2. Is the water war coming?

​As early as the 1990’s, some scholars began predicting that future water-related conflicts appeared inevitable. They asserted that water and water-supply systems have been the roots and instruments of war, and that inequities in water use have been the source of regional and international frictions and tensions. And these conflicts will continue. Disputes over the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates, the rivers of Central Asia, and the Ganges river systems appear increasingly likely because of growing competition for limited water resources, and because of disputes over ownership and the right to use the resource. Conflicts may also arise because of the contamination of shared water by upstream parties on the Colorado, the Rhine, and the Mekong.
The most famous case for “war for water” might be the third Middle East war which occurred in 1967. Testimony for this is the words which appeared in General Ariel Sharon’s autobiography, “People generally regard June 5th 1967 as the day the Six-day war began. That is the official date. But, in reality, it started two and a half years earlier, on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan.” Sharon was a brigadier during the war and later the Israeli Defense Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister, and Prime Minister. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupied much of the headwaters of the Jo River, ensuring a more reliable water supply and denying Jordan a significant fraction of its available water.
Additionally, the “water-war-thesis” has also received particularly high attention from policy makers at the international level. The following are some water- war-thesis quotes:

“The only matter that could take Egypt to war is water.”
------------- former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat-1979.

“The next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics.”
-------------former Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Boutrous Ghali-1988.
“Competition for water resources could provoke wars in Africa and the Middle East.”
-----------------------former secretary general of UN Boutrous Ghali-1988.
“The wars of next century will be fought over water.”
--------------former world bank’s vice president, Ismail Serageldin-1995 (interview with the New York Times, August 10 1995)
“Many political and social conflicts of the twenty first century will focus on water.”
----------former director of the UN Centre for human establishments Wally N’Dow (Gambia)
“The fierce competition for freshwater may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future”
---------former Secretary General Kofi Annan (Ghana, pointed out in a speech given at the 97th Annual meeting of Association of American Geographer in 2001)