CIAO DATE: 10/04

From Water 'Wars' to Water 'Riots' - Lessons from Transboundary Water Management

Abstract

'If there is to be water related violence in the future, it is much more liable to be like the 'water riots' against a Bechtel development in Bolivia [Cochabamba] in 1999 than 'water wars' across national boundaries' (Wolf et al. 2003:50)

Over the last decade, water scarcity has increasingly been coupled with international security. Due to the nature of water – a fluid life-necessity and a key ingredient in economic development, driven by gravity across boundaries – it has been anticipated that water may trigger international conflicts – the so-called water wars – in the future.

In 1995, the World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin said that '. . .many of the wars of this century were about oil, but wars of the next century will be about water' (New York Times, August 10, 1995). In a similar vein, in 2000, UN secretary general Kofi Annan suggested that '. . . fierce competition for freshwater may well become a source of conflict and war in the future'.

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