Water May Help Exacerbate Violent Conflict, but This Does Not Tell the Whole Story

Dec 11, 2019 | Phoebe Sleet
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A new tool, launched by the Water, Peace and Security (WPS) Partnership, has identified a number of locations where there is a high risk of water-related conflict. The tool analyses patterns of violent conflict, as well as environmental, economic and social variables, across South and South-East Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Trials of the tool suggest an 86 per cent success rate in identifying situations where violence will lead to more than 10 fatalities (although when testing emerging conflicts, 80 per cent of predictions were false positives, where violence was predicted, but did not occur).