Touzard Camille

M122B final exam

During the XXth century, the demographic explosion, the economic development, the industrialization of a party of the world and the expansion of irrigated agriculture led to great impacts on water cycles. Global common resources have been washed up or polluted leading to dramatic situations on human societies. Indeed, scientific data confirmed the uneven access and distribution of fresh water at the global and local scale. According to the report of the United Nations Development Program of 2006, more than one billion of humans are denied their right of drinkable water and 2.6 billion don’t have sanitary infrastructures. Moreover, more and more illness and deaths are due to the lack or pollution of water.

Water scarcity also illustrates, in a geopolitical perspective, the situation of interdependence that links many countries of the world. Then, the threat of ‘water wars’ is often brought by Medias and politicians as being the new trend of international relations. However, historical evidences showed that conflicts about water have often been the exception and instead, cooperation the norm. Sharing a common resource, riparian states would naturally negotiate to find solutions for a mutual management of their watershed. But, as the level of water scarcity is unprecedentless, especially in poor regions of the world, is it still possible to avoid conflicts related to water resources? Then, on which basis could international communities build cooperation and water management?

We will first show that the water scarcity issue, if it is caused by population growth and economic development, is actually more complex, as it is interrelated with other environmental problems such as global warming and biodiversity loss. Moreover, if scarcity is considered as the result of water shortage, it has also roots in social issues and can thus be seen as part of an environmental justice. As a result, the lack of water highly