Are there really conflicts over water?
In April, Slate magazine published an article referencing another article that questioned whether water disputes really lead to armed conflict. The article was written for Nature magazine by Wendy Barnaby and she concludes that “Countries do not go to war over water, they solve their water shortages through trade and international agreements.”
Reporting like Barnaby’s is the reason why I started this blog. Often conflicts that are really rooted in disagreements about how to use water resources are represented as something else. The Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, is often depicted as a religious war, while the internal conflict between Balochis and the Pakistani government is portrayed as ethnic strife. While these elements do exist in the conflict they are not the root cause. Palestinians have rejected peace accords because they didn’t change the balance of power: Israel still had total control of all the water resources. No nation would agree to letting another nation control its entire water supply.
The building of the Narmada Dam has led to internal conflict in India
