ENVIRONMENT: Trying to Pre-empt Water Wars

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 20 1998 (IPS) - Fresh water, a potential source of conflict in many regions, is expected to be high on the agenda of environmental ministers from around the world at a Mar. 2-4 meeting here.

The meeting is being organised by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which says it has been moving to prevent conflicts from breaking out as a result of disputes over the sharing of fresh water.

“There are a lot of hot spots around the world,” says UNEP’s Jorge E. Illneca. “In the Middle East, there are disputes over the River Tigris. In Africa, there are disputes over the Nile waters and so on.”

He told journalists here this week that UNEP was committed to play a role in trying to promote agreements for the equitable sharing of freshwater around the world.

“There are few international agreements to provide for the sustainable management and use of water resources contained in about 300 shared international river basins around the world. The potential for conflict or water wars is great, and this issue needs urgent political attention,” said Illneca.

Klaus Topfer, the new executive director of UNEP, said the issue of freshwater was at the top of UNEP’s agenda. “UNEP must be in the leading role in this sphere to identify hot spots around the world and sound early warning bells in order to arrive at a better solution for the future,” he said.

Topfer said he was transforming UNEP into a moderator and mediator on water conflicts. “We must be integrated in the peace policy in the future,” he said.

Water problems are acute in West Asia and parts of Africa, particularly the Sudano-Sahelian belt and the Horn of Africa, he said. These locations also experience high evaporation rates, high levels of anticipated future water demands, and potential transboundary problems associated with water resources.

“Adequate supplies and quality of freshwater will soon become problematic in those areas of West Asia, Africa, and the parts of Latin America that have megacities,” said Topfer. “In some cases, competition for water may lead to conflicts over transboundary resources.”

Illneca said UNEP’s strategy was always to try to bring governments together and mediate the difficulties they are facing. “We have done this to a degree of success in the Zambezi river basin, in the Lake Chad basin, in Lake Titikaka, which is shared by Bolivia and Peru,” he said.

“For example, when we did the diagnosis study on Lake Titikaka, there were massive plans to use the waters of Lake Titikaka for irrigation which could have caused very serious problems because there was competition among the countries to use that water for irrigation.

“We held a meeting and jointly agreed that we should keep the water limit below 33 cubic metres per second. Then, we moved towards trying to get those countries to institutionalise that cooperation through a convention, through another legal instrument,” he explained.

“What’s very important is that the legal instrument has to lead to an action plan for joint cooperation among the governments where there is constant dialogue among themselves over their problems, over how to tackle their problems and how to use their resources,” said Illneca.

According to UNEP, the pressure for freshwater is greater in Africa than anywhere else in the world. “Africa has 19 of the 25 countries in the world with the highest percentage of populations without access to safe drinking water,” said Illneca.

The availability of water in Africa is highly variable both in space and in time. Precipitation over the continent varies from practically zero over the Horn of Africa and the Namib Desert to more than 4,000 mm/year in Sudan’s Western Equatoria region. A large proportion of the continent is semi-arid, receiving between 200 and 800 mm/year of variable rainfall.

UNEP says Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia are among the countries currently suffering water scarcity and stress.

The agency is currently engaged in an attempt to solve a dispute between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the use of the Nile’s water, which they share. “UNEP has had an authority with the Nile basin countries to prepare a diagnostic study of what the problems are in the Nile basin,” said Illneca. “But it’s such a sensitive issue that in this particular case, it is the prerogative of each country to do its own diagnosis of what its problem are there.

“But this is just a road to get them to begin to discuss more and more of the communalities of the problems that they face.”

UNEP is also fighting to ensure that the world has safe drinking water, according to Topfer, who said an estimated 25,000 people died each day as a result of poor water quality.

“Indeed, waterborne diseases still represent the single largest cause of human sickness and death world-wide,” he noted.

“Some 1.7 billion people, more than one-third of the earth’s population are without safe water supply. In addition, an estimated one-quarter of the earth will suffer from chronic water shortages in the beginning of the next century,” he said.