Waters wars in africa
2283 mots
10 pages
Water wars in Africa: the Nile’s example.“The next war among countries will not be for oil or territorial borders, but only for the problem of water “.
Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali, former Secretary-General of the United Nations.
“Indeed water is already a catalyst for regional conflict”
Quote from the influential head of environmental research institute Worldwatch, Lester Brown.
1,5 billion of inhabitants do not have access to drinking water…
In 1995, Ismail Serageldin, vice president of the World Bank, made a prediction about the future of war: “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water”.
The world's supply of fresh water is running out and already one person in five has no access to safe drinking water. Indeed, many signs suggest that Ismail Serageldin was right and stories of water shortages are making headlines in major newspapers over the five continents. Water wars already surround us, although they are not always easily recognizable as water wars. For example the competition for water from the River Jordan was one of the primary causes of the 1967 war between Israel and Palestine.
The likely causes of water wars are in countries where rivers or lakes are shared by more than one country. Indeed, there is already fierce national competition over water for irrigation and power generation as in the Nile river basin.
The forecasts predict that water will in certain critical but arid parts of the world, cost as much per barrel as oil. Water is in crisis in China, in Southeast Asia, in southwest America, in North Africa, and in many parts of Africa except the Congo, Niger, and Zambezi basins. Even in Europe, drought is no longer an unknown phenomenon like England, where water tables were dropping throughout the early 1990s.
Everywhere we look, there are signs that the global water supply is in peril: * The level of the Dead Sea plummeted more than 10 meters during the 20th