Shortages don’t cause war.
Biswas ’19 [Asit and Cecilia Tortajada; 2019; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Engineering at the University of Glasgow; Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Water Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore; International Journal of Water Resources Development, “Water Crisis and Water Wars: Myths and Realities,” vol. 35]
A direct by-product of the current limited thinking has been the increasing focus on ‘water wars’ between countries because of lack of water. This thinking is both linear and wrong. Simply put, the thinking goes that as countries run out of water because of steadily increasing demand, they may go to war over water over the uses and allocations of transboundary river waters. This unwarranted preoccupation with water wars can be seen by simply referring to Google. As of 20 June, ‘water scarcity’ produces 34.2 million results, and ‘water wars’, 654 million – almost 20 times as many. In fact, an eminent development expert, Ismail Serageldin (2009/2010), former vice president of the World Bank and chairman of the Global Water Partnership, predicted in 1995 that ‘the wars of the next century will be about water.’
The fact is that in the entirety of human history, no two countries have ever gone to war over water. The price of water all over the world is very low, and there is no global market or trade for water, unless one considers bottled water, which represents a miniscule fraction of global water use. All countries are steadily realizing that they have to significantly improve their management practices to reduce the demand for all types of water uses and to control water contamination. No country can increase water availability progressively, constantly and cost-effectively ad infinitum. If countries make determined and sustained efforts to improve water management practices, and there are signs that some are gradually doing so, their water problems can be solved. As Biswas (2006) noted in his Stockholm Water Prize Lecture, ‘if ever there is a war between two countries, it will never be because of water. Perhaps the 10th or 15th reason for the war could be water, but not the first three’. In the future, countries will have to manage their water significantly better, because they will have no other choice. ‘Water wars’ is a myth that has been around for at least four decades. There are no signs that they will occur in the foreseeable future anywhere in the world.