Water as a polemological factor

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, a Mankind was witness of transformation of water from an abundant and cheap resource to a strategic resource, comparable with oil, due to its importance for human survival and due to the impossibility of increasing its supply to face the demographic explosion and the vertiginous industrial and agricultural development. Furthermore, the small amount of water available for human consumption (0.025% of the total existing on the planet) and the irregular distribution of this vital resource has been a cause of tension between different peoples throughout history. The situation tends to become even more complex due to the increase in demand generated by an increasing population that cannot be followed by an increase in supply, since water reserves are finite. In addition, the existence of hundreds of basins shared by two or more countries, the influence of climate change and contamination of the springs can be factors for the beginning of the 21st century to go down in history due to the water crisis. This fact, added by the lack of policies and necessary actions that guarantee the coherent use of this resource, is generating an unprecedented pressure on the water sources, being able to become "casus belli" in diverse regions of the planet. This work, based on the historical study of the conflicts caused by the control of water and in the analysis of the evolution of international treaties on the subject, seeks to predict consequent scenarios of the struggle for this resource in the future. In this context, this work take into account the technological development that will optimize the exploitation of existing reserves and, thus, can turn water management into a point of approach for the people, instead of a reason for the outbreak of wars; analyzing, in particular, the diplomatic effort to find peaceful solutions for the exploitation of the shared basins and the technological development that allows the increasingly efficient use of this finite resource. Finally, this work concludes predicting scenarios of possible conflicts in the future, as well as verifying which tools can be efficient to become the existence of water reserves a reason for union between peoples and not the reason of future armed confrontations.