted and agreed upon by everyone effected before beginning. Last, Israel shows that a country must have some compelling reason for discussing water security questions with their neighbors. Without that overwhelming unifying force or compelling reason, the justification to give up water, or to change, does not exist. Short of war, regime change, or possibly some biblical event, regimes in control of scarce resources, like water, cannot not be compelled to help others. Instead, internal changes, like those currently advocated by some vocal hydrologists in Israel, may ultimately pressure policy makers to accept using their tightly controlled resources for peaceful and unifying overtures. If done properly, sharing resources like water may ultimately bring lasting peace to areas historically embroiled in conflict.
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