Water Wars: Water Crises Drying Seas, ‘Hydro-Diplomacy’ Needed: UN

Nov 7, 2014 | Randall Hackley, Bloomberg
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Water crises are drying seas and creating a more urgent need for “hydro-diplomacy” to help avert conflict over shared rivers and lakes, the United Nations’ deputy secretary-general said.

“The world today is experiencing a surge of water-related crises,” the UN’s Jan Eliasson said in London. “The eastern basin of the Aral Sea dried up completely in August for the first time in 600 years. California is experiencing an unprecedented three-year drought. Climate change is manifested through more frequent and intense storms, more destructive floods and more devastating droughts.”

The 74-year-old envoy, a former foreign minister of Sweden who helped mediate conflicts in Darfur and between Iran and Iraq, now worries about the “risk of water wars,” he said yesterday in an interview during The Economist World Water Summit. ...