Water conflicts Flashcards
Water conflicts
Conflicts over water occur where different groups share the same water supply, and water demand exceeds supply.
This can occur because
Water supplies decrease, e.g. groundwater has been over-exploited or rainfall in the area has decreased.
Water demand increases, e.g. the population grows, or industry expands.
Local Conflict-PEPSI Factory, Kerala, India
PEPSI is based in the USA, but it has factories all over the world, including one in the Indian state of Kerala. This factory has been the source of an ongoing water conflict between PEPSI® and local people.
Droughts have increased water stress in the area, which has led to shortages of drinking water. The lack of water for irrigation has led to the loss of crops.
Local people claim that the factory is worsening the problem by over-exploiting groundwater.
Local authorities have tried to stop the factory extracting so much groundwater on several occasions in 2017, PEPSIⓇ agreed to cut water use by 75% while drought conditions persisted. There have also been protests by local people demanding that the plant be shut down.
National Conflict- Water crisis in Yemen
Yemen is an arid country in western Asia that has very high levels of water stress . Water is a major source of conflict between many different parties in Yemen:
There is anger amongst people in rural communities about the uneven availability of water between rural and urban areas. This has sometimes led to violent clashes and protests.
In 2002, the government introduced a law requiring landowners to get a licence to drill and maintain wells, and tried to introduce a register of wells in the country. This was met with backlash from farmers concerned that the government would try to control the amount of water they could extract from wells on their property.
In 2009, the government tried to restrict the cultivation of qat- -a leaf chewed by much of the population - because irrigation of qat crops uses around 30% of Yemen’s groundwater. Farmers objected to the government restrictions, arguing that they would lose their income. As a result, the limits were largely ignored.
International conflict:The River Nile
Conflicts often arise over water sources (such as rivers or lakes) that cross borders between countries. For example: The Nile river is a source of water for many countries in north east Africa. There’s conflict between the downstream countries (e.g. Egypt and Sudan) that use most of the water, and the upstream countries (including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania) that want to use more water.
In 2011, Ethiopia started to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam near the border with Sudan to generate hydroelectric power (HEP) and take better control of the river’s flow to prevent drought and flooding. Egypt is concerned that the dam will lead to the loss of billions of cubic metres of water by evaporation from the lake formed behind the dam, meaning that less water will flow into Egypt. This led to disputes between the two countries, but a partial agreement was reached in 2015.
