Environmental Engineering Reference
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warned that basins of the Nile, Niger, Volta, and Zambezi Rivers are all potential
flashpoints for violence over water supplies. Hydrologists, academics, and diplomats
worry that in coming years water disputes could devolve into wars among historical
rivals—between China and India, or India and Pakistan, over the Himalayan glaciers,
for example; or between Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan over the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers; or between Egypt and its neighbors over control of the Nile.
The IPCC report also noted the diminishing snowpack of the Sierra Nevada in
northeastern California, and the overuse of the Colorado River. The Colorado begins as
snowmelt trickling off the Rocky Mountain snow-fields, provides water for 30 million
people in seven states and Mexico, and has suffered from drought since 2000. If the Co-
lorado River continues to decline at a time when more Americans than ever are moving
to cities in the desert West, the IPCC cautioned, then social, economic, legal, and envir-
onmental havoc could follow—especially in a place such as Phoenix, Arizona, which is
the hottest city in the hottest state in the nation.
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