Water Wars

Dear readers,

Welcome to my blog! This is the introductory post for my blog on the subject of water politics in Africa. The scope of this topic is, as you can imagine, widely interpretable and sparks great debates, I will thus be specifying my area of discussion for the following posts on war over waters, and how some of these conflicts have been attempted to be resolved. 

According to the UN, water withdrawal rates have seen a threefold increase (UN, 2015) over the past 5 decades and the global threat of water scarcity has levelled severity with terrorism, cyber security and climate change (WEF, 2017). Overuse and mismanagement of water resources in Africa have fuelled unrest in certain parts of the continent, in many cases causing civil and international conflicts (Goldenberg, 2014). This blog will give an overview of such recent and ongoing conflicts and a closer discussion of literature and stimuli from the media will paint a detailed contextual picture of the current political scope around water resources in Africa.



Credits: The BBC

This picture shows an Egyptian farmer on his farmland that has completely dried up and reached an arid state. The agricultural sector is just one of many sectors that is affected by increasing coverage of water scarcity. The anthropogenic pressures including population growth, climate change, coupled with the mismanagement and overuse of resources exacerbate the problem of and expand the areas affected by water scarcity. Historically this has often resulted in the outbreak of conflict and unrest, which I will explore in this blog through looking at specific cases including the Somali water conflict and the ongoing dispute over the Nile basin. 
References

 Goldenberg, S. (2014). Why global water shortages pose threat of terror and war. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/global-water-shortages-threat-terror-war [Accessed 19 Oct. 2018].

 UN, (2015). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015: Water for a Sustainable World. Paris, UNESCO.
WEF, (2017). World Economic Forum - The Global Risk Report 2017. Geneva, Switzerland.


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