Sweet Water!

A blog for everyone to read!

My blog is about the worldwide effort to control water resources in a period of rising demand and climatic vulnerability. I will be using this blog to debate and examine about freshwater and humans. I will try to link the climate vulnerability with the geopolitical aspect and outline the potential global dilemma. Different geographical regions will be examined. My discourse will be informed by secondary data including several scientific articles and primary data including interviews. I will tell you a story to help you understand why I chose this topic and why it is of critical contempory importance.

You never miss water until you run out of it. 

That is what I learned when I went last year to Chad, in Africa, for a humanitarian trip.

Where is Chad?

 On my arrival, the Chadian capital was facing for two weeks a serious shortage of drinking water. In some neighborhoods of N'Djamena, it happened that the taps were dry for a day. Households were forced to sit up all night and wait the water. Women, bedpans on the head, roamed neighborhoods in search of the precious liquid. Around a hand-pump wells, they formed long queues. Water vendors porting, themselves, took advantage of the shortage to sell a bottle of twenty liters of water at 100 or 125 CFA francs instead of the usual 50 francs. 

The main source of fresh water in Chad is Lake Chad. The country is sharing the lake with 3 other countries. Tensions around this vital resources were and are still very vivid. After having lived this experience, I want to address this issue of fresh water (Ghanem, 2014).

'Access to "Blue Gold" is the cause of many international conflicts.'

According to Franck Galland,  (Galland,2008), the geopolitical dimension of water is often approached in a fantasy. Access to "Blue Gold" is the cause of many international conflicts. Or conversely, it is widely underestimated. The fresh water supply is seen as essentially belonging to "good governance" economic and technical nationally. Through seven short case studies well documented (Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Singapore, China), Franck Galland, shows how ecological, economic and geopolitical issues are linked to each other and what are their respective weights?

In accordance with The United Nation in (Environmental scarcity and conflicts), we have an increasing pressures on freshwater resources due to population and economic growth, industrial pollution and the depletion of  catchments. In some areas, water scarcity may be aggravated further by the effects of climate change. As a result of increased demand, some countries are now about to reach the limits of their water resources. This results in increased competition for freshwater. This is a competition between different countries, between urban and rural areas, between economic sectors or groups. Because of this, we may wonder when will the water world war burst?