Water Wars
Most Americans don’t wonder if water will pour out the faucet as it always has. We are blissfully ignorant of the national and global water struggles, present and future, that are the result of trends that are not going away. One big one is population. Population increases (which will continue to increase in the foreseeable future barring another bubonic plague) don’t just mean more consumption of drinking water. They also mean more crops to water.
Another factor is the lifting of millions out of poverty in China, India, Brazil, et al. The dramatic rise of middle classes in these countries means more water demand per capita. More people/municipalities have the capacity to purchase more water and more people have the capacity to purchase more food. Couple that with some disastrous protectionist agricultural policies in ours and other countries and it is easy to see that water could become one of the more contentious issues if not the most contentious global issue of the next millennia.
As a comparatively less significant but close to home example, look at my home state, California. You may have heard of the California’s “Water Wars.” In 1913, Los Angeles began diverting water from the Owens Valley, one of the deepest valleys in the United States, located on the east side of the Inyo Mountains from the San Joaqin Valley. Soon after, Owens Lake completely dried up and local farmers erupted in violence. At the time the aqueduct was constructed, Los Angeles’ population was about half a million. By 1970, the population was approaching 3 million, which lead to the construction of a second aqueduct. In the time since the first aqueduct was constructed, Owens Valley has become a dustbowl and tensions have persisted. Only last year did Los Angeles begin rewatering the Valley.
Yet, California is stymied right now in its attempt to forge a comprehensive water policy. Water is a zero-sum game. To supply enough water for farmers, you take water from the fishery industry. To supply enough water for some municipalities, you often have to divert water from ecosystems that can have tremendous implications for hunters. These are the complications among people who aren’t on the brink of critical dehydration.
Sudan (really all of Africa), Pakistan, and the West Bank in particular face critical water shortages. Turkey’s and Syria’s water disputes go back decades and have always been an obstacle to peace between them. Threatening to cut off water supply to downstream neighbors, as Turkey has done since the 80s, has become as power a weapon as any bomb. Don’t expect this to go away.
I am by no means an expert on water policy and didn’t write this to propose any solutions to these problems. I am currently advocating that they need to be talked about a lot more. Though related, this environmental issue in my opinion dwarfs climate change. It will be the paramount conflict for every generation that follows this one.
interesting post !
You are right about this being a dominant issue in the next decades. It may not have to be a zero sum game. I know there are some techno-optimists out there who would say that technology can help increase the supply of fresh water.
Right now techniques like desalinization are very expensive, but maybe they will get more efficient or new techniques will emerge when there is enough demand.
This also touches on the often ignored impact of geography on politics. Fresh water reservoirs are a matter of geography. Where a nation is positioned geographically, vis-a-vis other nations, determines a lot more than we seem to acknowledge. Water as the new oil?
I’ve been meaning to write an article for a long time now with that UNICEF map. That has to be the best predictor of resource-based conflict for the next generation.
Water law, in the United States, is typically comprised of a hodgepodge of outdated rules, decades-old regulations, court cases harkening back to a more simpler time, and recently created municipal districts, all of which, more often than not, create jurisdictional conflicts and muddy guidance.
Unless and until the Federal government enacts comprehensive legislation regarding the use of surface and groundwater (and there may be Constitutional impediments in doing so), states will continue to have difficulty implementing anything remotely resembling a sensible water policy.