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November 9th, 2009
Via Terra Daily, a report that the UN is increasingly worried about potential water conflicts. As the article notes:
“…U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said the Middle East is “in a challenging situation” and would need stability to achieve development, emphasizing the need to fight climate change to help avoid the next major conflict in the embattled region: “Water War.”
…Migiro explained that the United Nations’ present efforts were concentrated on addressing security and peace-related issues as well as issues of development.
She warned that water availability in the embattled Middle East region was already affected by climate change.
“Projections are that by the year 2050, water accessibility for human consumption will have dropped by 40 percent. So this is critical, scary,” she said. “Probably the next major conflict will be about water.”
She, however, emphasized that “war is not an option and we are confident that as we are looking into the question of climate change, we will pay enough attention to water access and availability.”
Migiro explained that the U.N. Environment Program, U.N. Development Program and other agencies were closely working with countries in the region to address the question of climate change and water availability “because we do want to avoid the situation where the next conflict arises over water.”
Creating awareness in the Middle East concerning climate change is a key issue but the major focus remains on the Millennium Development Goals, which were developed at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 and include eight international development goals that 192 U.N. member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. The aim is to reduce extreme poverty and child mortality rates, fight disease epidemics such as AIDS, and develop global partnership for development….”