Globe’s many dry parts are turning into hotspots
Access to water is a powerful economic issue and crises will blow up as demand vastly outstrips supply, writes Richard Hiault
In August 2015, rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime sabotaged a water source a few kilometres north of Damascus. For three days, the Syrian capital was deprived of 90% of its water supply. A month later, an attack by the Saudi-led Sunni coalition in Yemen destroyed a bottled water factory in a zone controlled by Shia rebels. In December 2015, an air strike launched by Russian warplanes in Syria destroyed the water treatment infrastructure to the north of Aleppo. Never had the historical database of the Pacific Institute, which takes a census of conflicts and tensions around water, been so long. Peter Gleick, who in 1987 cofounded the think tank entirely dedicated to water issues, has noted a sharp increase of these types of attacks in the past 10 years. Some experts no longer hesitate to say that, in the 21st century, blue gold (water) will replace black gold (oil), sparking conflict between states. Since the dawn of humankind, no countries have ever gone to war over wat...
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