Water to Die For

   

Who can forget the images of blazing oil wells, fires set in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s retreating soldiers. The 1990-91 Gulf War was over a precious natural resource that been of particular focus in the Middle East and adjacent Asia. While I can challenge you to live without relying on petroleum for a week, and that may well be an inconvenience, change the word to “water” (in any beverage), and you just might not last that week. Apocalyptic water war movies are many, and while they were once considered science fiction epics, it ain’t fiction no more! Water is life… and to many who lack it or wage war or are willing to resort to violence to get it… death.

Whether it is a central valley payoff to state administrator in California to shunt state water to those who can pay, the sneaky way Los Angeles siphoned off Owens Valley water to slake Southern California’s thirst or that notorious 1922 agreement among Western states allocating water among and between themselves, ignoring Indigenous People and dividing up water well in excess of actually available Colorado River resources (still a huge bone of contention in the region), water is and always has been a huge political issue in this country. Read the signs along California’s 99 or the I-5 as farmers complain about lacking enough water to grow their crops. So far, the battle over water in the American West is less violent than the bigger wars all over the earth, as climate change sucks the life out of rivers, lakes, streams and aquifers. But give it time.

As Ian James, writing for the August 26th Los Angeles Times points out, water seems to be worth dying for across the Earth: “In Pakistan, two groups of farmers started arguing in the fields and attacked one another with axes, clubs and bricks in a bloody fight over water… In South Africa, hundreds of people protesting a water shortage blocked roads with burning tires and hurled rocks at police… In Ukraine, Russian attacks on infrastructure left a city of nearly 1 million people without water.

“These are some of the 347 water-related conflicts that researchers have documented during 2023, a year that saw violence over water increase dramatically worldwide… The number of incidents reached a record last year, far surpassing the 231 conflicts recorded in 2022 and continuing a rising trend that has persisted over the last decade… The newly updated data compiled by researchers at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank in Oakland, show that water-related disputes — ranging from quarrels over water sources to protests over lack of clean water — have erupted into violence with alarming frequency, and that water systems have increasingly been targeted in conflicts… ‘The rise is very dramatic and disturbing,’ said Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute co-founder and senior fellow.

“The upsurge in violence, he said, reflects continuing disputes over control and access to scarce water resources, growing pressures on supplies driven by population growth and climate change, and ongoing attacks on water infrastructure where war and violence are widespread, especially in the Middle East and Ukraine… Details of last year’s incidents have been included in the latest update of the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology , a comprehensive global database on water-related violence.

“The researchers collect information about the incidents from news reports and other sources and accounts. They classify instances into three categories: where water or water systems have been a trigger of violence, have been used as a ‘weapon’ or have been targeted and become a ‘casualty’ of violence… Many regions of the world saw increases in the number of conflicts in 2023, including South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

“There were 131 instances of water-related violence last year in the Middle East, more than in any other region. The Israel-Hamas war pushed the number of incidents involving Israelis and Palestinians to 91, up from 45 events the previous year… ‘Water is being used as a trigger and as a weapon and as a casualty, all three categories, in the Middle East,’ Gleick said. ‘It’s partly a reflection on the scarcity of water in the region. It’s partly a reflection on disputes over control of land in the West Bank. And it’s partly a reflection of the massive destruction of Gaza after the Hamas attack in October, where infrastructure of all kinds has been targeted — civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, water systems, energy systems. It’s a reflection of the broad violence in the region.”

Water has its own set of dangers, from coastal storm surges to heavy flood from tropical storms, occasionally punctuated by a failing dam. Polluted water, water-borne diseases, from mosquito-carried malaria to dengue fever, cholera, typhoid, parasitic infection and killer chronic diarrhea, to name but a few of water’s killing ability. But the biggest threats to life, human and otherwise, have even more to do with water as the lifeblood of agriculture and the quest for potable drinking water for life itself, particularly human beings. And remember, that fresh water only covers 3% of the Earth.

As climate change has already imposed intolerable heat waves in the American West and Southwest, water shortages are rapidly becoming life-threatening. I wonder if future anthropologists will recognize why so many vibrant 21st century American cities were abandoned and why so much of what was rumored to have once been very productive agricultural land turned into deserts.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many here and in other affluent nations around the world simply believe not only that technology will totally solve the problem… but at least the affluent nations can buy their way out of harm’s way… and simply ignore the accelerating reality.