The "Third World War" for water has already begun - PART TWO
Thirst for which people are willing to fight
The inability to reconcile external sources of water policy with internal, official national authorities leads to so-called water conflicts — wars. Where access to water, as a victim of the contradictions described above, becomes a trigger for either indirect (currently the most widespread) or, in the near future, direct confrontation over water as an existential resource. This is the case in Syria, where a devastating drought from 2006 to 2011 helped spark a deadly civil war as farmers displaced by the overexploitation of groundwater moved to cities. There, unemployment fueled discontent, which was further exacerbated by food shortages. The next steps in the collapse of the state are well known to everyone. Jordan is also among the potential hotspots for water conflict in the region. According to one estimate, Jordan has enough water to feed only two million people in a country with a population of about ten millions. There was a project for a so-called "Two Seas Canal" to transfer desalinated water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, which would have benefited Palestinian settlements and Jordan the most, but the latter rejected the project in 2021, showing no desire to solve the problem of the Palestinians' severe water shortage. At the same time, Egyptian officials are openly threatening on television to destroy a huge Ethiopian dam upstream of the Nile, built with Chinese support. The filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) could, under new adverse climatic conditions, confront Egypt's 118 million people with challenges that this ancient land has never known before. Egypt, whose history and economy are tied to the Nile, considers the loss of control over the river a threat to national security. The population of Egypt is more than 20 times more than the population of Slovakia (118 million vs 5.5), despite the fact that their suitable territory is almost identical in size (~ 50 thousand km², another 950 thousand in Egypt—the dessert). That's all you need to know about the concept of homeland's spaciousness. The country of pyramids already uses more water than its internal renewable resources, and blocking the Nile for a couple of years could potentially kill the country.
Subjects of water conflicts. Water scarcity: water resources are limited, and demand for water exceeds its availability. This can cause conflicts between different groups, nationalities, or countries over access to water. Pollution of water sources: Excessive industrialization and agriculture can lead to the pollution of water sources with chemicals and waste. This can lead to conflicts over water purification and compensation for damages. Construction of water structures: The development and construction of reservoirs, hydroelectric power plants, and other water structures can cause conflicts with local communities that have lost access to water due to these projects. Transboundary conflicts: many rivers and lakes cross the borders of several countries, which can lead to international conflicts over the division of water resources.
Taking into account the above, we can define typical approaches to national foreign water policy and its components.
Creative approach: using another country's water resources to compensate for one's own deficit or savings (exported water consumption). For example, Saudi Arabia owns an unknown amount of land abroad where agricultural products are grown for domestic consumption by foreign workers, as such production is prohibited at home due to water shortages. Saudi Arabia even owns land in the US, where it grows feed for its own livestock. Or, for example, the US Global Water Strategy (2022) explicitly emphasizes USAID-like assistance with water quality improvement programs in poor countries (Africa and Asia) as an element of creating its own national security (supplies, migration, etc.). China provides substantial financial and technical assistance for the construction of dams and hydroelectric power plants on the Mekong River as part of a win-win policy of co-development with the countries concerned. In recent years, China's neighbors have become the final recipients of products from mainland China and demand both energy and reliable annual transport links.
Destructive approach: deliberate use (direct or covert) of tools to influence another country's water system as part of unfair competition. Suffice it to recall the Russian sabotage of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine. The direct motivation was hostile military expediency. But there are also consequences that are beneficial to Russian agricultural producers: a temporary blow to the production capacity of southern Ukraine, which benefits the farmers who are exporters in Russia's south. Equally destructive in its consequences, but not in its direct motive, could be the relocation of dirty production (with savings on treatment systems) or the planting of water-intensive export crops on the territory of another state. Yemen's civilian water infrastructure has been repeatedly attacked during the war. Egyptian hackers launched a cyberattack on Ethiopia's water systems in June 2020 with the aim of damaging the new Ethiopian dam, and in the same year, Israel reported several cyberattacks on Israeli water infrastructure. Water reservoirs, dams, and waterworks equipment have been targeted in recent incidents around the world.
A hybrid approach. For example, the Chinese-style war for water is a key component of natural warfare: China's plan to build a 60GW hydroelectric power plant in Tibet (three times more powerful than the legendary Three Gorges Dam!) will allow China not only to strengthen its power over the most important natural resource, but also to gain control over the flow of rivers in India and Bangladesh (the Brahmaputra River). In fashionable newspeak, this last example can be called "hybrid" in nature due to its impact on foreign policy. China has long controlled the headwaters of major rivers that feed South Asian countries: the Indus, Brahmaputra, and Mekong. The construction of dams upstream is turning Beijing into a "water supreme judge" for billions of people in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Some analysts are already warning that in the next two decades, the likelihood of a "water ultimatum" from China will become a question not of "if" but "when." Despite the interdependence of the global economy, isolationism is becoming an instinct for self-preservation in the water century.
The Beijing model of "water geopolitics." China has decided not to play the role of peacemaker, expressing its unwillingness to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries: that is why it is building a dam in Ethiopia, despite the potential war between Ethiopia and Egypt. But we should expect that it will appear in this role there as well. Perhaps this policy is the essence of China's paradoxical future peacemaking in old arenas of conflict based on the scarce resources of the 21st century. It is a specific strategy for strengthening its global presence. Dams symbolize China's new status as a global power, and its increasingly influential role gives China enormous leverage over countries through transboundary basins. All of its projects create a need for cooperation with itself to further address water management issues and possible man-made shortages. It is to be expected that China will use its relations with Iran to help Iraq overcome the negative aspects of Iran's influence on the country, such as Iranian dams that prevent water from reaching Iraq. In 2022, Iraq received only a tenth of the water it used to receive from Iran. And the diplomatic role of "infrastructure master for repairing water problems" may seem to official Beijing to be a suitable model for resolving this type of conflict.
Water fights of our time.
Let's take a broader view: armed conflicts are already raging in Africa over control of water resources. Tensions between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile not only symbolize the politics of water nationalism, but also demonstrate the fragility of inter-state agreements concluded in the 20th century, when rivers still seemed permanent. Egypt has stated outright that losing part of the Nile's flow would be a casus belli. And that is not a metaphor. Military escalation around dams, canals, reservoirs, and river sources is only a matter of time.
Conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Territories: Water resources, particularly the reservoir on the Jordan River, have become one of the issues causing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Territories over the Golan Heights. Both sides claim the right to use these resources. The Litani River has long been a source of tension between Lebanon and Israel, as it runs along the Israeli-Lebanese border and is a key source of fresh water in the region. During the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as during the 2006 offensive, the destruction of Lebanon's irrigation infrastructure — dams, canals, water intakes — led to accusations of attempts to control the Litani's water resources. Lebanon accused Israel of obstructing the construction of new water facilities and of diverting water from Lebanese territory to Israeli farmers. In response, Israel denied direct water diversion, but many reports, including one by The Washington Institute, note that control over access to the river is of strategic importance to both sides. UN resolutions have included the Litani River as a natural demarcation line, emphasizing its role in regional security. Although there is no open "water conflict" at present, water disputes are one of those invisible mines that could explode in the event of another escalation.
The Tigris and Euphrates, which once cradled civilizations, are now a source of geopolitical tension. Turkey, which controls the upper reaches of the rivers, is building massive dams as part of the GAP project, reducing the amount of water reaching Syria and Iraq. Iraq is already reporting a loss of up to 50% of its water, and the Euphrates has fallen to critically low levels. Fields in central Iraq have dried up, and millions of farmers are leaving their land. This is creating not only a humanitarian disaster but also a new type of refugee: climate migrants who are moving en masse to cities and abroad.
The GAP (Southeast Anatolia) Project, Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (Turkish): one of the largest water and hydroelectric power and regional development projects in the world. It was launched in the 1970s and involves the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants with a total capacity of about 7,500 MW. Thanks to this project, the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers will provide 1.7 million hectares of irrigated land, approximately 20% of Turkey's total irrigation potential. The Atatürk Dam has created Turkey's largest reservoir (≈ 48.7 km³), which has increased cotton production in the region from 164,000 tons to 400,000 tons per year. The GAP covers nine provinces, approximately 10% of the country's territory and population. In the 2020s, the project was estimated at over 190 billion Turkish lira (US$32 billion). Since 2010, its completion has been delayed due to international disputes (in particular, Iraq and Syria complain about water loss). But in fact, Turkey already has strategic control over the main sources of the two most important rivers in the Middle East — the Tigris and Euphrates, which originate in the Turkish mountains.
Iran and Afghanistan have long been in conflict over the distribution of water from the Gerirud River (Gerat or Tedzhen), which flows from the western mountains of Afghanistan into the freshwater lakes and marshes of the Sistan region in southeastern Iran. In 1973, an agreement was signed obliging Kabul to deliver about 820 million m³ of water annually to Iran, but it was never fully implemented or ratified. In subsequent years, Afghanistan has been accused of building dams (Kajaki, Kamal Khan), canals, and irrigation systems that significantly reduce the flow of water to Iran, leading to the almost complete drying up of Lake Hamun, a key ecosystem resource in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan region. In May 2023, the conflict escalated into border skirmishes, resulting in the deaths of two Iranian soldiers and one Taliban fighter, as a consequence of the escalating water dispute. For its part, Iran claims that it receives only about 4% of the volume stipulated in the agreements and demands that Afghanistan fulfill its obligations, while Afghanistan claims that the low water level is due to prolonged droughts and insists on its right to develop infrastructure for domestic consumption.
Iran is experiencing one of the most severe water crises in the world — the situation is so critical that it threatens the country's basic viability. More than 70% of the country's territory is affected by chronic drought, over 300 cities are under water stress, and dozens of them have officially introduced water rationing schedules. According to the National Water Agency of Iran, the amount of water available per capita has fallen from 1,800 m³ per year in the 1970s to less than 500 m³ in the 2020s — which is already classified as an "absolute deficit." Lake Urmia, the Zayandeh Rud reservoir, Karaun, and other key sources have virtually dried up, aquifers are being depleted at a rate of up to 1 m per year, and land subsidence has become a geological threat to Iranian cities. The loss of agricultural land, the demolition of villages, and mass migration to cities are already a reality. The authorities are resorting to redirecting rivers, building pipelines hundreds of kilometers long, and desalination projects, but these measures have limited effectiveness, especially in the context of economic sanctions and resource shortages. By 2030, according to internal forecasts by Iranian government institutions, up to 70% of the country's population could live in areas of acute water shortage, and more than 50 million people could be forced to leave their homes by 2050. Without systemic reform in agriculture, water management, and demographic planning, Iran could face unmanageable collapse of rural regions, social unrest, and mass migration in the coming years. This is no longer just an environmental problem — it is a challenge to the very existence of the nation as a political, social, and economic entity. Mass resettlement to neighboring territories with better water supplies, using military force, is a highly likely scenario. And the question of whether a drying-up Persia is at war with Israel in order to eventually capture it and resettle some of its citizens there is, for me, rhetorical.
Conflict in the Andes Mountains. Several South American countries, such as Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, are facing conflicts over water resources in the Andes Mountains, including struggles for access to underground water sources and rivers. In regions dependent on the Andean mountain glaciers, global warming has already destroyed entire ecosystems. In 2024, Bolivia lost another 20% of its glacier cover — in 2009, the Chacaltaya glacier, which once supplied La Paz with water, was officially declared dead. The capital now regularly faces water supply restrictions. In Argentina, within the Patagonian regions, the authorities have been forced to restrict agricultural production, triggering a new wave of internal migration. According to data from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), more than 10,000 farms closed in 2024.
Central Asia (Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan). Many rivers in Central Asia cross the borders of several countries and are a shared resource for them. During the Soviet era, there was a single system of control over shared consumption, and its injustice was maintained by force. The collapse of this system was compounded by climate change, making synchronization almost impossible. The nature of the deficit does not allow for the creation of a win-win system. Countries are left to compete for the right to use these rivers for irrigation and other purposes, but the means of competition are increasingly turning to violence. The conflict between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan: The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers are the two main rivers in this conflict. Tajikistan plans to build hydroelectric power plants on the Vakhsh River, a tributary of the Amu Darya. This has caused tension with Uzbekistan, which fears that these projects could restrict access to water for irrigating its agricultural land. Conflict between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan: Both countries are located in the Syr Darya River basin and share its water resources. Disputes concern water supply for irrigation and hydropower, and skirmishes occur every year at border crossings. However, the scale of the escalation will be determined by the further deterioration of the water situation.
India and Pakistan. The conflict between India and Pakistan over water is a creeping disaster that has been brewing beneath the surface for decades and is now approaching a flashpoint. Both countries — nuclear powers with a history of animosity — depend on a single waterway: the Indus River, which originates high in the Himalayas, flows through the Indian-controlled territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and then flows through Pakistan, providing water for more than 80% of its agricultural land. It is this dependence that makes water a weapon.
Back in 1960, with the mediation of the World Bank, the Indus Waters Treaty was signed, which supposedly regulated the distribution: India got the eastern tributaries (Satluj, Beas, Ravi), and Pakistan got the western ones (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab). But over time, especially after the conflicts in Kashmir, India began to actively build dams, canals, and reservoirs on its side, using the "gray areas" of the treaty. Pakistan perceives this as an attempt to stifle its economy and agriculture, and some politicians openly talk about a "hydrological war." In 2023–2024, India again began threatening to cut off water, saying that "water does not flow to terrorists," hinting at Pakistan's links to anti-Indian groups. In response, Pakistani military officials began talking about the need to protect water interests at all levels, hinting at a readiness to escalate.
Now China has joined the two. In the 2020s, China began implementing plans to build a giant dam on the Brahmaputra River (called the Yarlung Tsangpo in China) in Tibet, upstream from India and Bangladesh. This could have a catastrophic impact on the flow of water to eastern India, creating another point of tension. China wants to use this water for hydroelectric power and irrigation, but with glaciers melting, this could be the last straw — literally — for the entire region.
China plans to build the most powerful hydroelectric power plant in history on the Yarlung Tsangpo River (the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra), with a potential capacity of up to 60 gigawatts, three times that of the Three Gorges Dam. The project involves the construction of a giant dam in a deep mountain canyon near the border with India, in an area of seismic activity. Although the official goal is "green" energy, India and Bangladesh see this structure as a tool to control water for more than 130 million people living downstream. In the event of a conflict or man-made disaster, such a mega-structure could become not only a lever for political blackmail, but also a source of regional catastrophe.
There will be no happy ending. Water is the region's new nuclear weapon, and unlike bombs, hundreds of millions of people are already feeling its shortage. Global warming is only making things worse: glaciers are melting, rainfall is decreasing, and agriculture is on the brink of collapse. If this situation reaches boiling point, it could spark the most densely populated conflict in human history, where the stakes are not economic resources but the right to survive.
Transformation or destruction
Already today, the world's most developed countries are implementing mega-projects that resemble preparations for a long siege. Saudi Arabia, for example, depends on seawater desalination for almost 60% of its water supply. ACWA Power, one of the region's largest energy giants, signed agreements worth more than $10 billion in 2024 to build new desalination plants that will run on solar energy. Dubai is creating "water banks" — underground reservoirs with millions of liters of fresh water. This is not science fiction, but modern logistics in a water-scarce world.
California is implementing a program to reuse treated wastewater — not only for irrigation, but also for drinking purposes. Reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, and UV sterilization have become commonplace items in local budgets. Companies such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola, which once obtained water almost free of charge, are now forced to conduct public negotiations on water rights with municipalities — and increasingly, faced with the threat of physical clashes with locals, these companies are having to back down.
A new class of "water maps" is emerging in Europe: geo-analytics that determine which regions will remain viable after 2050 . France has already updated its National Climate Strategy in 2024 to include water adaptation in agriculture as a key element of security. In the Netherlands, where water is a long-standing enemy but also a life-giving force, the government has begun promoting a "gradual retreat plan": some areas will be officially designated as unsuitable for protection against rising sea levels. The decision to lose part of the land in a controlled manner is a bitter but strategically honest one.
Interactive hydrogeographical models combine risks of scarcity, overload, salinity, groundwater conditions, and climate vulnerability with socioeconomic indicators. This data can be formalized in a so-called "water passport." In the context of the European Union, such a "passport" for a region is not a separate, unified document, but rather a comprehensive, dynamic electronic information system that provides a "snapshot" of the water situation in a given territory. The process was launched with the adoption of the New Green Deal. Geoanalytical tools make it possible to overlay maps of climate droughts, water shortages, reduced inflows, and adaptive capacity at the national level — and immediately see which regions will be "water secure" and which will be potentially unsuitable for development after 2050. This analysis makes it possible to create water passports for regions — classifications that indicate exactly where to invest in new infrastructure and where to abandon concentrated efforts because it is simply impossible to maintain viability.
A widespread water disaster could be one of those rare occasions when individual nations agree to profound changes not for the sake of lofty values, but for the sake of mere survival. Cities could become water-efficient, manufacturing could become waste-free, and agriculture could become smart. This will require not only technology, but also a rethinking of the very idea of "success": not "where you live," but "do you have access to water where you live?" A return to localism, a transition to cooperation, and the protection of water cycles as part of security are no longer utopian ideas, but an extremely pragmatic agenda. At the same time, most countries in the world have neither a plan B nor sufficient infrastructure to maintain the situation even in the medium term. And here is the most important question: how far are governments willing to go to maintain access to water? Water wars will not have a "cold" phase. Water is the most essential resource for human life and communities. Potential hot spots in the struggle for water resources are already in full swing. Russia's attack on Ukraine is one of them.
P.S.
Global warming means three basic adverse processes: significant changes in the annual heat regime; permanent crisis in access to fresh water, with a negative water balance; and an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. The areas most affected will be those located near ocean coasts, near areas of seismic activity, in basins originating from mountain rivers, etc. The interaction of these processes and their cumulative effect varies greatly around the world from region to region, creating uneven distribution of natural resources in the 21st century. These new climatic characteristics of territories form the concept of the economic value of climate change. In this regard, global competition between systems of social organization (neoliberal capitalism, Chinese communism, and other -isms) and systems of scientific and technological progress is being overlaid by competition for control and effective management of geoclimatically stable territories.
According to independent estimates, 40% of the world's population will face global water shortages by 2030 - The United Nations World Water Development Report, 2021
Climate change will radically disrupt and/or render impossible the production cycle of most complex existing industrialized economic activities: energy, agriculture, heavy industry, machine building, etc. All these clusters were designed on the nature-economic map of abundance of the last century. For the most part, preserving them in their original locations is a huge problem. And you remember the difference between a problem and a task, right? If something requires additional money and/or time to solve, it is exclusively a task. But a problem cannot be solved with any amount of money or time — you need to change your approach to what is bothering you. For example, the shortage of a key component, water, is either fundamentally unsolvable or its compensation is economically unfeasible. As an example, to meet the water needs of US agriculture alone (≈ 99.9 billion m³ per year) exclusively through desalination of seawater, it would be necessary to build about 666 stations of the size of Sorek, an Israeli desalination giant that produces about 150 million m³ of fresh water per year with a consumption of about 3 kWh per cubic meter. In total, such a system would consume more than 299 billion kWh of energy per year, require a continuous capacity of ~34 GW (equivalent to three dozen nuclear power plants), and cost about $50 billion per year for water production alone, excluding construction and transportation. The Sorek Desalination Plant is the world's largest reverse osmosis (RO) plant, located in Israel near Tel Aviv; it covers an area of about 0.1 km², produces over 624,000 m³/day, and provides water to over 1.5 million people. The scale of the task for the US would mean creating an entire "desalination empire" that would surpass any modern engineering project in the world.
However, water is not only drunk — it cools many technological processes at numerous industrial facilities. And I am not even talking about server stations. "In 2020, 87% of the world's electricity generated by thermal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power plants was directly dependent on the availability of water. Meanwhile, 33% of thermal power plants, whose operation depends on the availability of fresh water for cooling, are located in areas with high water scarcity. This also applies to 15% of existing nuclear power plants, whose share is expected to increase to 25% in the next 20 years. 11% of hydropower capacity is also located in areas with high water scarcity. Approximately 26% of existing and 23% of planned hydroelectric dams are located in river basins where the risk of water scarcity currently ranges from moderate to very high" And these are just the beginning of global warming.