---

---

---

---

Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds

---

---

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

Fear of water wars ungrounded

November 12, 2003

Water is a source of cooperation, rather than conflict, at least when it comes to armed conflict. States tend to find ways to reach an agreement rather than to engage in war over shared water resources. Sinister phrophecies about future water wars should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt.

This is the somewhat surprising conclusion which Anders J'¤gerskog, from the Department of Water and the Environment at Tema Institute, Linköping University, Sweden, reaches in his doctoral thesis.

J'¤gerskog is also an expert on development issues within the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The study centres on the process of negotiations and decisions about water management in the Middle East, one of the most conflict-ridden areas of the world and one where water is extremely scarce, per capita.

The waters of the River Jordan are of vital interest for the states of Israel and Jordan as well as for the Palestinians. All three parties are dependent on one another with regard to the administration of this water. Anders J'¤gerskog shows how the parties have been able to keep the issue of water out of the conflict even during the most violent periods of war and instead, have chosen to cooperate.

"It is striking", he says, "how the parties managed to maintain cooperation even when the Intifada broke out anew a couple of years ago."

The treaties that govern this cooperation are the 1994 Peace Treaty between Israel and Jordan and the Interim Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Even though this latter agreement is clearly unfair towards the Palestinians, it still constitutes a ground for cooperation in the Joint Water Committee (JWC).

"The conclusions reached in the thesis may also be significant for other states sharing a common water resource", claims Anders J'¤gerskog. He refers to the database over all the water agreements on international watercourses compiled by the geographer Aaron Wolf's Institute at Oregon State University. According to this database, the one and only true water war was fought 3,000 years ago!

The fact that states do not start wars over meagre water resources does not indicate that there are no conflicts, however.

"Of course there are conflicting positions in negotiations, and existing agreements are not always fair. What often happens is that might is right. But my point is that these conflicts do not lead to wars. The parties choose other means to solve them, or they do not solve them at all".

This will even hold true in the future, he believes, even though a growing population will give rise to an increasing water scarcity. States can compensate for this scarcity by importing water-intensive products. Moreover, future technologies for desalinating ocean water will become cheaper as well as technologies for recycling water.

The title of the thesis is "Why states cooperate over shared water: The water negotiations in the Jordan River Basin". Linköping Studies in Arts and Science #281, Linköping 2003

Linkoeping Universitet