TITLE:
Water: A Major Stake of Conflicts in the Twenty-First Century
AUTHORS:
Benjamin Mwadi Makengo, Joseph Mimbale Molanga, Jean-Marie Mbutamuntu, Patience Kamanda Londo, Théo-Macaire Kaminar Nsiy
KEYWORDS:
Water Conflicts, Climate Change, Major Stake of Twenty-First Century, Water Scarcity, Water War
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.11,
November
23,
2021
ABSTRACT: The need to ensure freshwater security remains sacrosanct to the survival
and security of humanity. While various studies on water security continue to
draw the world’s attention to future threats and risks against humanity’s
better survival and security—following the current management of our various
waterways. It is in this light that this paper proposes to explain why access
to water may well be a major stake of conflicts in this 21st century. After
debate and discussion, the results that emerge from this paper show that the
multiplication of threats arising from climate change, which continues to
worsen in this century, coupled with the hybrid policies and activities of
various actors at stake, and combined with the singular characteristics of
water—including, notably, a resource that guarantees our existence, a scarce
resource, an unevenly distributed resource, and a resource that is shared among
several states, nationalities and social categories—emerge two fundamental
implications. The first is that of the great need for cooperation between
riparian states, nationalities and various social categories; and the second is
that exhibits the great likelihood of conflicts between them—to the competing
uses of the shared water resource and the conquering spirits of one another. By
using a few cases of bellicose rhetoric on the Tigris-Euphrates, Jordan, Indus,
Syr-Daria, Nile, Congo, Colorado and Rio Grande watersheds, this paper makes a
bitter observation of the predominant tendency of the second implication—the
conflictual one—over the first—the cooperative one—in this twenty-first century
that ostensibly denotes that water should be taken seriously as a major stake
of conflicts in this century. Thus, this paper considers that it is important
and time for humanity to promote transboundary water cooperation between states
and nationalities of shared river basins; and integrated water management in
the steps of good governance at all levels, in the sense of avoiding a flare-up
of the situation and limiting to the maximum a worsening where the violins do
not agree anymore.