Fresh water is crucial to sustaining human life. At a time when most climate change scenarios forecast changes in relative abundance of this critical resource, concern is warranted. This brief addresses the concern that changing precipitation patterns will be a cause of future interstate conflict, an issue that is largely neglected in climate change studies. Pushing beyond simple theories about resource-based conflict, it utilizes important concepts of trends (long-term means) that may affect the baseline probability of conflict, and triggers (short-term deviations) that may affect the probability of conflict in the short run. The findings illustrate that higher long-run variability in precipitation and, to a lesser extent, lower mean levels of precipitation are associated with the outbreak of militarized interstate disputes, or clashes short of full-blown war. In contrast, joint water scarcity – defined as both countries experiencing below mean rainfall in the same year – has a conflict-dampening effect.
Water is a critical natural resource. It is necessary for sustaining human, animal, and plant life, provides a variety of ecosystem services, and is an increasingly important source of electrical power. Despite its centrality to human existence, nearly one billion people lack reliable access to clean drinking water. A 2009 report by the Water Resources Group projects that by 2030 annual global freshwater needs will reach 6.9 trillion cubic meters, which is 64 percent more than the existing accessible, reliable, and sustainable supply.
This forecast, while alarming, likely understates the magnitude of the challenge, as it does not account for the impacts of global climate change on hydrological systems. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts an increase in total precipitation at the global level, regional patterns will vary significantly. Rainfall will likely decline by more than 20 percent across North Africa and the Middle East, central Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean, Southern Africa, the eastern Amazon basin, and western Australia, leading to decreases in water availability of 10 to 30 percent. The IPCC also forecasts a 90 percent likelihood that variability in rainfall will increase, leading not only to more numerous dry spells, but also to more extreme precipitation events and flooding.
Water’s critical role in the survival of human life, combined with imminent changes in its relative abundance, generates concern that this significant resource will be both a cause of future conflict and a source of bargaining power for states that control access to surface and groundwater supplies. Policy discussions of climate change impacts on water security have tended to focus on declining stocks of freshwater resources – absolute scarcity – as the primary driver of conflict. This discourse is rooted in a neo-Malthusian characterization of the relationship between carrying capacity and violence: declining or degraded stocks of natural resources, for which no substitutes are available, spark distributional conflicts.
The prospect of conflict over water resources is most clear in shared river basins, in which surface freshwater is shared between two or more states. In these cases, river water constitutes a common pool resource whose consumption is rival: one country’s increasing consumption necessarily leaves the other country, or countries, with less. Policy discussions have focused on potential links between climate change and conflict that may occur through changes in declining mean levels of freshwater abundance from other sources.
For the complete article, please see International Relations and Security Network (ISN).
