Australia is in no better shape. The diversion of Snowy River inland led to massive salinization of the lands it irrigates - Australia's bread basket. Many of the tributaries are now unfit for either irrigation or drinking. In India, the holy river, Ganges, is depleted and impregnated with poisonous arsenic.
A long running dispute is simmering between India and Bangladesh regarding this dwindling lifeline, recent progress in negotiations notwithstanding. This is reminiscent of a low intensity conflict that has been brewing along the banks of the Nile between an assertive Egypt and the encroaching Sudan and Ethiopia since the Nile Basin Initiative has been signed in 1993.
A July 2000 conference of the riparian states, backed by the likes of the World Bank and the United Nations, eased the tension somewhat by promulgating a workable plan to redistribute the African river's throughput. The emphasis in the February 2001 meeting of the International Consortium Cooperation on the Nile, though, was on hydro-power over the contentious minefield of water usage rights.
Israel controls the Kinneret Sea of Galilee. It is the source of one third of its water consumption. The rest it pumps from rivers in the region, to the vocal dismay of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Despite decades of indoctrination, Israelis are water-guzzlers. They quaff 4-6 times the water consumption of their Palestinian and Arab neighbors.
"The Economist" claims that:
"The argument over Syria's water rights to the Sea of Galilee is now the only real stumbling-block to a peace treaty between Syria and Israel. Negotiations broke down last January, after the two sides appeared to agree on everything save the future of a sliver of territory on the north-east coast of the sea. Israel had insisted on keeping control of that, since the Sea of Galilee supplies more than 40% of its drinking water."
Only two decades ago, the Aral Sea featured in encyclopedias as the world's fourth largest inland brine. In a typical hare-brained subterfuge, the communists diverted its two sources - the Amu Darya and Syr Darya - to grow cotton in the desert. The "sea" is now a series of disconnected, toxic, patches overlaid on a vast wasteland of salt.
But excess water can be as damaging to multilateral relationships - and to the economy - as scarcity. Floods brought on by the Zambezi River have devastated the countries on its path, despite their efforts to harness it. Often, these calamities are man-made. Zimbabwe wrought a deluge upon its region by opening the gates of the Kariba dam on March 2000. The countries of West Africa, from Ghana to Mali are "one river states". Their fortunes rise and fall with the flow and ebb of waterways.
Sometimes watercourses are conduits of destruction and death. A single - though massive - chemical spill in Romania on January 31, 2000 devastated the entire Tisa River which runs through Yugoslavia and Hungary. Only when the waste reached the Danube did the West wake up to the danger.
Nor are these phenomena confined to the poor precincts of our planet. The people of Catalonia in Spain are thirsty. They contemplate diverting water from the river Rhone in France to Barcelona. A five years old government plan to redistribute water from rain-drenched regions to the arid 60 percent of Spain meets with stiff domestic resistance. The Ogallala aquifer in the USA, its largest, has been depleted to near oblivion. The BBC estimates that it lost the equivalent of 18 Colorado rivers by 2000.
All the lakes around Mexico City have dried and it is now sinking into the cavernous remains of its withered reservoirs. Soil subsidence is a major problem in cities around the world, from Bangkok to Venice. According to "The Economist", the town of Cochabamba in Bolivia, once a florid valley is now a dust bowl. Some of its residents receive water only a few hours every two or three days. A World Bank financed project attempts to pipe the precious liquid from mountain rivers near the city.
Singapore, concerned by its dependence on water from capricious Malaysia, decided in November 2001 to purchase water from private sector suppliers who will be required to build one or more desalination plants, capable of providing it with 10% of its annual consumption.
Singapore is so desperate, it even considered importing water from the strife-torn (and now tsunami-devastated) Aceh province in Indonesia. The cost of Malaysian fresh water skyrocketed following a bilateral accord with Singapore signed September 2000.
Control of water sources has always served as geopolitical leverage. In Central Asia, both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan often get their way by threatening to throttle their richer neighbors, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - and by actually cutting them off from the nourishing rivers that traverse their territories. This extortion resulted in inordinately cheap supplies of gas, coal, and agricultural products.
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