Chapter 1
Introduction
All living things run on water. While the amount of accessible freshwater in the
world is limited and remains constant, it has to satisfy the ever growing demands
of an ever growing number of users, be it human beings, the economy or the natural environment. Yet, the various human-induced pressures of our era—population
growth, urbanisation, climate change to name a few—are leading to a massive degradation of the quality and quantity of freshwater resources worldwide. As a result,
by 2030, the world is projected to face a 40% water deficit, if current trends remain
unchanged. Consequently, water security in the broadest sense of the term will be
one of the critical questions of development, peace and stability in the 21st century.
Not surprisingly the World Economic Forum has repeatedly identified water as one
of the top global sources of risk. The US National Intelligence Council in a recent
report also concluded that “water may become a more significant source of contention
than energy or minerals out to 2030 at both the intrastate and interstate levels” (US
National Intelligence Council 2012). Changing hydrological conditions are further
complicated by the geography of water: around 47% of the Earth’s surface waters
lie in basins shared by at least two countries. These basins are home to some 40%
of the world’s population and account for about 60% of the global river flow (Wolf
et al. 1999). Thus, the bulk of world’s unfolding water crisis will have to be solved
in an international context.
In view of the conflict potential of shared surface waters, the 1980s and early
1990s saw the emergence, in mainstream political discourse and scientific literature,
of a widely held conviction that wars for water were both inevitable and imminent.
The rise of the water wars thesis, however, inspired not only political speculation,
but also gave impetus to a new wave of empirical research focusing on the drivers of
interstate conflict over shared river basins. Such research has laid the foundations of a
new discipline coined hydropolitics that is concerned with the study of the resilience
of co-riparian relations in transboundary basins. The basic findings of the various
schools of hydropolitics are probably best summarised by Aaron T. Wolf, a leading
authority in the field, as follows (Wolf 2009):
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
G. Baranyai, European Water Law and Hydropolitics, Water Governance - Concepts,
Methods, and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22541-4_1
1
Introduction
All living things run on water. While the amount of accessible freshwater in the
world is limited and remains constant, it has to satisfy the ever growing demands
of an ever growing number of users, be it human beings, the economy or the natural environment. Yet, the various human-induced pressures of our era—population
growth, urbanisation, climate change to name a few—are leading to a massive degradation of the quality and quantity of freshwater resources worldwide. As a result,
by 2030, the world is projected to face a 40% water deficit, if current trends remain
unchanged. Consequently, water security in the broadest sense of the term will be
one of the critical questions of development, peace and stability in the 21st century.
Not surprisingly the World Economic Forum has repeatedly identified water as one
of the top global sources of risk. The US National Intelligence Council in a recent
report also concluded that “water may become a more significant source of contention
than energy or minerals out to 2030 at both the intrastate and interstate levels” (US
National Intelligence Council 2012). Changing hydrological conditions are further
complicated by the geography of water: around 47% of the Earth’s surface waters
lie in basins shared by at least two countries. These basins are home to some 40%
of the world’s population and account for about 60% of the global river flow (Wolf
et al. 1999). Thus, the bulk of world’s unfolding water crisis will have to be solved
in an international context.
In view of the conflict potential of shared surface waters, the 1980s and early
1990s saw the emergence, in mainstream political discourse and scientific literature,
of a widely held conviction that wars for water were both inevitable and imminent.
The rise of the water wars thesis, however, inspired not only political speculation,
but also gave impetus to a new wave of empirical research focusing on the drivers of
interstate conflict over shared river basins. Such research has laid the foundations of a
new discipline coined hydropolitics that is concerned with the study of the resilience
of co-riparian relations in transboundary basins. The basic findings of the various
schools of hydropolitics are probably best summarised by Aaron T. Wolf, a leading
authority in the field, as follows (Wolf 2009):
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
G. Baranyai, European Water Law and Hydropolitics, Water Governance - Concepts,
Methods, and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22541-4_1
1