Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Hightower, whose agency specializes in national security threats.
“Globally, about 250 rivers cross international boundaries [includ-
ing the Colorado and the Rio Grande along the United States'
southern border, and the Columbia River in the north]. Water
fl owing from Turkey into Iraq and Iran, water fl owing out of the
Himalayas into Pakistan and India, and water fl owing out of Tibet
into China are all transboundary water resources.”
The downstream water users feel the impact of upstream devel-
opment because that development requires more water withdrawals.
“Water resources, especially fresh surface water resources like riv-
ers, are all potential transboundary confl ict areas,” adds Hightower,
“especially when the natural resource is limited. The issue is not,
'Will there be confl icts?' There have already been hundreds of con-
fl icts over water over the last two hundred years.”
Confl icts are likely because as developing countries (and the
United States) try to grow their economies, they require more
access to freshwater, typically through their river systems. “If a coun-
try upstream is withholding water out of its river systems, that min-
imizes water that goes to the country downstream. Confl icts have
and will continue to arise over that,” says Hightower.
To put the potential for confl ict in perspective, more than 3,800
unilateral, bilateral, or multilateral declarations or conventions con-
cerning water exist today, according to data from UNESCO.
20
That
includes 286 treaties, with 61 referring to the more than 200 inter-
national river basins.
U.S. border issues.
Transboundary issues hit close to home. The
Rio Grande, which runs along a big chunk of the United States'
southern border with Mexico, has for decades spawned turmoil
that has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with
water. There's simply not enough of it. In 2001, the Rio Grande
actually stopped fl owing into the Gulf of Mexico. Plain and sim-
ple, it ran out of water because of too many people and too many
demands on its limited supply.
In recent years, cross-border skirmishes (of the legal and dip-
lomatic kind) have only worsened as dry weather and drought
have gripped much of the already water-short U.S. Southwest.
In some cases, Mexico claims the United States isn't provid-
ing its full allocation of water as set forth in a 1944 treaty. In that