Water: A blessing or a curse? 

Image: Canva

This year’s World Water Day put forth the idea of Leveraging Water for Peace, but can such a peace even exist? From the perspective of disaster management, the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of water are floods, tsunamis, landslides due to extreme rainfall, and their destructive power. Instead, this piece hopes to point towards agreements relating to clean water and sanitation as set out under the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 for all people by 2030. 

Water or a lack of water can cause and reinforce conflicts, but it can also create peace. The following article attempts to present a bridge between water as a curse and a blessing, as well as peace, based on my personal experience while working for the UN (as part of a United Nations Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination Team) or the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.

SDG Progress Report 2023

Access to sufficient drinking water and for personal and domestic hygiene, as well as access to sanitation (SDG 6), was recognised as a human right by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2010, which passed a resolution in 2015 enshrining the right to water and sanitation.

The SDG Progress Report 2023 stated that 2.2 billion people didn’t have access to clean drinking water in 2022, of which 703 million lived without basic water supplies. Additionally, it also stated that 3.5 billion people lacked safe sanitation, including 1.5 billion people without basic sanitation. Today, 419 million people still have to defecate outdoors. It is estimated that 58 per cent of household wastewater was recycled in 2022, and 2.4 billion people suffered from water stress. Conflict and climate change exacerbated all of these problems. 

Globally, only 32 of the 153 countries that share transboundary rivers, lakes, or aquifers have entered into agreements on their use. But are we on track to achieving SDG 6 by 2030? According to the Sustainable Development Goal Report 2023, the goals stand at around 62 per cent; fair progress has been made, but efforts need to be accelerated.

Water as a curse

Almost every day, we see images of devastation after floods and tsunamis.

During the Great Flood of 2000 in Mozambique, an area of 80,000 square kilometres was flooded, partly due to rainfall and partly because the rivers carried a correspondingly large amount of water into Mozambique. This affected around 900,000 people, who no longer had access to clean drinking water. In the capital, Maputo, and the reception camps of the displaced, children drank from rain puddles, causing diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. 

The population living on the Limpopo River was told to evacuate as the floodgates of the dam fed by South Africa had to be opened in order to prevent it from bursting. In the small town of Chókwè, for example, this meant that the water level rose to six metres, which was more than half of the usual water level. 

The Bangladesh floods in July 2004 affected 33 million people, or around 6.5 million families. There were 700 deaths and around 12,000 to 14,000 new cases of diarrhoea every day. At the same time, 2.6 million hectares of crops were destroyed. One of the reasons for this flood was, among other things, deforestation in the Himalayan region because the main rivers Ganges and Bramahbutra meet west of Dhaka. Here too, access to clean drinking water was one of the most important issues, as the groundwater contains arsenic, and sand filters had to be installed in wells. 

As early as 1993, it became known that a third of the wells were heavily contaminated with arsenic and that 30 million Bangladeshis drank water that exceeded the World Health Organization's arsenic limit by more than ten times.

In September 2010, heavy rainfall led to flooding across Pakistan, affecting more than 20.5 million people, of whom 13.47 million were without clean water. The country was grappling with a water famine at a time when the Taliban were issuing threats against international teams attempting to provide relief. As a result, the northern part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which had already implemented existing international projects, received supplies, but almost no organisation wanted to go south of the country for security reasons. Although many water treatment systems were donated, they could not be used because no one could operate them.

Water as a blessing

Sometimes major disasters can also have positive effects. During my deployment after the tsunami in 2004 as the UN's regional co-ordinator for civil-military cooperation for the Southeast Asia region, in which more than 30,000 soldiers from 35 countries provided support, there were also indirectly positive aspects in the sense of disaster or climate diplomacy. In Sri Lanka, after the tsunami disaster, the government cooperated, at least for a short time, with the rebel organisation Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE), who wanted to build their own state. There was even a Memorandum of Understanding for post-disaster cooperation for the Eastern Province (Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure) in 2005, but for various reasons it never actually came into force. The movement disbanded in 2009.

Another, far more positive event occurred after the tsunami in Indonesia. The province of Banda Aceh was 90 per cent destroyed, although at this point a bloody civil war was still taking place, which had already cost around 12,000 lives and had lasted for almost 30 years. Eight months after the tsunami, representatives of the rebel organisation Free Aceh Movement signed a peace agreement with the Indonesian government in Helsinki in August 2005. As a result of the tsunami, in addition to the dramatic consequences, there was also a peace agreement and an end to the civil war.

Cross-border co-operation

The Zacharias depression, starting on August 3, 2023, caused flooding and landslides following severe storms in Styria and Carinthia, with neighbouring Slovenia also being severely affected. Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob spoke of the worst natural hazard in Slovenia in the last 30 years, affecting two-thirds of the country. Around 2,500 firefighters were on duty in Styria and Carinthia on August 5, a total of around 5,000 personnel and 400 armed forces soldiers. In eastern Slovenia, a dam on the Mur near Dolnja burst late in the evening, putting 10 villages at risk.

The Federal Ministry of Interior of Austria, through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) with the support of the Federal Ministry of Defence and ASFINAG, provided disaster relief in the form of the provision of 2 military helicopters from August 9 to August 13, 2023, as well as 2 excavators/trucks and 3 operating personnel from ASFINAG from August 9, 2023, to August 25, 2023.

This example shows how important it is, in addition to spontaneous neighbourly help, to have appropriate agreements and good contacts at all levels of government with neighbouring countries in place to be able to help quickly.

Problem of water shortage

In an interview with Domradio, it is stated that in Africa, almost half of the people who drink water from unprotected sources live south of the Sahara. Only 24 per cent of the population there has access to clean water that won't make you sick if you drink it. Not even one in three people has access to decent sanitary facilities.

A lack of water is always a reason for conflicts, including armed conflicts. Taking Sudan as an example, conflicts arose due to water shortages in Dafur, Southern Sudan, where resources such as pasture and water were at stake. Tribes moved north with their herds, which led to fear among the settlers in the north that there would no longer be enough water left for agriculture, and this led to conflicts.

In another example: At the end of April 2021, fierce fighting broke out in the border area between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan over the use of the Soviet Golovnoi water distribution facility. According to official information, at least 55 people were killed, and many fled or were evacuated.

Conflicts over scarce water resources are complex phenomena. A conceptual distinction is made here between genuine water wars, violent international conflicts that revolve exclusively around water, and water distribution conflicts, which often arise at a regional or local level and are usually embedded in larger conflict conglomerates.

This makes it even more important to use water for peace. Enough water for people and animals in all regions would reduce the likelihood of destructive conflicts and ensure stable habitats.

For instance, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan have been arguing over the distribution of Nile water for years. Egypt had already indirectly threatened Ethiopia with war in 2013 due to fears of water shortages. In 2015, the states concluded an agreement to build a mega dam to distribute water more fairly.

If we take the example of Jordan, we come to the Good Water Neighbours initiative, which has been in existence since 2001, when EcoPeace Middle East launched an environmental peacebuilding project. The attempt is to create a space for co-operation and dialogue since all three entities are dependent on shared water resources. This involves working at the intergovernmental and community levels with eleven Palestinian, nine Israeli, and eight Jordanian communities (2013). Israeli authorities seized control of all water resources in the area after the 1967 Six-Day War. In 2013, for the first time in 49 years, Israel released fresh water from the Sea of Galilee into Lower Jordan.

The international Water, Peace & Security (WPS) initiative deals with tools and options for water security prevention and in the context of water stress, which also includes conflict, migration, and other types of social destabilising factors. 

Fortunately, initiatives like this show that more and more people and organisations are working on the issue of water for peace.