In talks I have given and in conversations with other scientists, I’ve discussed the likelihood that future wars may be fought not over property or other causes but over water. In the Southeast, we’ve seen lawsuits over who has the right to use water and who decides how much (which I won’t get into because one such lawsuit between Florida and Georgia is underway now). Across the world, limiting someone’s access to water may doom them to a meager existence since water is needed to grow food, or even starvation if the region goes into a drought and further limits water supplies. One example is this story from Al Jazeera on the limitation of water to Palestinians on the West Bank, which you can read here. Obviously, this is one side of the story since Israel did not provide their rationale for withholding water to the article writer, but it highlights what can happen when water or lack of water becomes a weapon. Similar stories can be told in Egypt, where a dam in Ethopia upriver from the Nile delta may cut water to Egypt by a significant amount, especially in the years when the dam is filling.
