Water is the New Gold: An Emerging Source of Global Conflicts

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• Control over the remaining water in the Indus will ignite fire of war around Kashmir where the river emerges more acute.

• So far, privatization has been concentrated in poorer countries where the World Bank has used its financial leverage to force governments to privatize their water utilities in exchange for loans.

• “We must be extremely careful not to impose market forces on water because there are many more decisions that go into managing water — there are environmental decisions, social-culture decisions,” said David Boys of the U.K.-based Public Services International

• Water bankruptcy

• Unfortunately, rocketing population, rapid industrial growth, and drastic change in global climate have pushed the world into water bankruptcy

• a scramble among global powers to occupy as much water of the world as possible.

• our world suffers from acute shortage of fresh drinking water

• Realizing this enhancing worth of this most essential commodity of life (water), the world has nicknamed it as “blue gold” and “oil of the 21st century”; it further, attests to the ballooning value of fresh water and its importance to the people of the world.

• According to some experts, in 21st century, the “blue gold” will replace the “black gold (oil);

• since the world has seen fierce wars in quest for oil, now, it is likely to witness another round of wars on water.

• Scarcity of fresh drinking water is going to be the first and foremost factor that might trigger global water wars

• The on-going regional water conflicts too testify to the fact that the global water wars are eminent.

• Global water utilization has tripled over the last 50 years

• The World Bank reports that 80 countries now have water shortages with more than 2.8 billion people living in areas of high water stress

• This is expected to rise to 3.9 billion — more than half of the world’s population — by 2030 in a ‘business as usual’-scenario

• To add, according to the water project, one in nine people don’t have access to clean drinking water and 37% of those people live in sub-Saharan Africa

• Internationally, half of all hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related diseases

• What is more appalling is that in developing countries, around 80% of illness can be linked to poor water conditions.

• Apart from this, Global water partnership says that two and half percent of total volume of water on earth is drinkable and out of which only 0.3% is located in rivers and lakes.

• Further, National Geographic predicts that by 2025, about 66% of the total population of the world live in water- stressed regions as a result of over use of water and climate change