Professor Colleen Graffy, Hydropolitics and the Weaponization of Water -- Geopolitical Information Services

Professor Colleen P. Graffy's report, Hydropolitics and the Weaponization of Water, is pubished in Geopolitical Information Services. The report examines the increase in water conflicts globally.

Excerpt from Hydropolitics and the Weaponization of Water

Water is the only natural resource that is essential to human life. This indispensable supply is also limited. Unlike energy, where technological advancements can offer replacements for coal, oil and gasoline, there is no alternative to water. The same amount that sustained dinosaurs in the Jurassic period is now expected to meet the needs of over 8.2 billion people. Approximately 97 percent of the Earth’s water is saline (oceans), leaving only about 3 percent as fresh water – the vast majority of which is locked in glaciers, ice caps or deep underground aquifers. Consequently, less than 1 percent of the Earth’s fresh water is easily accessible for human use, in rivers, lakes, and shallow groundwater.  

These realities – compounded by population growth, degradation of water quality and climate change – add dangerous pressure to the already fraught world of hydropolitics. The risk of hostilities spikes wherever nations share a water resource – particularly when there is no binding treaty to govern allocation or resolve disputes.  

Earlier legal theories were entirely state-centric – either the upper riparian state claimed complete control over the water, or the lower riparian state argued it had an absolute right to the same quantity or quality of water as the upstream state. The former was the case when in 1895 the United States declared, under the Harmon Doctrine, that Mexico had no right to protest over the polluted water that the U.S. was delivering to Mexico in the Rio Grande. As water law matured, most nations, but not all, realized that this zero-sum approach would not work when so many other issues, such as trade and security between nations, were at stake.  

The complete report may be found at Geopolitical Information Services