It is, however, in the Middle East and Africa where the water disputes assume a strategic dimension and the threats are traded between the adversaries to deny water to the opponent. The acute water shortage in the region makes water a key issue in the Middle East politics. The leaders of the region often spoke of war over water. Late King Hussein of Jordan declared in 1990 that water was the only issue that could take him to war with Israel. Jordan, Israel and occupied West Bank share the water of Jordan river. A hostile Israel already interfered with the river's water supply to the Palestinians in the occupied area. Moreover, an increasing demand on the water of Jordan river basin has led to a heightened tension in the region.

The Nile, the world's longest river, is shared by as many as nine countries. Egypt is last in the line. In 1989, the then Egyptian minister of state for foreign affairs famously said : "The national security of Egypt is in the hands of eight other African countries in the Nile basin." The current research on 'Environment and Conflict' indicates that the cause of future conflict between nations will tend to centre on water availability.

The situation is likely to exacerbate with the global warming which with rising sea level will pollute the river waters with salinity. The repeated draughts across the vast swathe of Africa, Central Asia and part of South Asia continue to take their tolls. At this time, globally 1.4 billion people do not have enough drinking water. The phenomenal rise in the population has not seen, in tandem, an equally high rise in the quantity of water. Yet the consumption of fresh war is multiplying on an unequal basis. While this multiplication of consumption keeps rising the world's water reserve cannot but deplete only.

As revealed in the UN's Environment Outlook 3, 2002, the total volume of water on the earth is about 1400 million cubic kilometers of which only 2.5 percent or about 35 million cubic kilometers is fresh water, most of which is locked up in glaciers or deep ground water acquifer. The usable portion of it is only 200,000 cubic kilometers. This is less than one percent of all fresh water and 0.01 percent of all water on earth. This starkly brings forth our predicament and a scramble for water that may ensue at a point of future time.

The fight for water is already on between not only the states but also between provinces as well as upper and lower riparians. Multinationals are rushing to appropriate ground water resources and are meeting resistance from civil society. But the major global companies are determined to overcome those challenges and control water resources. They already constructed large scale water projects in key consumption centres in the cities such as Paris, Marseilles, Athens, Helsinki, Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles by moving huge quantities of water from basins elsewhere, leaving those basins perhaps dry.

This is a kind of conflict where no ethics or moralities are likely to be adhered to. As the resource of water is key to physical survival there exists no scope for bringing in ethics or moralities by the parties concerned. Only a collective endeavour at global level can save the humanity from the looming catastrophe through a planned conservation of this bounty of the nature with a sense of selflessness.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.