A Tool to Settle Scores

Contests over water are set to increase, intensify.

- K J Joy and Shruti Vispute

WHAT WILL the world look like in the next quarter of a century? What role would water play especially in terms of global conflicts? Though it is rather difficult to predict or provide precise answers to these questions, we think three factors would play a decisive role—globally and also within countries and regions. These three factors are: climate changeinduced uncertainty, increasing urbanisation and industrialisation, and a more conservative political system.

All the three factors have implications for water—how much water we would have, how much we would use, how water would move from one use to the other or from one region to another, how it would impact the water that comes back from the uses as “return flows” and water quality, and, finally, how all these would either exacerbate or give rise to new conflicts.

A more uncertain world

The world is moving to increasing uncertainties and climate change is the single most important factor for this. Extreme weather events resulting in increasing droughts and floods is a sign of this. Climate predictions indicate that most countries are heading for water scarcity of varying degrees. Stationarity, long-term averages and predictions about river flows and water availability—the basis of most transboundary river-sharing—may not work any longer.