Water Wars? Tension in the Nile River Basin

Abstract

With an ever-growing world population, rising living standards, pollution, and climate change's uncertain weather patterns, it became almost a platitude that “the previous war was about oil, the next war will be about water.” Of all water-related situations that might lead to war, the Nile basin tension was probably most likely to escalate. In the early 2000s, Ethiopia conceived a plan to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam across the Blue Nile, close to its border with Sudan, straining relations with downstream Egypt and Sudan. Could such smoldering tensions over water in a region with a history of conflict lead to war? This case is part of the “Global Economics of Water” course, a second-year elective for MBA students at the Darden School of Business. The case would also fit in any class that focuses on natural resources or international relations. It is used as an introduction to the water topic, as it touches upon some key aspects of water stress and the world's current water challenges. Excerpt UVA-GEM-0162 Rev. Dec. 18, 2018 Water Wars? Tension in the Nile River Basin With an ever-growing world population, rising living standards, pollution, and climate change's uncertain weather patterns, water stress began to receive more attention at the beginning of the 21st century. While freshwater resources were very unevenly distributed (see Exhibit1), water use had reached sustainable limits in many regions. Agriculture in particular was responsible for over 70% of human water use (see Exhibit2). With heightened competition for such an essential resource, analysts predicted rising security risks, especially among countries sharing a river basin. Since Joyce R. Starr's 1991 article, “Water Wars,” a common concern among intelligence services and in public debates was that these heightened water security risks might trigger war. It became almost a platitude that “the previous war was about oil, the next war will be about water.” United Nations (UN) Secretary Generals warned of water wars, with Ban Ki Moon pronouncing in 2007 that “water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is potential fuel for wars and conflict,” and Kofi Annan before him stating that “fierce competition for freshwater may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.” Even though rivers were an essential source of water, and increasingly subject to water withdrawal, many experts in hydropolitics who studied conflicts over transboundary water resources were skeptical about water war predictions. Professors Nils Gleditsch and Aaron Wolf were among the first to study water wars without focusing on singular cases. They assessed the likelihood of water wars in large samples of occurrences of conflict and war. They found very few instances of wars primarily motivated by water. Gleditsch and Wolf's view became the consensus opinion. Large event studies that defined conflicts much more broadly showed, however, that water issues did contribute to tensions among riparian neighbors. Water could also be a tool of war. In particular, the Nile basin with its 11 riparian neighbors attracted attention, as threats of a water war were often explicit in this region (see Exhibit 3). . . .