This year’s theme for World Water Day is “Water for Peace.” And it’s not a coincidence. Access to water is a political weapon and causes confrontations between regions. In the last two decades there have been 1,057 conflicts over water around the world, according to data from the Pacific Institute. In fact, in the last two years there have been 202 conflicts over water and they are expected to increase due to the scarcity caused by global warming.
And more than 3 billion people depend on water that crosses national borders. However, only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for all the water resources they share, according to data from the United Nations, which estimates that a conflict over water could break out in approximately 300 areas of the world in 2025. For this and other reasons , water crises have been among the top five dangers on the World Economic Forum’s list of Global Risks by Impact since 2012.
In addition, water scarcity affects approximately 40% of the world’s population and, according to predictions from the United Nations and the World Bank, drought could put 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030, leading to new conflicts. It already happened in 2017, when several severe droughts caused the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, and 20 million people in Africa and the Middle East had to leave their homes due to food shortages and armed conflicts.
