Iran: Water Conflict: Will a Drying Iran Face Syria’s Fate?

Jan 23, 2018 | Erik Khzmalyan, Geopolitical Monitor
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Perhaps one of the most quoted predictions regarding the increasing role of water conflicts in global affairs belongs to former vice-president of the World Bank Ismail Serageldin, who in 1995 famously claimed, “Many of the wars of this century were about oil, but wars of the next century will be about water.” While oil has long dominated the geopolitical thinking of world powers, the new millennium promises to elevate the importance of water resources, potentially triggering conflicts in water-starved regions of the globe. The most obvious and fundamental problem with water management is that 97% of water on earth is impractical for drinking or agricultural purposes since it’s enclosed in the world’s oceans. As U.S. Army War College Professor Dr. Butts in his renowned article The Strategic Importance of Water wrote, “Only three percent of the water on the earth is fresh and, of this, more than two is locked away in the polar ice caps, glaciers, or deep groundwater aquifers, and is therefore unavailable to satisfy the needs of man.” The previous century did in fact witness several serious stand-offs between neighboring states that were at odds over sharing adjacent water resources. Consider the conflict between India and Pakistan over the Indus River basin that was exacerbated after the British partition. Had the World Bank not intervened, a violent clash between New Delhi and then the capital Karachi would have been inevitable. The ongoing negotiations brokered by the World Bank resulted in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.  Among myriad examples of water conflicts is the famous case of the Argentina-Brazil border dispute over the Alto-Parana basin that took decades to resolve. The agreement was finalized in Itaipu-Corpus Multilateral Treaty of 1979.