On the Tibetan Plateau, where a whim of nature created the highest points on Earth, many of the world’s major rivers are born. Each day their flows bring life to more than a billion people downstream in Asia, the planet’s most populous region.

As we watch the headlines in an age of shifting water supplies, we may see a future filled with conflict and war over water resources, flows and quality.

Prayer flags and khatags, Tibetan ceremonial silk scarves, fly over the wide Yarlung Tsangpo River in central Tibet’s U-Tsang region. It is the highest major river in the world. Photo: Alison Domzalski

For example, we report today at Circle of Blue’s WaterNews the water-strategic importance of the Tibetan Plateau. It doesn’t take much to imagine the stress and potential for conflict downstream, particularly with China’s propensity for hydrological engineering.

However, flip the perspective 180 degrees and we may have seeds for some of the greatest collaborations and cooperative opportunities in history. This according to an essay by Karin Bencala and Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko published Tuesday in the Journal of International Affairs.

In the Middle East, for example, “Water and sanitation investments are pitched as providing peace dividends,” according to the essay, Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities. Dabelko directs the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program; Bencala is program assistant.

True, the planet’s water challenges are great, the situation grim. As Circle of Blue reported last year, drought and poor water management are spurring immigration to the United States from Mexican agrarian communities. Similarly, Inner Mongolian herders face desertification and relocation, and as glaciers retreat, Peruvian pastoralists are forced to move to the city with few urban survival skills. The health statistics are even more numbing: nearly 2 million children die each year from water-related diseases.

Write Bencala and Dabelko:

“Scholars from a variety of disciplines would likely argue the world is entering a level of water stress it has never previously experienced, driven by population growth, increased consumption of goods and resources and climate change. But it is less the absolute scarcity of water and more the rate of change in water availability that should raise concerns about future transboundary water conflict. Water stress alone is unlikely to lead to an international conflict, as all conflicts have multiple origins. Instead, most disputes occur when a unilateral action is taken, such as building a dam or diverting water, and when there is not sufficient institutional support or flexibility for conflict resolution or mitigation. Abrupt climate change or the sudden creation of new countries without developed patterns of water relations could also similarly occur at a rapid rate to which institutions cannot adapt.”

…

“While increased scarcity could lead to conflict, this scarcity also provides opportunities to shape a cooperative future. If addressed early on, issues of water scarcity and water use can bring parties together to jointly manage resources for purposes as diverse as water quality and hydroelectricity.”

In parallel, Bencala and Dabelko point out, water supplies and meteorological patterns can be indicators for potential conflict, and offer opportunities to generate proactive peacemaking.

According to analysis conducted in 2005 by Marc Levy, Charles Vorosmarty and Nils Petter Gleditsch: “…at the global scale, there is a highly significant relationship between rainfall deviations and the likelihood of outbreak of a high-intensity internal war. When rainfall is significantly below normal, the likelihood of conflict outbreak is significantly elevated.”

Dr. Vorosmarty and I co-presented the session on water at the Aspen Environment Forum in March. During our session, he noted with irony that as we face these great challenges, we are in many cases allowing our global water monitoring capabilities to decline. This becomes particularly notable as comprehensive monitoring and research could offer indicators — a kind of early warning system — for proactive response to potential hot spots, and turn them into peacemaking opportunities.

It’s precisely water’s unpredictablity — combined with the speed of political and environmental change, and the prevalence of bombastic commentary — that encourage quick judgments and poor investments, explain Bencala and Dabelko.

“Growing water scarcity and climate change-derived unpredictability may motivate countries to fight over water. Yet the world community would be wise to resist the dramatic headlines of water wars. Conditions are dire, but this disproportionate focus on states fighting over water gets in the way of understanding the complexities of conflict over water. It also obscures the positive opportunities presented by cooperation over water. Academic inquiries, policies and program designs that ignore these differentiations misdiagnose causes of conflicts, skew risk assessments and prescribe inappropriate means to address the problems.”

Is there hope? Bencala and Dabelko propose that we take proactive, collaborative approaches that avoid the pitfalls of bad policy and the 24-7 news cycle, which so often ignore long-term, slow-to-develop solutions.

“To move in a positive direction, politicians, advocates and the media need to stop predicting water wars and instead begin to call for water cooperation. International policy will follow, affecting how money is spent on the ground. As (U.N. Secretary General) Ban Ki-moon counseled at (the World Economic Forum in) Davos, “We need to adapt to this reality just as we do to climate change. There is still enough water for all of us, but only so long as we keep it clean, use it wisely, and share it fairly.”

That’s the rub. Politicians, advocates and the media — and most of us — are driven by crises, not slow fuses. China and Tibet may be in the hot seat, and most don’t predict an easy resolution to tension and strife anytime soon. Yet water management decisions on the Tibetan Plateau will affect billions of people for generations. China and Tibet are are not alone: any number of regions, from Israel to Mexico to the United States to Peru to Sub-Saharan Africa, are struggling with water scarcity. In each case, perhaps those dark clouds can bring a gentle rain and nurture the seeds of peace.

Margaret Catley-Carlson is chairperson of Global Water Partnership, a working partnership among formed in 1996 by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. From the U.N. Global Compact to what you can do, Catley-Carlson talks all things water at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Margaret Catley-Carlson: I have a very interesting position in that I either sit on the board or chair six or seven organizations that work in the science and policy of water. I’m not an expert of any kind. I’m not an oligist of any kind. I’m not a hydroligist, an agronomist, a geologist, but I have the great privilege of listening to them day after day, week after week and finding out about the world of water.

J. Carl Ganter - Circle of Blue: Here at Davos, water has become a major priority. Can you characterize that: Why is has it become a priority and what’s coming out of the discussions?

Margaret Catley-Carlson:First of all, I’d characterize it by saying, Great! Last year at Davos, there were sort of one and a half water sessions. Before that it’s been very difficult to get it on the schedule at all. So some good people certainly in the corporate sector, but some good people also in the Davos secretariat have worked very hard to say, ‘Look there is an increasing concern about water.’ When businessmen are canvassed on what they see as the risk factors ahead, water has been moving up. You can make lots of puns and say the water line is rising. There was a canvas done of Fortune 500 companies and something like 70 percent of the executives canvassed said that a major water disruption would make huge difference to their company. Of course if you characterize this as floods, hurricanes, etc., it would make a major difference to all of us. But they were talking about the universe of water risk in terms of quality, quantity, the kind of things that really are changing around the world. So what’s great about this meeting is that the business community as a community and as businesses are saying, Let’s talk about this. I’m very glad when they talk about bringing drinking water to people that don’t have it. That’s the other side of the house. They’re now talking about the self-interest of well-managed water. And I think that that’s quite a big step forward.

JCG: You’ve mentioned that water is local, local, local. How does “local” come into play.

Margaret Catley-Carlson: When I make speeches, I always start out by saying “I’m going to turn you all into water experts. I want you to repeat three times after me: Water is local, Water is local, Water is local. And then the next thing I do is say now, draw two circles in your mind. One of them is the management and the care of the lakes, the rivers, the groundwater, the water that runs into the oceans and does damage or otherwise to coral reefs. The water in the soil, the water melting in the glaciers, that’s water resource management. And that is, if you wish, the big circle. That is how well are we taking care of the resources that sustain us. That’s the circle from which we get the food that we eat, that’s the circle that we get the electricity that we get through hydro. Water transport, tourism, all the rest of it. Now there’s another circle and that’s called drinking water and sanitation. The lingo people call it the “taps and toilets” part of water. The two of them are linked. If you’ve got bad sanitation, you’re going to get bad water quality as well. But the two circle are quite different. So when you ask the question, How do we ever pull these things together? a lot of the public interest is in the drinking water, taps and toilets business. That’s what hits the headlines. That’s where you get the big debate about privatization. This is where, mostly where water as a human right argument or debate is. But I am trying to pull attention to the two circles because the enveloping circle, the big circle, is where you have to look to how you understand the totality of water. In the small circle, it’s basically a question as to whether water, poverty, delivering water to everybody, is a priority, including financial. In the big circle, the people that call the shots might well be the minister of mines, a big company that is building a big transport company. What affects water quality and quantity is very unlikely to be under the rubric of water. It’s going to be those that affect erosion, water quality, stability, all sorts of other factors.

JCG: Looking toward the future, what’s next? What comes out of Davos?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: Ideal world scenario: Now that Davos has raised some consciousness, now that a number of members of the business community are saying, ‘Hey, water affects me, I’ve got an enlightened self interest in doing something about this,’ the first thing that the call to action — which was a really good paper available on the web produced here … if you want to know about water in a six-page capsule it will tell you all the facts, even all the cocktail snippets you need to know about water. It recommends three things: The first one is that the business leaders sign something called the “Call to Action.” This isn’t even a Davos document, it’s a U.N. document coming from something called the Global Compact, which is a group of business persons that support within the U.N., some of the goals of the United Nations, including achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which try to get more water and sanitation and a better world to a lot of people that don’t have it now. So sign the Global Compact first.

What does the Global Compact ask? That you do three things. First of all, you find out about your water footprint with a view of getting as close to water neutrality as possible.

The second one is you find out what the state of water management is in your river basin. In other words, back to the rivers, the lakes, the underground water. How these connect — where the threats are, what the quality is, what the quantity is. Now if you’re a multinational company with operations manufacturing in seven countries and sales in a hundred countries, your backyard has a lot of water basins in it. So this isn’t just for headquarters and this isn’t just one manufacturing site. So in other words, it’s becoming informed about what is creating the water quality and quantity situations in a large part of the world.

Third part: Get involved in this. At least to some extent so that the guys who are setting the rules, the regulations, whether they’re being observed or not. The policing of this, the observance of the protection of watersheds, the upstream downstream… you cut down the forest upstream it’s going to have a big impact downstream. So get involved, find out if there’s something you can do as part of corporate policy. Find out how you can actually help shape the water universe that you particularly live in, remembering that you may live in several. If you’re a company with interests in a number of countries. Back to a water footprint. What’s a water footprint? It’s the amount of water that you cause to be involved in production and distribution processes. What are you growing, what are you manufacturing? Lemon juice? Ok, you’ve got all of the orchards. Where are they planted? How much pesticide, fertilizer are they using? How much of the outflow of that goes into the water stream? How do you wash these things? How much water are you actually using there? Have you looked at both the water and energy implications of the transport that you’re using to get those lemons to distribution centers? Are you shipping concentrate or are you shipping lemons? Are you shipping this in the most economical sense, not just in terms of money, but in terms of water and energy? Follow the chain through — what’s the manufacturing and processing plant look like? Is is being done in the best way possible? Start looking at distribution. How does this material, how does the lemon juice actually leave the factory? How does it get to consumers? How is it packed? Are those throw-away containers? Or are these reusable containers, or ideal world, are these things that will biodegrade when the light hits them if they get thrown somewhere in a landfill. You can see now I could go into how are they arranged in the supermarket, etc. But you begin to see what the water footprint is. It’s really how does my product and how do my processes affect the water universe in which they live. I call this the water mirror sometimes. Hold up your water mirror, look behind you and you’ll see what the universe of water is, that within which you’re working and then look deeper into the water mirror and see what your own footprint is.

JCG: We need some major paradigm shifts as to how individuals look at water and act on water. What’s going to cause those shifts?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: I think occasions such as Davos are very useful. They bring home that this is not simply worrying that people in far away lands don’t have drinking water. And yes, please, keep worrying about that. It’s something as human beings we can worry a lot about. But it’s also saying, ‘Hey, this is adding to the list of things I’ve really got to worry about in order to be in business.’ And that is good.

There’s been a fair amount, not enough, of media coverage. I hope that we can continue working with media to say, How do you understand these two circles of concern about water. How do you cover these? What’s the non-sensational story? How do we make sure that we’re not talking about real collapses and disasters in ten years? These are actually happening in some places now. How do we make sure that these are not being universalized? How do we make sure that conditions are kept as good as they can be in a number of places?

I sat across from some business leaders yesterday saying, “Oh sure, we make our decisions about whether we’re going to locate plants very much based on water availability.”

I said, “Do you ever talk to the countries where you’ve decided _not_ to be about water?”

“No, no we wouldn’t do that, we talk to the ones where we’ve decided to be.”

So in a sense, it’s the growing awareness, I hope, of the countries that didn’t get the jobs, and didn’t get the employment, if they improve their water management, that they might improve their economic prospects, their development, their employment, better life for people.

JCG: What about the individual?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: People ask, ‘What should I be doing about water?’

You know all of those funny little things about turning off the tap, really being conscious that you really don’t need a 20-minute shower, washing your car occasionally and not all the time? This really counts. Why does this count? I’m Canadian — we have seven to 10 percent of the world’s resources. Canadians say, “Surely I don’t have to care about this, we’ve got all the water in the world.”

Well, you’ve got all the water in the world. But you’re not using that river, or that lake, which is all the water in the world. You’re using something which has been collected, it’s been piped, it’s been chemically adjusted to make sure that it’s pure. It has been transported. At each stage of this, there’s pumping, there’s energy expense, there’s expense to the community that could be used for other things. So every time you have a good long shower, you are sending carbon particles into the air just as thoroughly as that truck going down the road in front of you that you’re looking at and saying, “This is why we have global warming.”

Next time you have a 20-minute shower, you’re sending carbon particles into the air, too, because somebody had to pump that water to get there and that pump sent carbon particles into the air. So, yes, you can do quite a bit by your water use. It isn’t just about water, it’s about water, it’s about energy, it’s about a lot of things.

Shanghai’s experiencing isolated showers. But will the forecast call for pain?

China scholar Li Cheng challenged the audience’s sense of hygenic urgency yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he described what might happen if everyone in Shanghai took a shower even once a week.

Atlantic Monthly journalist James Fallows summarizes:

On the environment (a huge theme in discussions of China here): when a rural dweller moves to the big city, his or her demands on the water supply increase thirty-fold. This reminds me of a statistic I heard last year in China: if the average Shanghainese resident took a shower even once a week, the city’s water supply would be used up.

In the separate morning session, A Year in Shanghai, Fallows described some of his behind-the-scenes perspectives gleaned from reporting his recent Atlantic article, “Why China’s Rise is Good for Us.”
Some of the key takeaways:
- Environmental factors will be most limiting to China’s continued growth;
- Most in China don’t seem to realize how bad the situation is. For example, the Yellow River doesn’t reach the ocean;
- Seven percent of the glacial ice mass on the Tibetan Plateau is melting each year. What will happen to every river in Asia with a decline in snowmelt?
- China is undergoing the largest mass human migration in history with more than 150 million people moving from rural to urban areas;
- The new definition of foreign aid is you save yourself.

WASHINGTON - While we’re preparing for our return to Mexico City to showcase “Tehuacán: Divining Destiny,” the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program has published our working group’s papers online. (Mine is called “Navigating the Mainstream: Making Water Issues Matter.”) Included are the multimedia reports Soren Nielsen and I produced in Iztapalapa and other regions of Mexico (with editing help from Aaron Jaffe). These are mere examples of the the people, the children, the faces behind the global freshwater crisis.