Water as a Cause of Conflict or Cooperation

The prospect of future "water wars" is frequently brought up by the media or by politicians, for both good and bad reasons. The vital importance of water and the potential tensions arising from difficulties to access this resource can not be over-estimated. But water means also and above all interdependence and therefore cooperation, as multiple examples show.

Conflicts around water are far from restricted to trans-boundary conflicts between countries, even though these are more prone to degenerate into verbal or material clashes. Manage and conciliate the different utilisations of water in a fair and sustainable way, work to transform interdependence into cooperation and mutual benefits: this is the task of water governance both inside countries and at international level.