Pauchari 7 (R.K., IPCC chairman, “Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to the [IPCC]”, 12/10, p. 5-6, http://www.ipcc.ch/) ET
Climate change is expected to exacerbate current stresses on water resources. On a regional scale, mountain snowpack, glaciers, and small ice caps play a crucial role in fresh water availability. Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and the changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world’s population currently lives. There is also high confidence that many semi-arid areas (e.g. the Mediterranean Basin, western United States, southern Africa, and northeastern Brazil) will suffer a decrease in water resources due to climate change. In Africa by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change. Water scarcity will cause World War 3.
Stonehill 8 (Alex, co-founder of Common Language Project for humane international journalism, Z Magazine, 08, http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:ezAcQF4xJZMJ:www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/water/2008/0619ethiopconflict.htm+water+scarcity+world+war+3&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us)
Water is the new oil. While western politicians and consumers fret over the declining economy and increasing oil prices, the news from East Africa is that with a growing majority of the world living on less than a dollar a day, the liquid that fuels bodies is becoming even more contentious than the liquid that fuels cars. I've spent the last four months reporting stories about water from Ethiopia and Kenya, two countries at the forefront of the world's coming water crisis. The director of a local water NGO told me a few days after I arrived in Ethiopia in January 2008, "As you may know, Alex, the coming World War III will be fought over water, not oil." Variations on that refrain were echoed by aid workers and researchers across the region over the next several months. Women walk for miles each day to collect drinking water; farmers are pushed into deadly conflict by dwindling river flows, and city water supplies are drained by overzealous irrigation. The bigger picture that the smaller stories hint at is one of ecological disaster and conflict over resources that will affect millions and have repercussions around the world.
Stipp 4 (David http://www.climate-talks.net/2005-ENVRE130/PDF/20040126-Fortune-Pentagon-and-Climate.pdf) ET
Warming would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change. The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"—the natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis—it is too widespread and unfolds too fast. As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life. Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
Water scarcity is empirically a source of tension between neighbors. Despite the lack of water wars, climate change is likely to exacerbate conflicts over water.
Kolmannskog 8 ( Vikram , April, Norweigan Refugee Council, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf, Accessed 6/28/8) ET
Water scarcity may trigger distributional conflicts. Water scarcity by itself does not necessarily lead to conflict and violence, though. There is an interaction with other socio-economic and political factors: The potential for conflict often relates to social discrimination in terms of access to safe and clean water. The risk can therefore be reduced by ensuring just distribution so that people in disadvantaged areas also have access to the safe and clean water. As already pointed out, a main problem today (and probably for the near future) is still the so-called economic water scarcity, and good water management can prevent conflict. Within states, groups have often defended or challenged traditional rights of water use: In semi-arid regions such as the Sahel there have been tensions between farmers and nomadic herders. According to The Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change,41 the droughts in the Sahel in the 1970s and 1980s may have been caused partly by climate change and contributed to increased competition for scarce resources between these groups. The Tuareg rebellion in Mali in the beginning of the 1990s, is also mentioned as an example of a climate change-related conflict. Many of the drought-struck nomads sought refuge in the cities or left the country. The lack of social networks for the returnees, the continuing drought, competition for land with the settled farmers and dissatisfaction with the authorities, were factors that fuelled the armed rebellion.
In the past there have been few examples of “water wars” between states. In fact there are several cases of cooperation (for example between Palestine and Israel), but these have generally concerned benefit-sharing, not burden-sharing. According to Fred Pearce, the defining crises of the 21st century will involve water.42 He sees the Six Day War in 1967 between Israel and its neighbours as the first modern “water war”, specifically over the River Jordan. Most of the world’s major rivers cross international boundaries, but are not covered by treaties. According to Pearce, this is a recipe for conflict and for upstream users to hold downstream users to ransom. This could be helped by internationally brokered deals for sharing such rivers.