Is Water Really Not Being Fought Over ?

Chronology database has been created at the Pacific Institute for Studies in

Development, Environment and Security in Oakland.

Every incident or event in Gleick’s database is given its date, its exact geographical

location, and type of dispute—violent or not. Naturally, the description of the event

is accompanied by the sources on which it is based. All events in the database are

classified into six sub-categories: control of access to or use of water resources (by

states or other actors) that might lead to friction; water as a weapon in the hands

of states; water as a political tool in the hands of states or other bodies; water in

the service of terror groups (but not of a state); water as a target in armed conflict

between states; development projects around water (economic, social) that cause

conflict among states and among other bodies.

The comprehensive work of collection, as well as the thoughtful categorization,

seem not to leave any doubt as to the necessity of the database and its veracity.

However, precisely the multiplicity of cases and sub-categories of the collection

expose itsweakness; likewise the diversity of scales applied to the events it contains,

the media basis that feeds it (not always reliable; possibly politically slanted), as

well as the coverage of historical cases according to the diverse geographic regions.

Thus media coverage of the Middle East and Israel is immeasurably greater than

that of other regions, among other factors because of the “CNN effect.” By contrast,

water conflicts in states with censorship, or without reliable media, if any at all,

hardly stand a chance of appearing in the database. Similarly, events nearer to the

present time are covered much better than those at the start of the 20

century or

earlier.

To substantiate the problematic nature of the database, we can indicate several

curious events that have been inserted into it. It contains an account of an electricity

shortage during the Protective Edge campaign between Israel and Gaza, which

led to the closure of the sewage disposal station in Gaza and the flow of sewage

in the streets (Akram & Rudoren 2013). There is a description of the demolition

of seven water containers, a well and a pump—all illegal—at a Bedouin village

south of Mount Hebron (Aburawa 2011). Alongside these we find entries on the

distribution of the Indus water between Pakistan and India, which fairly often

have been on the verge of nuclear war, and events resulting from climate change,