Business_Spotlight_No3_202..

20 Business Spotlight 3/2020 GLOBAL BUSINESS

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for more people. According to the UN, as

many as five billion people could expe-

rience water shortages by 2050. Recent

statistics from the Pacific Institute think

tank in California show that cases of vio-

lence linked to water has more than dou-

bled in the past ten years, compared to the

decades before.

“The machine-learning model is

‘trained’ to identify patterns using his-

torical data on violent conflict and polit-

ical, social, economic, demographic and

water risk,” said Charles Iceland, senior

water expert at the World Resources In-

stitute, part of the WPS partnership. He

said: “It looks at over 80 indicators in all,

going back up to 20 years. It is then able

to use what it has ‘learned’ about the cor-

relations among these variables to predict

conflict or no conflict over the next 12

months, given current conditions.”

Scarcity is putting people at risk

Jessica Hartog, a climate change expert with Inter-

national Alert, a WPS partner, highlighted Iraq and

Mali as two countries at risk. Malian farmers, cattle

herders and fishermen have been arguing over the

reduction of the Niger River’s water levels. Mean-

while, Iraqis — already angry that their basic needs

are not being met — protested last year after more

than 120,000 people were hospitalized after drinking

polluted water.

“Water scarcity has affected both Iraq and Mali,

largely due to economic development projects that

reduce the water levels and flow in rivers — a situ-

ation made worse by climate change and increased

demand due to population growth,” Hartog said. “In

Mali, we are concerned about the plans of the gov-

ernment and neighbouring countries to build dams,

further expand Office du Niger, which oversees

water management projects, and related irrigation

channels, which will further affect the water availa-

bility in the inner Niger Delta. This will affect more

than one million farmers, herders and fishers who are

fully dependent on the inner Niger Delta.”

In Iraq, Hartog said, a failure to address water con-

cerns and improve water services “directly threat-

ens Iraq’s fragile peace”. In Syria, meanwhile, water

scarcity and crop failure have caused many people

to move from rural areas to the cities, worsening the

civil war. In Iran, people living in Khorramshahr and

Abadan protested over polluted drinking water.

Water conflicts are complex

Susanne Schmeier, senior lecturer in water law and

diplomacy at IHE Delft, which is also involved in

the WPS project, said violent clashes over water re-

sources have occurred between local communities

and between provinces within the same countries.

“Violence is then exerted by non-state actors, poten-

tially even illicit groups, or representatives of certain

sectors,” she said. “Such local conflicts are much more

difficult to control and tend to escalate rapidly — a

main difference from the transboundary level, where

relations between states often limit the escalation of

water-related conflicts.”

Schmeier said water problems alone do not create

conflict or war, “but they can become ‘threat multi-

pliers’ when combined with other grievances, such as

poverty and inequality”. She added: “Once conflicts

escalate, they are hard to resolve and can have a neg-

ative impact on water security, creating vicious cycles

of conflict. This is why timely action is critical.”

SAEED KAMALI DEHGHAN is a staff journalist at

The Guardian. © Guardian News & Media 2020

Coming together for peace

The Water, Peace and Security (WPS) tool was developed

by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in

collaboration with IHE Delft, Deltares, International

Alert, The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, Wetlands

International and the World Resources Institute.

https://waterpeacesecurity.org

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Water scarcity in

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