Sub-theme
6. Innovation for Water Governance and Management
Topic
6-7. Role of national and international law
Body
Together with urbanization and climate change, water scarcity in the world’s cities and rural towns are accelerating. Amongst these towns, people in developing nations are feeling the effects of this tragedy the most. Despite the efforts to innovate and engineer efficient and economically friendly water purification methods, other factors complicate fighting the crisis, such as foreign aids and investments, corruption, and most importantly, policies that govern the country’s domestic and foreign affairs. This paper first calculates the regions that pose a high water security threat by using Falkenmark’s ‘water barrier’ methodology, and discusses how historically, water resources have been one of the main objectives of interstate conflicts and how water has been used as an instrument of war as well as explains how the maldistribution of water resources around the world, together with a growing population and water demand, will create and increase the tension between neighboring countries and suggest that water is going to be a silent element of interstate politics, and has the potential to escalate into violence. This paper also discusses potential solutions to tackle the depleting water resources in populated cities in developing nations from policy and socioeconomic perspectives. Finally, this paper concludes that densely populated water-scare cities and small towns in poor countries in the Middle East and North Africa can be relieved through foreign aids and investments in infrastructure and by some policy reform. Though potential tradeoffs such as dependency on another country, political pressure, and corruption are inevitable, potential solutions are reviewed and discussed as well. It is unlikely that disputes over water could lead to war, rather countries would want to resolve them through negotiations and diplomacy. However, recent disturbing examples of water infrastructure being targeted as tools of war, and growing inequities of wealth around the world make it urgent to act fast on mitigating the possibility of any water-related tensions. Recommendations are given to experts and professionals in the water engineering sectors on collection and widely sharing data on water volume, flows, usages, and other ways to use water in ways that make more sense. Potential solutions are also suggested to policymakers and policy experts on ways to better understand the link between national security and water rights.