The document discusses water resources and the global water crisis. It notes that 97% of the world's water is salty or otherwise inaccessible, and of the remaining 3% of freshwater, nearly all is locked up in ice caps or underground. Only 0.03% of total water is easily accessible. It then outlines issues like the billions of people without safe drinking water or sanitation, and millions of deaths annually from water-borne diseases. Climate change also threatens to exacerbate water stresses. While water conflicts do occur, most water is actually shared cooperatively between nations, with many existing water treaties and agreements. Overall water issues will continue to be a major global challenge.

1. The World’s Water
• 97% of the world’s water is salty or brackish
• Of the remaining 3% that is freshwater, 99% is in
inaccessible polar ice caps, glaciers or deep aquifers
• 0.03% of the total is easily accessible freshwater

2. Global Water Crisis
• 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation
• More than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking
water
• 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal
diseases
• Every 3 seconds, a child dies from water born diseases
• At least 250 million illnesses (5-10 million deaths)
• Water-related disease costs
US$125 billion/yr.
(Would “only” cost
US$7-50 billion/yr. to resolve)

3. “We shall not finally defeat AIDS, tuberculosis,
malaria, or any of the other infectious
diseases that plague the developing world
until we have also won the battle for safe
drinking water, sanitation and basic health
care.”
Kofi Annan
United Nations Secretary-General
May 2001

4. The world resized according to
freshwater availabilty

5. Water Stress
Source: IWMI, 2000

6. Climate change – the facts
• Sufficient evidence that Rising atmospheric
temperatures
climate change is real
• Climate change is more
than an unprecedented Rising sea levels
environmental challenge
– it is a massive
development, economic
and social challenge. Reduction in
snow cover

7. Climate change
Security implications:
• Increasing scarcity and variability of renewable resources
– Declining resource base
– Increased demand
• Sea-level rise
– Displacement?
• Intensification of natural disasters
– Migration

8. Natural Resources
• Overexploitation,
pollution,
mismanagement, scarcity
or abundance of natural
resources:
– Exacerbated by climate
change
– Resulting in increased
competition, turbulence,
migratory movements and
conflict and insecurity?

9. Water Wars?
“The next war in the Middle East will be fought over
water, not politics.”
Boutros Boutros Ghali, 1991, 1997, 2005
“Wars of the next century will be over water, not oil.”
Ismail Serageldin
“Fierce competition for freshwater may well become a
source of conflict and wars in the future.”
Kofi Annan

11. > 270 Shared River Basins
Source: TFDD

12. Whare indicators of conflict?
100 GIS layers by basin
• Geopolitical
– Boundaries
– Events
– Democratization
• Biophysical
– Average annual runoff
– Projected water stress
– Climate change (precip and T)
• Socio-economic
– Population
– Human Poverty Index
– GNP Source: TFDD

13. The Facts
Formal War 0
Military Acts 37
Hostile Acts 56
Verbal Hostility 414
Neutral 96
Verbal Support 628
Non-military agreement 436
Military Support 7
International Water Treaties 157
Source: http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu

14. Water Myths & Water Facts
Myth # 3: Causes of conflict include:
• Climate
• Water stress
• Population
• Level of development
• Dependence on hydropower
• Dams or development per se
• “Creeping” changes:
» general degradation of quality
» climate change induced hydrologic variability

15. What are indicators?
•Sudden physical changes or lower institutional
capacity are more conducive to disputes:
•Uncoordinated development: a major project
in the absence of a treaty or commission
•“Internationalized basins”
• General animosity

16. Institutional Resiliency
Transboundary water institutions are
resilient over time, even between hostile
riparians, even as conflict is waged over
other issues.

17. Conflict at different levels
• Irrigation and agricultural use
• Industrial use
• Household use
And: cooperation and conflict almost always co-
exist.

18. Darfur Ethiopia
“Darfur is an environmental
crisis – a conflict that grew
Shrinking resource base
at least in part from exacerbated by
desertification, ecological – Population growth
degradation and a scarcity of
– Environmental
resources, foremost among
the water” degradation
– Climate change?
UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon
Sept. 2007

19. Institutional Resiliency
Transboundary water institutions are
resilient over time, even between hostile
riparians, even as conflict is waged over
other issues.

20. 1760 river floods over the period 1985-2005
175 floods shared between countries

21. Comparison floods and shared floods
100%
40.7%
75%
67.3%
All River Floods
90.1% 85.9%
50%
Shared riverfloods
59.3%
25%
32.7%
9.9% 14.1%
0%
# of floods Casualties Displaced Damage

22. Transboundary Floods
Formal War 0
Military Acts 0
Hostile Acts 0
Verbal Hostility 8
Neutral 3
Verbal Support 16
Non-military agreement 31
Military Support 0
International Water Treaties 9
Source: Bakker 2009

23. African continent
33% of floods in Africa were
transboundary

24. 34 institutions for 16
basins
77% of basins: no
transboundary water
institutions
***
4 institutions focused
on flood issues

26. Summary
Where should transboundary flood-related institutional capacity be
increased?
• 43 basins without institutional capacity
• 12 basins with history of multiple shared floods :

27. Challenges
• Links climate change, environmental degradation
and conflict?
• Environmental peacemaking?
• Land degradation, deforestation, climate change,
water scarcity, pollution
• Threaten global, national and human security
• Can contribute to conflict
• Can exacerbate poverty and migration

28. Scope of PBL DGIS research on adaptation
Adaptatie: vraag van DGIS
• Focus ontwikkelingslanden
• Kosten en baten van adaptatie-opties
• Hoe te komen tot effectieve
adaptatiestrategieën
Relatie ontwikkeling adaptatie

29. Scope of PBL DGIS research on adaptation
• Focus 1: developing countries
• Focus 2: climate change water land use
• Encompassing
– Drought
– Floods
– Salinisation of deltas
• Options and costs of adaptation
• Synergies/trade-offs with MDG strategies, conserving
biodiversity, forestry/REDD, biofuels

30. Interactions within river basins

31. Assessment:
options and costs of adaptation
Addressing:
- Droughts
- Floods
- Salinisation in deltas
Types of measures
- Adjustment of behaviour/management
- Technical measures
- Land use development
- Migration (tipping points?)

32. WATER STRESS
?
AQUIFERS

33. Water & Cooperation
“But the water problems of our world need not
be only a cause of tension;
they can also be a catalyst for cooperation
….If we work together, a secure
and sustainable water future can be ours.”
Kofi Annan, February 2002