Inside global water-conflict hotspots

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Water in well. Source: Suhasajgaonkar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Water in well. Source: Suhasajgaonkar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bob Koigi, FairPlanet (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

For thousands of years, bodies of water have been attractions around which the very first civilizations formed, offering people fresh drinking and irrigation water; however, due to their high value and scarcity, they have also been sources of contention, creating competition among communities and countries. Today, as climate change threatens the global supply of water, these conflicts are more pronounced in certain areas, escalating in disunity and violence.

As global water supplies dwindle, occasioned by unprecedented population growth, poor governance, weak infrastructure, climate change and pollution, among other factors, nations and citizens are rising against each other in the fight for the scarce and necessary resource, inducing experts, including UN Secretary Generals, to posit that future wars will be fought over water rather than oil.

Transboundary water conflagrations have redefined foreign relations in the 20th century: from Iran, which has for years been engaged in protracted clashes with Afghanistan over the sharing of the Helmand River’s waters, to Pakistan’s conflict with India that dates back to the 1960s due to the waters of the Indus River – used as a weapon of war in the dispute over Kashmir -, as well as the clash between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam that will store 10 million cubic metres of water, and the intermittent clashes between muslim Fulani herders and christian farmers in Nigeria over lack of rain and pasture. 

Indeed, in 2017, water was attributed as a key factor in conflicts in over 45 countries. 

Water-conflict hotspots

There are an estimated 260 transboundary bodies of waters – lakes, rivers and aquifers that are shared by two or more nations – which supply water to over 2 billion people. They have been sources of livelihood, but have also had large roles in shaping inter-state and global geopolitics. 

According to a water conflict chronology, a breakdown of the 925 water conflicts that go back 5,000 years, a large share of water wars are related to agriculture due to the fact that the sector accounts for 70 percent of freshwater use. 

“The instability and conflicts associated with water have ripple effects that have shaped international relations and altered how we live. Key among them are migration and the emergence of water refugees,” said Fatma Abdalla, a water and environmental activist. “These developments are likely to become more pronounced going forward as the effects of climate change become more intense and supplies dwindle. It is a nightmare that governments and the international community haven’t given much thought to, but urgently should.”

Sustainable water agreements

However, even with water’s destabilising potential, there have been concerted efforts to arrest the runaway situation. From 1948, over 200 international water agreements have been negotiated and signed, among them the UNECE Water Convention, which spells out the framework for transboundary water cooperation globally. Others include the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 between Pakistan and India and the Global Water Convention on Transboundary Rivers and Lakes, chaperoned by the United Nations, which includes the commitments of 43 countries.  

“Now more than ever, there needs to be cooperation and a shared framework among sectors that are heavily dependent on water, such as energy, sanitation, agriculture, navigation and industry in order to have a harmonised and sustainable approach to address the biting water shortage,” argues Jessica Rotich, a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) expert. “Governments, private sectors and development agencies must therefore work together to streamline a workable formula.” 

It is a statement corroborated by the Water, Peace and Security Partnership, WRI and the Pacific Institute who, through a report dubbed Ending Conflicts over Water: Solutions to Water and Security Challenges, highlighted a series of strategies that are crucial to taming water-based conflicts – among them political and legal implementations, policy and governance strategies, economic and financial tools and science and engineering approaches. 

Tech to the rescue

Technology has also been at the forefront of tackling water-related conflicts with great results. The Water, Peace and Security (WPS) partnership, a coalition of six European and American NGOs, has come up with Global Early Warning Tool, that bets on machine learning to predict conflicts before they arise by combining data on population density, droughts, flooding, crop failure, and rainfall among other data sources to highlight conflict warnings. The hotspots are displayed in a red-and-orange Mercator projection and are narrowed down to the administrative districts. The tool has identified 2,000 prospective conflict zones with an accuracy rate of 86 percent. 

“As factors that drive instability and conflict become more pronounced and water now starts being used as a tool of war and terrorism, which may ultimately create failed states, there has to be a change in our way of doing things,” Abdalla advocated. “We have to bring everyone onboard in conservation efforts, boosting investment in water initiatives, embracing innovations that deliver payoffs and supporting entrepreneurs who have dedicated themselves to saving our planet thanks to their innovative initiatives.”

 

‘Big news’ for climate as global insurance giant shifts away from fossil fuels

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Otogidemon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
30 St Mary Axe. Also known as the Swiss Re building, or Gherkin. Source: Otogidemon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The new policy by Swiss Re “is not perfect yet,” said one campaigner, but the world’s second-largest reinsurer “is headed in the right direction.”

By Kenny Stancil, Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

After Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, announced Thursday that it is moving to end coverage for most new oil and gas projects, climate justice campaigners who have long pushed for the insurance industry to shift away from fossil fuels offered cautious praise.

“Swiss Re is one of the world’s ultimate risk managers and the policy which it published today sends a strong message to fossil fuel companies, investors, and governments: oil and gas operations need to be phased out in accordance with climate science or they may become uninsurable by the end of the decade,” Peter Bosshard, global coordinator of Insure Our Future, said in a statement.

According to Reuters:

In its annual sustainability report on Thursday, Swiss Re said it would no longer insure projects that get the go-ahead from their parent company from 2022, unless the company has an independently verified, science-based plan to reach net-zero emissions.

By 2025, Swiss Re said it wanted half of its overall oil and gas premiums to come from companies aligned with such a net-zero by 2050 plan, and by 2030 all its clients in the sector should have done so.

Also, from 2022, the company said it will no longer insure companies or projects with more than 10% of their production in the Arctic, apart from Norwegian producers.

On the issue of treaty reinsurance, whereby it insures bundles of risk in a job lot, Swiss Re said it expected to finalize a policy for the oil and gas sector in 2023.

“By taking steps to stop insuring new oil and gas projects and companies that won’t aim at aligning their activities with climate science by 2030, Swiss Re is headed in the right direction,” said Reclaim Finance director Lucie Pinson.

“The policy is not perfect yet,” she added, “and we encourage its peers to build on it to fully align with a realistic 1.5°C scenario.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said last May that there is “no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply” if the world is to achieve a net-zero energy system by 2050 en route to meeting the Paris agreement’s more ambitious global warming target.

Swiss Re, said Pinson, should respond to the IEA’s landmark report by “drawing a red line against fossil fuel expansion and excluding both projects and companies that cross that line well before 2025.”

Sharing a detailed Twitter thread by Bosshard, Oil Change International celebrated Swiss Re’s move. Becoming the first major oil and gas insurer to deny coverage for most new fossil fuel projects is “big news,” said the group.

Arguing that “ending support for oil and gas projects is gaining real momentum,” 350.org also praised Insure Our Future and encouraged its campaigners to “keep up the good work.”

According to Bosshard, Swiss Re’s phase-out commitment represents “a first for the insurance industry” because it “not only applies to the up and midstream sectors, but also to downstream companies (oil refineries, gas utilities, petrochemical plants etc.) without credible net-zero plans.”

However, he continued, “the new policy includes some important gaps and contingencies.”

“It will not cover new production projects which oil companies move forward as part of their ongoing operations,” said Bosshard. “It also exempts Norway from its definition of Arctic oil. The IEA doesn’t make any such exemptions.”

“Most importantly, the policy hinges on the development of a credible oil and gas framework by the Science Based Targets initiative [SBTi], by which oil companies’ net-zero plans will be measured,” he added. “It’s crucial that the SBTi framework reflect the findings” of the IEA and the United Nations.

Swiss Re’s new policy follows similar policies adopted last week by Hannover Re and Mapfre, said Bosshard, who pointed out that “these three companies cover 21% of the global reinsurance market.”

“Now, the Insure Our Future campaign calls on Munich Re, Lloyd’s, and SCOR, which together account for 26% of the global reinsurance market, to make commitments which build on Swiss Re’s approach by the time of their annual general meetings,” said Bosshard.

“We’ll be watching,” he added.

Amazon deforestation hit record high in February—up 62% from 2021

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Amazônia Real from Manaus AM, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amazônia Real from Manaus AM, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This absurd increase shows the lack of policies to combat deforestation and environmental crimes in the Amazon, driven by the current administration. … The destruction just isn’t stopping.

—Romulo Batista, Greenpeace Brazil

By Jenna McGuire, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a record high for the month of February, jumping by nearly two-thirds over last February’s level, according to official data released Friday.

Satellite images released by the Brazilian space agency INPE’s DETER monitoring program show 199 square kilometers (77 square miles) of the Amazon rainforest was lost to deforestation last month—the highest rate recorded in February since the agency began keeping records in 2015 and a 62% increase from last year during the same month.

Environmentalists find the data particularly alarming since February is considered the rainy season in the Amazon and generally sees the lowest rates of deforestation throughout the year.

As Indigenous communities and global environmentalists have been sounding the alarm on the imperiled rainforest, deforestation has skyrocketed under Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. While the Amazon covers land in nine countries, approximately 60% of the forest lies in Brazil, which has reached its highest level of deforestation in more than a decade.

“This absurd increase shows the lack of policies to combat deforestation and environmental crimes in the Amazon, driven by the current administration. The destruction just isn’t stopping,” said Romulo Batista of Greenpeace Brazil in a statement.

Deforestation is predominantly caused by animal agriculture, soy production, logging, mining, and major construction, and has greatly impacted the nearly one million Indigenous people from over 300 tribes who live in the Brazilian Amazon.

“We are going to be eating the rainforest in our burgers,” Holly Gibbs, a land use scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the Washington Post. “This is our moment as Americans to step forward and leverage some pressure to save the world, by helping to save the Amazon, which is critically important for the future of our planet.”

Research published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the world’s largest rainforest was quickly reaching its “tipping point” and that the Amazon “has been losing resilience since the early 2000s, risking dieback with profound implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate change at a global scale.”