New report catalogs sharp rise in clashes connected to water in 2023.

Children collecting water in Khan Younis city, south of the Gaza Strip, amid escalating hostilities at the end of 2023. Most of the Gaza Strip’s water systems are heavily impacted and/or non-operational due to lack of fuel, security situation and damage to production, treatment, and distribution infrastructure. Photo © UNICEF/UNI485724/El Baba

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – August 22, 2024

Wars against Ukraine and Gaza, and ongoing drought in farming-dependent regions contributed to a surge of violent water conflicts last year.

Violent incidents associated with water rose by 50 percent in 2023, according to a new report that tracks those events.

The Pacific Institute, a California-based think tank, maintains the Water Conflict Chronology, a database of water-related violence. In this latest update, it added 347 incidents, up from 231 that occurred in 2022.

Major wars against Ukraine and Gaza are leading contributors to the growth in water-related violence, said Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute co-founder and senior fellow. In conducting their attacks, Russian and Israeli forces have targeted dams, water treatment facilities, water supply wells, and water pipelines. Though these strikes made global headlines, many more incidents that took place last year were smaller in scale and triggered by a mix of environmental and social factors, including drought and political instability.

“I think there’s growing pressure on water resources in regions that have weak institutions and poor mechanisms for resolving water disputes,” said Gleick, who is also a Circle of Blue board member. “That’s where we see most of the violence.”

The new entries in the database illustrate how political and ecological turmoil, in the absence of mediation, can activate the worst human impulses. Spanning the continents, the entries include violent acts at a range of scales, from intimate interpersonal disputes to appalling international strife.

  • A villager in Yemen was shot and killed and his brother wounded during an argument over a natural rainwater pool.
  • Farmers in India assaulted government inspectors who discovered the farmers’ theft of irrigation water from a canal.
  • Protesters and police in France were injured in demonstrations against the construction of reservoirs for farm irrigation.
  • An environmentalist in Honduras who opposed a hydropower dam on the Mezapa River was killed.
  • Members of the Islamic State-Sahel Province, a militant group, vandalized a pump station at a dam in Burkina Faso, leading to water cuts in a nearby town.

Those regions with weak institutions include the Sahel, where militant groups attack water delivery points, and the Horn of Africa, where herders clash with farmers over scarce water sources amid erratic rainfall and devastating heat.

A transitional region in Africa between the dry Sahara to the north and the wetter tropics, the Sahel is a flashpoint for climate-related conflict, notes the Council on Foreign Relations. But the region’s “institutional weaknesses are as formidable as environmental hardships.” Governments do not have the resources or the power to buffer people against extremists or extreme weather.

Water conflict events per year, 2000 to 2023. Graphic courtesy of the Pacific Institute

The database divides violent incidents into three categories: water used as a weapon, water as a trigger of conflict, and water as a casualty of conflict. Most of the entries are for water as a trigger or casualty, and incidents can be classified in multiple categories. Violent incidents within a country occur far more frequently than those between countries.

To be included in the database, an incident must result in injury, death, or threat of violence. This criteria omits certain events that could be considered early indicators of unrest – a peaceful protest, for instance.

Along with news reports, one of the database sources is ACLED, a global dataset on all forms of armed conflict and protest. Gleick said hundreds of entries in the ACLED dataset were protests in South Africa over lack of safe drinking water. Most of those entries were not added to the water conflict database because no injuries occurred.

Still, Gleick said, the high number of protests in the country is a warning signal. “There is an ongoing, growing unrest in South Africa over the failure to provide safe water and sanitation,” he said.

Can these conflicts be foreseen, even prevented? That is the work of groups like the Water, Peace and Security Partnership, a joint effort from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the German Agency for International Cooperation that incorporates the expertise of six research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Using ACLED data and computer modeling, the partnership produces quarterly forecasts to anticipate regions where water might spark conflict in the next 12 months.

It is urgent work, because ecological pressures and government failures are gathering force, even when water systems are not immediately in the crosshairs of artillery fire.

Consider the number of people who do not have access to safe drinking water, which the United Nations deems a human right. Gleick pointed to a study published last week in the journal Science. The study concludes that the number of people globally without safe drinking water is twice as high as previous estimates.

“The underlying message was that there are four billion people that don’t have access to safe water and sanitation,” Gleick said. “And I think the uptick in violence we’re seeing is partly a reflection of that ongoing failure to provide for this basic need.”