This pioneering and authoritative study considers the profound impact of the growing global water crunch on international peace and security. Writing in a direct, non-technical, and engaging style, Brahma Chellaney draws on a wide range of research from scientific and policy fields to examine the different global linkages between water and peace.
Offering a holistic picture and integrated solutions, his book promises to become the recognized authority on the most precious natural resource of this century and how we can secure humankind's water future. Review: This book argues that even though water is of fundamental importance to humans, we have undervalued it and have therefore failed to create institutional mechanisms at the international level to ensure its prudent use.
This argument is developed in detail in five chapters, considering both the scientific and political implications of water use. Chellaney (Center for Policy Research, New Delhi) notes the geopolitical impacts of water shortages on the frequently bellicose behavior of Israel and its neighbors. The author then provides a credible account of the ways in which China has become an unprecedented water hegemon.
The reader learns that China's unabated dam building has allowed it to control the headwaters of several international rivers and manipulate their cross-border flows. Therefore, concerted external pressure is needed to get Beijing to accept some form of institutionalized cooperation. The author concludes that in order to prevent water-based conflicts, a set of international rules, cooperative institutional mechanisms, and environmentally sustainable water management solutions will be needed.
Chellaney's attempts to draw causal connections between water and actual problems can sometimes be questioned, but his book, while occasionally repetitive, provides a lucid account of the nexuses between water security and world peace. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. CHOICE When the word war is mentioned, most people conjure images of blood, bullets, and violent clashes over land and oil.
Hence, fighting a war over something as apparently abundant as water sounds almost surreal, and yet there are places in the world right now where nonshooting battles are already being waged over this precious resource. According to international-affairs authority Chellaney, it's only a matter of time before tanks roll and lives are lost in countries struggling to secure enough water for their citizens.
Unless, of course, the world community finds a way to ensure this universal need is met for everyone. Beginning with the sobering fact that almost a billion people don't have access to clean water, Chellaney gives the reader multiple snapshots of existing water-related tensions around the world, then offers several risky but necessary solutions based on current UN-based international rules.
A clearly written and thorough guide to a complex problem that, along with global warming, is rapidly becoming one of the world's most serious humanitarian crises. Booklist Chellaney sketches a bleak picture of water scarcity in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, regions also struggling with unstable governments and rapidly growing populations.
What Chellaney calls water stressed conditions are also appearing in developed countries, such as Australia, Spain, and South Korea. Even the deep-water aquifers that support modern agriculture in North America are dwindling. But will the social and environmental stresses of water shortage lead to conflict and armed violence?
On that question, Chellaney's book is more speculative. Conflicts over water have already embroiled states along the Nile basin, in Africa, and along the Tigris-Euphrates basin, in the Middle East, and the war in Darfur has at least partly been driven by clashes over access to water in Sudan's far west.
Chellaney makes it clear that such conflicts will become more common as water begins to be used as a weapon, as a recent U.S. intelligence assessment predicted, at least in a metaphoric sense, as upstream countri
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