WATER POLITICS

On June 6, 2023, bombs hit and destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine and eliminated its hydropower generation, draining the massive reservoir behind the dam and flooding four cities and several dozen villages downstream (Gleick et al. 2023). The flooding left at least 50 people dead and hundreds missing—perhaps dead (Kullab and Novikov 2023). It caused contamination from pollutants picked up from sites along the river such as wastewater treatment plants and landfills, as well as contaminants that had been locked up in waters and soils behind the dam (Vyshnevskyi et al. 2023). Losing the reservoir, which had been the largest on the Dnipro River, also cut off the cooling source for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and the water supply for 580,00 hectares of crops—about 2,239 square miles, or an area larger than the state of Delaware (Gleick et al. 2023). It was also the drinking water source for an estimated 700,000 people (Mirovalev and Mirovalev 2023). The repercussions of this attack are likely to last from years to decades.

Attacks on water infrastructure and water supplies are not new. Records of water-related conflicts go back 4,000 years to Sumeria, where the neighboring city-states of Umma and Lagash fought over water and irrigated lands. In that instance, the attacks went back and forth for a century. (See Figure at top of page, or click here for the interactive version.)

In more recent history, water has been part of many international conflicts. In May 2023, a water-rights dispute triggered a violent clash along the Helmand River between Iran and Afghanistan (Gambrell 2023). In Israel and Palestine, even before the current war that’s left water and wastewater systems destroyed in Gaza (UN-OCHA 2023), there have been more than 100 documented violent incidents between the two sides, with attacks on water wells, water pipes, and water treatment plants and violence over water allocations and access.

These are just a small number of examples of water-related conflicts from around the world. The Water Conflict Chronology—an open-source, online database created and maintained by the independent water research and policy nonprofit, the Pacific Institute—contains more than 1,600 such instances from 2500 BC to present day (Pacific Institute 2024). It tracks water-related conflict in three forms: As a trigger, when water has been a trigger of violent conflict; as a casualty, when water or water systems have been damaged or destroyed during conflicts; and as a weapon, when water or water systems have been used to intentionally harm people or property (Gleick and Shimabuku 2023). These categories are helpful to understanding why these conflicts start, and to discern solutions to prevent, mitigate, and recover from water-related conflict.

A few examples can help clarify the three forms of conflict. For most people, when they hear the term “water wars” they imagine two armies from neighboring countries fighting over a water source. But in modern times, subnational, small-scale conflicts triggered by disputes over water access, allocations, or control are the most common. For example, water triggered several violent conflicts in South Africa in the late 2010’s. The drought in the Western Cape at the time—when Cape Town’s water supplier infamously declared an impending “Day Zero” for the city’s water supply—was notably severe (Wolski 2018). At least a dozen protests turned violent over the lack of water and sanitation, rising water prices, poor water quality, and water-supply outages. There were reports of protestors burning tires to block roads and throwing rocks at cars and businesses, police forces responding with rubber bullets, and injuries sustained by both protestors and police forces. In at least one instance, a protestor was killed (Mabena 2017). Fights between citizens also broke out at water points, such as in Cape Town, where citizens had lined up to wait to get water from a local spring (Chambers 2018).

Exacerbating the extremes in South Africa’s hydrology is an inequitable distribution of basic drinking water and sanitation services, particularly for the poorest and more rural populations. This is despite South Africa’s progressive policy on water access, which constitutionally mandates everyone has the right to sufficient water.

As well as an instigator of discord, water can also become a casualty of conflict. Militaries have long recognized that gaining control of water systems, destroying access to water supplies, or damaging and rendering useless critical infrastructures like drinking water systems and dams can help win battles and wars. In Yemen between 2015-2022, Saudi-led airstrikes and Houthi counterattacks were responsible for more than 100 incidents of the damage or destruction of water tankers, bottling stations, water-system offices and infrastructure, wells, and water-storage tanks. Water staff and civilian lives were not spared in many of these attacks.

The third type of water-related conflict is when water is used as a weapon. This can occur when dams are attacked and destroyed or levees are cut, causing violent flooding in downstream communities or cutting off water supplies to communities. It can also take the form of poisoning drinking water.

In Iraq in 2014, Islamic State militants were reported to have closed the Falluja Dam floodgates on the Euphrates River, diverting water over an irrigation channel into a side valley, inundating land up to 100 kilometers away (about 62 miles), and placing parts of the city of Abu Ghraib under up to four meters of water, or nearly 10 feet. More than 10,000 houses and 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of farmland were flooded, and water for millions of people in the Iraqi cities of Karbala, Najaf, and Babil was cut off for a time. In another incident, the Islamic State deliberately contaminated drinking water with crude oil in the Balad district of the Salahaddin Governorate of Iraq. The poisoned water supplies were reported to run across Syria from Aleppo to Deir ez-Zor, to Raqqa, and all the way into Baghdad, Iraq—a distance of about 736 kilometers, or about 458 miles.

Our data show that water-related violent conflicts are increasing. When reviewing all water-related conflicts from the year 2000 to the present—a time period when the media, governmental and non-governmental reports, and improved access to real-time information have made reports of these events relatively accessible—there has been a notable rise in the number of incidents in which water has been a trigger or a casualty of conflict. Researchers have found inequitable access to and control over water resources, degraded water quality, poor or non-existent water governance and sharing protocols, and the increasing impacts of climate change on water availability to all be factors that contribute to water-related conflicts. And despite international laws prohibiting the targeting of civilian infrastructure, intentional attacks on water systems are on the rise.

Water-related conflict has been most pronounced in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern Asia (i.e., India, Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan). Notably, an increasing number of these conflicts are occurring at the sub-state level, such as between opposing militant groups or between groups with different ethnic and cultural heritages, for example herders and farmers in the Sahel region of Africa. There have also been a number of violent conflicts between citizens seeking to protect or restore a river or water source and militarized police, police-like security forces, or actual military forces. Several of these conflicts have occurred in Latin America, such as the 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, an environmental and indigenous rights defender from Honduras who had been organizing her community against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque River (Lakhani 2020).

Another sign of the times is an increase in cyberattacks on water systems (Lyngaas 2024). It’s difficult to know the actual frequency of these attacks because water system operators and governments may be reluctant to disclose cyberattacks for fear of raising customer concerns or for security reasons. But mainstream organizations like the American Water Works Association have taken enough notice that they provide courses on how water operators can reduce their vulnerability to cyberattacks (AWWA, n.d.).

The United Nations declared World Water Day 2024 to be the year of “Water for Peace” and has called on governments, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens to cooperate on water to help bring peace, stability, economic opportunity, and environmental rejuvenation to communities around the world (UN Water 2024).

While those goals are ambitious, there are real opportunities for creating and sustaining peace through water. These approaches range from technical and economic methods to political and legal tools and include policy and governance strategies (Gleick et al. 2020). Of course, what works in one place may not work in others, depending on factors such as cost-effectiveness, political viability, and cultural appropriateness.

Technical solutions to resolving and mitigating water-related conflict focus on reducing pressure on water resources, reducing water demand, and improving water quality. In many countries, municipal drinking water distribution systems lose an estimated 45 to 50 percent of their treated drinking water before it reaches end-users (Dighade et al. 2014). Technical fixes—repairing leaks in water infrastructure, improving water-use efficiency, installing water meters, and upgrading billing systems—can reduce revenue losses, improve utility financial stability, and contribute to more consistent and affordable water services.

Another approach is identifying and harnessing alternative water supplies, consequently improving supply diversity and resilience to natural hazards. For example, Namibia—one of the driest countries in sub-Saharan Africa—is home to the first major city in the world to pursue a water reclamation method known as direct potable reuse (Espinola 2017), a process by which municipal wastewater (i.e., water discharged to the sewer that carries waste from sinks, bathtubs, toilets, and other appliances) is treated and cleaned to drinking water standards, so it can be reused again and again. In other parts of the world, stormwater, brackish groundwater, and desalinated seawater are being used to bolster local water supplies and reduce competition over limited natural surface and groundwater resources.

Economic incentives and other financial tools offer an approach to alleviating water access challenges, creating greater social safety nets, and supporting livelihoods or other vital industries like agriculture. Yet, they can also produce unintended consequences.

For example, agricultural subsidies can help farmers obtain access to water, giving their business a better opportunity to survive and thrive, with the potential for greater societal benefits such as improved food security. But subsidies for irrigation water can also distort the value of water and contribute to inefficient and unsustainable water use, leading to more—not less—water insecurity.

Meanwhile, in other cases, subsidies—such as grants to build water supply infrastructure—may be the only viable option for urgently addressing tense situations. As one example, in the early 2010s, the European Union gave a grant to build a saltwater desalination plant in Gaza to address water insecurity amid water conflict with Israel (UNICEF 2018).

Institutional reforms and improvements are needed most immediately in places where extreme inequalities in economic, social, and environmental outcomes are being experienced.  These include working to expand stakeholder and community engagement on water projects (not only in name, but also in action) and formulating and implementing policies that enhance gender equality in decision-making processes. In Niger and Burkina Faso, for example, USAID water projects have worked to engage local leaders and expand participation of women and young people in leadership roles at local water committee management meetings (USAID 2022).

Political and diplomatic approaches to reducing and mitigating water conflict can take the form of cross-agency collaboration, water-sharing and transfer agreements, and legally-binding ecological flow commitments. Treaties and agreements like these exist all over the world; the Mekong River Agreement, for example, governs the lower portion of the river through a joint commission created by Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Another needed approach involves improved enforcement of international humanitarian laws that protect civilian infrastructure. While many international laws prohibit attacks on water systems, enforcement of those laws has been extremely rare.

Water and conflict trends are going in the wrong direction. Action to prevent, mitigate, and recover from these conflicts is possible and available but insufficiently applied. Investments in the broader effort to create more equitable, sustainable, resilient societies are urgently needed. The good news is that we no longer lack the technological capability to create that world, and action at all levels of society, from the local to the global, will help to foster peace and sustain and protect water resources for everyone.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Peter Gleick and my father-in-law, Maurice Shimabuku, for their review and feedback on early drafts of this article.