Why Waters Wars will be More Destructive than Wars on Water in future

Though a recent report identified potential flashpoints with respect to water wars in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East,  water wars already exist, having led to the suffering of tens of thousands of persons in the Chad Basin in West Africa, South East Asia, the United States, and other places. 

The surge of water from Chinese dams  in 2019 caused the Upper Mekong River to rise  by 3.7 meters, the highest in more than 37 years, flooding croplands in Laos and Thailand, the flash floods created leading to conflicts from the collapse of hundreds of businesses.

The size of Lake Chad in West Africa diminished  by 90 percent since the 1960s, forcing herders and farmers into conflicts,  resulting in the displacement of 2.3 million people, as well as fuelled the Boko Haram insurgency, which accounted for the direct deaths of at least 350,000 people.

The drought conditions in the United States in 2022 caused numerous Americans to suffer from water shortages, with four states recording  top-ten warmest years in history,  while the courts got inundated by water disputes involving hundreds of parties.

Climate change in part makes these water wars to exist, bringing the death of tens of thousands of persons directly and indirectly in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and other places.

The Chinese in 2019 found themselves under the pressure of incessant rains from climate change, released water from their dams, in order to prevent them from breaking, only to cause water levels in the Mekong to rise around four meters, the largest of such increases in 37 years.

People living around the Chad basin found themselves under pressure from the shrinkage of Lake Chad, once the 11th largest in the world, because climate change forced the water body to shrink to 2,000 square kilometers in the  1990s from a peak of 25,000 square kilometers in the 1960s.

The residents around Colorado River also found themselves under pressure from the shrinkage of the river, because climate change from 2000 to 2021 led to the loss of more than 40 trillion liters (10 trillion gallons) of water in the basin, a quantity almost the same as the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, with the regional drought that began around 2000 seen  as ushering in the the driest period in 1,200 years.

Climate change in the future could cause more discomfort in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and other places, leading to greater conflicts in basins such as Lake Chad, Colorado, and others.

Floods submerges about 66 percent of China's land mass, with the phenomenon affecting 50 percent of the population, but with the persistence of climate change factors in the coming years, experts project the number of individuals affected by riverine floods to surge from 65 million in 2010 to a staggering 132 million by 2030 and 292 million by 2080.

Lack of water led to an unbelievable 90 percent of Lake Chad to shrink in three decades, due to the reduction of rainfall in Central Africa Republic, a country located around 800 kilometers from the lake itself, but with the prevalence of climate change factors in the next few years, water conflicts could escalate, meaning much more than an already 7.6 million people in the area would be in need of humanitarian relief to survive.

Numerous factors also lead to the drying up of the Colorado, America's seventh largest river, but with climate change bringing less precipitation to the Rocky Mountain and drought lasting longer, the river could decrease by five to 20 percent in the next 40 years, meaning a rise in conflicts over water.

To prevent climate from causing more discomfort to nations in the near future, laws and regulations should suffice at local, state, and international levels, to strengthen the more than 3,800 declarations and 286 treaties already signed, or conflicts similar to the ones taking place on Lake Chad and other places may be frequent going forwards.

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Vegan food from the United States, Credit, New York Times