Cleanwaterforum : A forum to discuss how to achieve universal access to safe, physically accessible, sufficient and affordable, clean water.

We set up this blog to discuss issues surrounding universal access to safe, physically accessible, sufficient and affordable clean water. These issues include, but are not limited to: 1) whether access to clean water should be enshrined as a fundamental human right; 2) how to respond to the increasingly prevalent treatment of water as a commodity rather than a public good (corporate social responsibility and water); 3) clean water as global health issue; 4) clean water as a poverty issue; 5) clean water as a global security issue; 6) clean water as a gender issue.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Water shortages threaten stability

A pair of articles from the Times Online highlights the threat of conflict over water.   The first discusses UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon telling the inaugural Asia-Pacific Water Summit that, "The consequences for humanity are grave. Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict."

The second article, entitled "Ecologists warn the planet is running short of water,"  discussed the end of the era of "cheap water."  Well, that prediction may be more true for those living in the north where water is currently plentiful and underpriced, but tell that to the inhabitants of water-impoverished nations who are paying up to 20% of their incomes for water and pay exponentially more per gallon than we do in the developed world. 

Reference is also made to a study by David Zhang, a geographer at the University of Hong Kong, in the US National Academy of Sciences journal that analysed 8,000 wars over 500 years and concluded that water shortage had played a far greater role as a catalyst than previously supposed.
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