Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
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- WATER WARS won’t happen – cooperation is likely Wolf 99
- Water used as a tool for international cooperation Wolf 05
Ext #2 – CooperationWater wars are a myth – even states that hate each other will cooperate over water Neubert and Scheumann, 03 (Susanne Nuebert, agriculture economist at the German Development Institute. Dr. Waltina Scheumann, Institute for Management in Environmental Planning, Technical Berlin University. “Water Stress – But No Water Wars.” Winter 2003. http://en.internationalepolitik.de/archiv/ 2003/winter2003/----water-stress------but-no-water-wars.html) The gloomy prognosis that water scarcity equals conflict equals war is plausible, however, only at first glance. A quick review shows that in the past fifty years alone, utilization conflicts for transboundary water resources worldwide were settled in 1800 agreements. Transboundary water resources have often even been a catalyst for cooperation among bordering states that were at odds over other issues. The best-known example is the Indus agreement of 1961 between India and Pakistan, which was signed at a time of extreme political tension and has weathered several wars over Kashmir since then. In practice, states on the lower course of a river, like Egypt and Iraq, were often the original users of its water and could thus claim the right of first use. Egypt, threatening military retaliation, was thus able to block utilization at the upper course of the Nile, and Iraq has simply stopped supplying oil to Turkey. In addition, since not all potential uses of the upper course have negative effects on those living downstream (for example, dams protect downstream states from floods, while reservoirs ensure the availability of water for all during dry spells), cooperation is in everyone’s interest. In 1997 Heather L. Beach and other American researchers at Oregon State University published spectacular findings in their Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Data Base. The last water war was waged 4500 years ago, they documented, between the two Mesopotamian city-states of Lagash and Umma. In a word, water wars are a myth. In today’s unsettled conflicts over the Jordan, Nile, and Euphrates rivers, there are usually other factors that come into play and have prevented cooperative solutions to date, such as the territorial and status disputes between Israel and Palestine, or security issues between Turkey and Syria. In another study of 460 constellations of upper/lower course riparian states, German academics Frank Biermann, Gerhard Petschel-Held, and Christoph Rohloff found thirty critical conflicts of interest, of which only seven reached a high conflict potential. Some of these cases have now been settled by contractual agreement. Even in the case of those transboundary rivers (with the exception of the Jordan river) where no agreements have been reached between states, there are signs of cooperative developments. Riparian states tend to favor non-military conflict resolution by such mediators as joint technological committees and joint water commissions to increase their water supply. The simple hydrological determinism on which the thesis of water wars is based has thus been refuted: water wars have no empirical reality. WATER WARS won’t happen – cooperation is likely Wolf 99, Ph.D., works in the Department of GeosciencesOregon State University, Aaron T. Wolf, “Water and Human Security”, Universities Council on Water Resources, http://ucowr.siu.edu/updates/pdf/V118_A5.pdf CONCLUSIONS: The global water crisis has led to a large and growing literature warning of future “water wars,” and pointing to water not only as a cause of historic armed conflict, but as the resource which will bring combatants to the battlefield in the 21st century. The historic reality has been quite different – we have not, and probably will not, go to war over water. In modern times, only seven minor skirmishes have been waged over international waters. Conversely, over 3,600 treaties have been signed over different aspects of international waters – 145 in this century on water qua water – many showing tremendous elegance and creativity for dealing with this critical resource. This is not to say that armed conflict has not taken place over water, only that such disputes generally are between tribes, water-use sectors, or states/provinces. What we seem to be finding, in fact, is that geographic scale and intensity of conflict are inversely related. Water used as a tool for international cooperation Wolf 05 Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University and Director of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database [A.T., 6-1-05, WorldWatch Institute, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/79] Directory: files -> documents documents -> North Mankato Taylor Library documents -> In the Red and Brown Water documents -> - documents -> I. Disaster Summary Sheet II. Tropical Cyclones documents -> Cbp and Trade Automated Interface Requirements Appendix: pga december 22, 2015 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> Cartographic Concepts for Realizing a Location Based umts service documents -> 1/ Background Statistics Human development index rank Download 2.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
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