Chapter Five

Water Wars and Peace

Aaron Wolf, Mediator and Oregon State University Professor


This story reveals how moving beyond just the facts of an issue and acknowledging the emotions, needs, and experiences of others can lead to unexpected opportunities for cooperation. Developing empathy for other life forms (both human and non-human), one of the five practices of socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy, carries great transformative potential. As you read, imagine being the voice for the many non-human life forms that cannot speak their needs but that are, like us, dependent upon water for their survival.

When people come together for a common purpose—whether they are students working on a new class project or warring nations negotiating the use of shared water resources—there is always the potential for something Aaron Wolf refers to as a “sudden jolt.” “People in education and mediation, they know the jolt,” says Wolf, an Oregon State University professor of geography and a mediator of water disputes around the world. “They all recognize it.” There is a distinct, transformative shift in the room when suddenly everybody sees, understands, or experiences things differently from the way they did before. Very often, he suggests, it is the “Aha!” moment for which teachers and mediators live.

But what exactly leads to such moments of transformation? Is it possible to design the conditions in a room, and engage with the people in it, so as to bring about these moments more often? And if so, what does one need to understand about the transformation process to work with it? These are the questions that have fascinated Wolf in his work as a scientist, an educator, and a mediator of water conflicts from the United States to the Middle East.

Throughout his journey, Wolf has recognized the essential role of emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and ecological intelligence—as well as spiritual intelligence. To be sure, it is an unconventional approach for a scientist, but one Wolf has found central to a deep understanding of human behavior regarding ecological issues. Indeed, he believes that to develop realistic solutions to some of today's great challenges, “you need an understanding of both sustainability and the core emotional values that cause people to make the decisions they make.”

“I originally thought I would save the world through better technical models,” Wolf adds with a smile. “But I kept getting drawn to the human dimension.” Hired to map springs around Madison, Wisconsin, for example, he routinely turned in reports late because he spent so much time talking to landowners.

In time, he came to realize that “the scientific approach really focuses on understanding physical symptoms, pointing to better efficiencies, and developing better handles on cause and effect. It can then also point to the things that people ought to do. But if you don't take into account what people care about, what they are passionate about, why they make certain decisions, you only understand half the puzzle.”

As a result of his own efforts to take a broader view, Wolf has flipped a widely held assumption about water wars on its head. He has also begun to change the discourse about what some have called the defining issue of the century. As a result, he has helped warring nations turn the need to share resources to a pathway to peace. And these efforts have helped him serve as a more effective facilitator—both in negotiations and in the classroom.

Like Oil, Like Water?

For the past twenty-five years, many officials have predicted that nations will eventually go to war over water as they have over oil. Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali, former Secretary General of the United Nations, first declared in 1985, “The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics.”1 In 1995, Ismail Serageldin, then Vice President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development at the World Bank, announced, “The wars of the next century will be fought over water.”2 A few years later, Kofi Annan, another former United Nations Secretary General, said, “Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.”3 And more recently, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed water scarcity to be a “potent fuel for wars and conflict.”4 The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has similarly warned of “water wars.”5 Numerous books have invoked the same specter.6 And documentaries such as Blue Gold: World Water Wars have warned that ordinary citizens may soon have to fight for water.7

These predictions, of course, do not come out of the blue. They emerge from growing concerns about trends that are exacerbating the scarcity of clean drinking water in developing countries—and threatening to bring an end to what journalist Charles Fishman has described as the developed world's “golden age of water.”8

Today, one out of six people in the world lacks access to clean, safe drinking water. Many of them are children. In fact, if you picture an American elementary school of 500 students, and then imagine ten such schools all lined in a row, you would be looking at roughly the number of children who die every day from lack of access to adequate clean water, as Fishman reports in The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water.

And what of developed nations? For the past century, the majority of people in America and other developed countries have known water to be abundant, safe, and cheap. Indeed, the water we use—to drink, cook, bathe, clean our clothes, grow our gardens, and refresh ourselves and our children on hot days—has been so reliable that, Fishman observes, we don't even have words to describe the aquatic equivalent of “power failure.” Like the air we breathe, we have learned to count on it without even thinking about it.


The Biggest (Hidden) Use of Water
When we think about how we use water in the United States, we usually first think of the water we use at home: for drinking, cooking, washing—and flushing the toilet (which requires more water than the other three activities combined).9 After that, we might think about irrigation systems on farms, lawns, and golf courses. But what we often miss are the hidden uses of water—even though one of them represents the biggest use of water in the nation and one of the largest worldwide.
“Water is the secret ingredient of our fuel-hungry society,” wrote journalist Charles Fishman. In fact, our use of electricity consumes two-and-a-half times more water than the amount used in our bathrooms, kitchens, and yards.10
In the United States, more water is used in the production of electricity than anything else. An estimated 201 billion gallons of water a day were used to power thermoelectric plants in 2005, the last year for which these estimates are available from the United States Geological Survey.11 Most of this water is used to cool the equipment.
Irrigation, or the watering of crops, accounts for the second largest use of water, at 128 billion gallons a day. And unlike water we use in our homes—90 percent of which ends up back in streams or groundwater supplies—about half of this water is lost to the natural process of evaporation or evapotranspiration (which includes the release of water through plant leaves12), or as a result of leaking pipes.13
Public water use—withdrawn by water departments from rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and wells for delivery to homes, businesses, and schools—represents the third largest use of water at 44 billion gallons a day.14
Other top uses include water used for industry (eighteen billion gallons a day), aquaculture or fish farming (nine billion gallons), mining and domestic uses through public and private supplies (four billion gallons each), and livestock (two billion gallons).15

But all the same, the reality is this golden age is coming to an end. “We are entering a new era of water scarcity—not just in traditionally dry or hard-pressed places such as the U.S. Southwest and the Middle East, but in places we think of as water-wealthy, such as Atlanta and Melbourne,” Fishman writes. In developing countries, of course, the problems will get even worse.

Causes of Scarcity

Three of the biggest trends driving water scarcity are population growth, economic development, and climate change.16 Global population has increased from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion in 2011. By 2045, the United Nations predicts, it will reach 9 billion. And although every person on Earth needs water, we have only a finite supply—the same amount we have always had, endlessly recycled from the clouds, to waterways and oceans, to our homes and back again.

Moreover, there is no way around our limited global supply: We cannot make our own water, nor can we turn to water substitutes (although increasing efforts are underway to turn salt water into fresh water).


Ocean Water in a Glass?
Ocean water, which represents 97 percent of the Earth's water, has long tempted those who have wrestled with shortages of fresh water.
The earliest known efforts to remove salt from ocean water date back to 2000 B.C., according to ancient Sanskrit texts. Hippocrates also spoke of it, as did Sir Francis Bacon.17 And in 1962, president John F. Kennedy declared, “If we could ever competitively—at a cheap rate—get fresh water from salt water, that would be in the long-range interest of humanity, and would really dwarf any other scientific accomplishment.”18
Sixteenth century ocean voyagers are thought to have made the first serious efforts to desalinize water using simple devices on ships.19 But the first large-scale desalination plants only began in the 1970s.
Today, an estimated 300 million people in 150 countries use water from the sea or brackish groundwater—about twice the number who did in the 1990s.20 An estimated 13,080 desalination plants exist around the world and produce an average of twelve billion gallons of water a day.21
About half of these projects are located in the Middle East, although other regions have also begun to turn to desalination in recent years. For example, a $300 million facility has been proposed near San Diego, California. A $2.9 billion facility is planned near Melbourne, Australia.22 And in Tianjin, China, a $5 billion plant is projected to be China's largest. “As it did with solar panels and wind turbines,” Michael Wines reported in the New York Times, “the government has set its mind on becoming a force in yet another budding environment-related industry: supplying the world with fresh water.”23
With projections that one billion urbanites could face water shortages by 2050 due largely to urban growth and climate change, a rush to build systems capable of converting massive amounts of salt water into drinking water makes sense.24 Numerous technological advances also have helped bring down the costs.
But there are several associated ecological concerns. Most notably, the process of drawing enormous amounts of seawater into desalination plants destroys the habitat for countless fish, plankton, seaweed, and other marine life.
In addition, every fifteen to fifty gallons of drinking water produced from saltwater leaves thirty-five to fifty gallons of concentrated brine, according to Alex Prud'homme, author of The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-first Century. And that raises questions about what to do with all the brine that is left behind.25

Every one of us requires a minimum of three liters of drinking water a day. One liter of water is also required to produce the food that supplies us with one calorie of food energy—or 2,000 liters (528 gallons) for each day's recommended calorie intake per person.26 And that just scratches the surface of our water demand.

In fact, due to economic development, growth in water use has exceeded population growth by a rate of two to one during the past century, according to the United Nations.27 Water is also required for the manufacture of almost all products, including those made out of metal, wood, paper, chemicals, gasoline, and oils.28 And since the turn of the twenty-first century, economic development has surged—most notably in China and India, two of the world's most populous nations.

Climate change is also driving scarcity by disrupting nature's water cycle in numerous ways—causing wet regions to get wetter, dry regions to get drier, droughts to last longer, flooding to be more intense, and snow to melt faster. Climate change leads to drier soil, which slows the replenishment of groundwater. And perhaps most dramatically, it accelerates the melting of glaciers, affecting the water supplies on which millions of people depend. “Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry, and power generation during key parts of the year,” according to Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.29

As a result of these and other factors, the United Nations forecasts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population could be living in water-stressed conditions—where they might find it difficult or impossible to get adequate water to meet the needs of agriculture, industry, and households.30

Challenging the Orthodoxy

Given these realities—and the fact that two out of five people in the world live in places where rivers and lakes cross national boundaries—it is easy to imagine nations going to war over water. But have they ever done so during periods of water scarcity in the past? This is the iconoclastic question that Wolf asked—in part because his scientific training taught him to search for evidence, but also because, based on things he had seen in his childhood, he suspected that the experts might have it wrong.

Wolf grew up (with his sister, the feminist writer Naomi Wolf) in San Francisco during the politically charged 1960s and 1970s. His father, Leonard Wolf, was a writer and professor; his mother, Deborah Goleman Wolf, was an anthropologist.31 And both instilled him with a strong sense of ethics. “The idea of our obligation to right wrongs was clearly the language of the day,” he says.

The years 1976 and 1977 saw the worst drought in California's history, a time when skateboarders turned abandoned pools into makeshift skate parks. Wolf became fascinated with water during these years, aware of its potential to lead both to conflict and cooperation. But he experienced the greatest influence on his future work during the few years his family spent living in Israel.

The Middle East is the most severely water-stressed region in the world—one where unfriendly, even warring neighbors must work out ways to share this scarce resource.32 The people of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, for example, all depend on water from the Euphrates River. The people of Egypt and the Sudan rely on water from the Nile. And the people of Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan must share water from the Jordan, perhaps the source of greatest contention.33 “For a biblical stream whose name evokes divine tranquility,” Don Belt recently observed in National Geographic, “the Jordan River is nobody's idea of peace on Earth.”34

The enemies there are intense enemies, Wolf says. “Yet while living in Israel, I saw so much cooperation that no one had been talking about. I thought: If there is so much implicit cooperation going on in the Middle East around water, if it isn't true that people are going to war over water there, where is it true?”

Uncovering the Facts

Working with a team of researchers from Oregon State University, Wolf spent three years studying all known conflicts between nations in which water was a driving factor. His findings led him—hesitantly at first and, eventually, more stridently—to challenge the prevailing opinion about water wars, until one day he declared during a lecture in Norway, “There was never a war over water in all human history.”

A man in the back of the room, whom Wolf describes as a ruffled-looking historian, raised his hand and asked, “When you say ‘never,’ just how far back are you going?” It was his way of advising Wolf that there had been a water war between two Mesopotamian city-states, Lagash and Umma, some 4,500 years ago.35


The Resilience of Water
Water is the most recyclable of all resources. The water that appeared on Earth some 4.5 billion years ago is the same water that flows in our oceans, rivers, and streams today. And, of course, it is the same water we use to drink, cook our food, water our plants, and bathe our children. Every drop has a staggeringly long history.
Your most recent glass of water, for example, could have flowed through a dinosaur, mammoth, or saber tooth tiger. It could have quenched the thirst of the builders of Stonehenge or the Taj Mahal. It could have refreshed the first Olympians or the last inhabitants of Easter Island. It could have touched the skin of Jesus, Muhammad, or the Buddha. And it most certainly floated aloft in clouds and moved with fish through countless streams.
This history is a testament to what may be the most remarkable qualities of water: It cannot be used up, and it cannot be destroyed. It is resilient beyond compare. And given the many ways in which we humans pollute water—including the runoff of chemicals from industrial farming, slurry from coal production, and waste dumped in streams and rivers—this is good news, indeed.
Water is also cleaned naturally through evaporation, crystallization, and aeration (which occurs, for example, when a fast-moving stream crashes repeatedly into a rock and becomes an airborne spray).36
More recently, people have developed techniques to disinfect water more quickly than nature—albeit on a vastly smaller scale. Perhaps the most simple and popular method, used by an estimated five million people worldwide, is solar water disinfection, or SODIS.37 Endorsed by the World Health Organization, it uses UV radiation and the heat of the sun to inactivate waterborne microbes that cause diarrhea and other waterborne illness.
To try this in your home or school:
1. Remove any solids by filtering the water or allowing it to settle.
2. Fill the water in one- or two-liter clear plastic bottles.
3. Shake well to aerate.
4. Expose the bottles to sunlight for five hours (or up to two days if it is cloudy).38

But that one long-ago war over water appears to be the exception to the rule. As the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars concluded, “Exhaustive research by Aaron Wolf of Oregon State University has firmly established that international violent conflict is rarely—if ever—caused by, or focused on, water resources.”39 What Wolf found instead was evidence of approximately 3,600 water-related agreements.

More specifically, of 1,831 conflicts between nations over water during the period from 1946 to 1999, only 5 percent (93) led to physical hostilities. An estimated 23 percent (414) involved verbal hostilities. And the overwhelming majority—67 percent (1,228)—resulted in peaceful resolutions.40 Instances of cooperation, Wolf points out, outnumbered conflicts by more than two to one.41 (Other researchers have since affirmed Wolf's findings.42)

What the facts about water conflicts reveal, says Wolf, is this: “People will go to war over oil, over gold, over diamonds. But water is different. It is really hard to think about depriving your enemy of water, even as you are depriving your enemy of other resources.” During the first Gulf War, for example, Turkey allowed the United States and its allies to launch air attacks on Iraq from its territory, but it refused the allies' request to shut off the flow of the Euphrates River. “In their mind, you could use air bases to launch bombing raids. But shutting off water was too horrific to consider.”

Still, even if nations do not go to war over water, Wolf explains, all the other problems that arise from the need of a growing number of people to share a limited supply of water remain. “People suffer. There is ecosystem degradation. There are high levels of conflict, tensions, and violence.”

And yet, Wolf's point is that is exactly where the opportunity for transformation is created. “Even when people are not shooting at each other, they still need to come together to figure out how to manage the water that's there,” he observes. And it is out of that need to come together that water can serve as an elixir of peace.

The Space Between War and Peace

What sparked Wolf's quest to work the space between war and peace began with an observation: While serving as a mediator of water conflicts, he would show those engaged in the conflict two maps—one of countries defined by conventional political boundaries, and another of the same territory with boundaries defined only by water and land. From this experience he often sensed that people suddenly began to see their world differently. No longer were they thinking only about their own agendas, but they were recognizing and understanding the needs of others.43 In the Middle East, for example, “they [momentarily] forget about distinctions between Arabs and Israelis, because the only thing on the map is what unites them.”

Why exactly did this exercise prove to be such a powerful catalyst of transformation? When Wolf studied the literature of conflict resolution, he was unable to find a persuasive answer. Then one day, he happened to be talking with World Bank water advisor and friend, Vahid Alavian,44 who observed that the images seemed to reflect a metaphor for spiritual transformation.

We usually start with our own map of the world. We go through life with our own needs, wants, and expectations, which form the boundaries of this map as we individually set them. If we learn to remove or at least adjust those boundaries, a new map of the world can be drawn based on relationship with the community around us. The key to mediation in this context is to transition from one map to the other with newly defined needs, wants, and expectations for the entire community and its prosperity. This transition requires examining and introducing elements beyond the current practice to include the moral and spiritual dimensions.45

The possibility of studying spirituality for insight into transformation hooked Wolf in that moment for several reasons—not the least of which, he quips, was that he had the tenure that allowed him to study whatever he chose without threatening his career. More significantly, his friend's observation helped him realize that spiritual traditions were perhaps the most natural places to look for an understanding of the process of transformation. After all, he explains, every spiritual tradition in the world is devoted to guiding individuals to think less about their own immediate wants and desires and more about others.46

So Wolf spent the next year traveling and studying. He began in Israel, where he studied Judaism and the Kabbalah, and later traveled to Thailand, where he learned from Phra Paisan Visalo, a Buddhist monk who mediated conflicts between villagers and the timber industry. He also read widely to broaden his understanding of other world traditions.

But although the subject was a mystical one, and spirituality had always been important to him in his personal life, Wolf's goal in this quest was strictly pragmatic. “It wasn't a study of mysticism for its own sake,” he explains. “What I was after was, What is useful? What can we apply to the conflict-resolution world? What can we learn from mystical experience that we can bring into a room of angry people?”

One thing that became clear to him was that the dominant Western perspective on what influences human behavior is too narrow. “There are so many things we talk about with certainty—ideas we think we can quantify, such as intelligence, or the economy, or affection. As soon as there is a number attached, we think we're okay. But the limitation of that shows up regularly. Especially when you try to describe the conflict resolution process, rationality falls apart immediately because people also make decisions that are counter to rational values.”

People in many parts of the world understand this, Wolf observes. But people in the West often forget it because our intellectual history severed the worlds of spirit and reason.47 In practice, he says, that means Westerners sometimes think that people will agree to a certain action only when it is in their economic, environmental, or strategic interest to do so. But he insists that those motives alone fall short of a complete model for understanding human behavior regarding water or any other natural resource.

A New (Old) Model

According to Wolf, a truer—indeed, a universal—model for understanding human behavior is what is known as the “Four Worlds” (or what historian Huston Smith called “levels of reality”48). These levels of reality, or lenses through which we experience ourselves in relation to others and the world, include the physical, emotional, knowing, and spiritual. Each is important. Each is valid. And all can be true at the same time. “Psychologists will recognize [Abraham] Maslow's hierarchy of needs49 in the Four Worlds,” Wolf adds. “But those familiar with the mystical traditions around the globe will find much more ancient roots.”

In a 2008 article, Wolf offered this illustration of the Four Worlds frame in practice:

One intuitive example might be seen through a glass of water, which exists most recognizably on a physical plane. However, if one is thirsty or the water is particularly satisfying, one's experience of water can be transformed into an emotional response. One can also intellectualize the water and thus can consider its components and interaction of the water with our body to provide and maintain sustenance. Finally, one might say a blessing over the water, lifting its “profane” covering, and it now becomes a source of spiritual nourishment.50

These different ways of seeing the world help reveal that water, like any natural resource, can mean different things to different people. And in the hands of a skilled facilitator, this understanding can move people away from considering only their own interests and help them recognize the needs of all who depend on the same scarce resources.51

Putting Four Worlds to Work

Today, Wolf applies the physical, emotional, knowing, and spiritual model in all aspects of his life, from the classroom to conflict negotiations. He has frequently used it, for example, to help resolve conflicts between Arabs and Israelis. “For the Palestinians, Gaza is one of the worst places for water in the world. There's not enough, and what's there is close to being poisoned; it's laden with pesticides and saltwater. When they talk about water, they're talking about survival on the physical level,” Wolf says. In contrast, water issues are intellectual for the Israelis, who focus on such questions as how much water can they divert from agriculture to industry, and what would the impact be? “They're all using the same word,” he adds. “But if you are dying of thirst, you can't treat the discussion like an intellectual exercise.”

In one particular conflict, Wolf used the physical, emotional, knowing, and spiritual frame to help Israelis and Palestinians prioritize their respective needs for water. “It was not so easy,” he recalls. “Farmers needed water for farms, environmentalists for the environment. For everybody, their need was most important.” So Wolf acknowledged that the first priority uniting everyone in the room was water for drinking and spiritual purposes. “It was one of those seminal moments in the room. To recognize the spiritual significance in the same breath as drinking water was an instant symbol of respect toward each other's traditions and also a way to express explicitly how deeply felt the water issues are.” In fact, once those priorities were clarified, the parties in conflict were able to work out many of their other issues—agreeing, for example, that water for subsistence farming should be given a higher priority than water for a semiconductor plant.

Wolf has also applied the physical, emotional, knowing, and spiritual perspective in a training manual he produced for UNESCO, Sharing Water, Sharing Benefits: Working Towards Effective Transboundary Water Resources Management,52 and in a textbook, Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts.53 But neither book is explicit about its inspiration. “If the Four Worlds perspective is where science leads me,” Wolf says, “I have a scientific obligation to go there. If I stop because of some preconception or bias, that's not good science.”

Still, he is practical enough to recognize that some people will just shut down at the mere mention of spirituality. “Face-to-face, I'm more comfortable being open about this,” Wolf says, “because with a safe container, many people are cognizant about what we lose from not being explicit about our spiritual lives.” In fact, when he speaks about the role of spirituality in his own life, people often look around and whisper, “Yeah, me too.”

But whether or not he opens up about what he has learned from spiritual traditions when pursuing his work in science, mediation, or the classroom, the approach still works. “That's what's beautiful about this stuff,” he adds. “These truths are so central and universal, they almost don't have to be named.”


This story describes the profound shift in perception that can occur when one looks beyond political boundaries and considers the universal human connections to local bodies of water. Consider where you live. With whom do you share the water? What territory constitutes your watershed? Who manages it? Does the watershed cross political boundaries (such as cities or counties)? What personal and emotional connections do you have to bodies of water in your area? Do any local groups or events express an emotional or spiritual connection to water?

 

 

Notes

1 “Talking Point: Ask Boutros Boutros Ghali,” BBC News, June 10, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/2951028.stm.

2 “Peace in the pipeline,” BBC News, February 13, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7886646.stm.

3 “The Freshwater Guide,” Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service, p. 11, http://www.unesco.org/ccivs/New-SiteCCSVI/CcivsOther/Documents/FreshwaterGuideEN.pdf.

4 Maywa Montenegro, “The Truth About Water Wars,” SEED, May 14, 2009, http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_truth_about_water_wars.

5 Kevin Watkins and Anders Berntell, “A global problem: How to avoid war over water,” The New York Times, August 23, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/opinion/23iht-edwatkins.2570814.html?pagewanted=all.

6 Books include Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, by Vandana Shiva (South End Press, 2002); Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly and the Politics of Thirst, by Diane Raines Ward (Riverhead Books, 2002); and The Water Wars, by Cameron Stracher (Sourcebooks Fire, 2011).

7 Blue Gold: World Water Wars, a 90-minute documentary by Sam Bozzo, was released in 2008, http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/press_kit/blue_gold_press_kit.pdf.

8 Charles Fishman, The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water (Free Press, 2011).

9 Fishman, p. 2.

10 Ibid., p. 4.

11 United States Geological Survey, “Thermoelectric Power Water Use,” http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wupt.html.

12 United States Geological Survey, “The Water Cycle: Evapotranspiration,” http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleevapotranspiration.html.

13 United States Geological Survey, “Irrigation Water Use,” http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html.

14 United States Geological Survey, “Public-Supply Water Use,” http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wups.html.

15 United States Geological Survey, “Total Water Use in the United States, 2005,” http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-total.html.

16 The growth of water privatization since the 1990s, the inefficiencies of faulty and aging infrastructure, and the pollution of fresh water drinking supplies are other factors that fuel concerns about water scarcity.

17 Kathy Jesperson, “What's the Word on Water at the USDA?” National Drinking Water Clearinghouse, West Virginia University, http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/pdf/OT/OTs96.pdf.

18 “Tapping the oceans,” The Economist, June 5, 2008, http://www.economist.com/node/11484059.

19 Ibid.

20 Karen E. Lange, “Get the Salt Out,” National Geographic, March 15, 2010, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/09/desalination.

21 Kathryn Kranhold, “Water, Water, Everywhere,” The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120053698876396483.html.

22 “Tapping the Oceans,” The Economist.

23 Michael Wines, “China Takes a Loss to Get Ahead in the Business of Fresh Water,” New York Times, Oct. 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/world/asia/china-takes-loss-to-get-ahead-in-desalination-industry.html?pagewanted=all.

24 Joey Peters and Climate Wire, “Climate Change Could Leave 1 Billion Urbanites High and Dry by 2050,” Scientific American, April 4, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-one-billion-urbanites-water-shortage.

25 Alex Prud'homme, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-first Century (Scribner, 2011).

26 David Molden, ed., Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, International Water Management Institute, 2007, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/assessment/files_new/synthesis/Summary_SynthesisBook.pdf.

27 The United Nations, “Water Scarcity,” http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml.

28 “Industrial Water Use,” Water Science for Schools, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wuin.html.

29 “Glaciers Are Melting Faster Than Expected, UN Reports,” Science Daily, March 17, 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317154235.htm.

30 United Nations, International Decade for Action: Water for Life, 2005–2015, http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml.

31 Aaron Wolf is the nephew of Daniel Goleman, one of the authors of this book.

32 Kevin Watkins and Anders Berntell, “A Global Problem: How to Avoid War over Water—Editorials & Commentary—International Herald Tribune,” New York Times, August 23, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/opinion/23iht-edwatkins.2570814.html?pagewanted=all.

33 Richard Cowen, “Middle East Water: The Geopolitics of Middle Eastern Water,” University of California, Davis, Geology Department, http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/∼GEL115/115CHXXMideastwater.html.

34 Don Belt, “Parting the Waters,” National Geographic, April 2010, p. 158.

35 Sandra L. Postel and Aaron T. Wolf, “Dehydrating Conflict,” Foreign Policy, September 18, 2001, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2001/09/01/dehydrating_conflict.

36 Stan Mack, “How Is Water Cleaned Naturally?” eHow, http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5163235_water-cleaned-naturally.html.

37 The SODIS method was developed by Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (http://www.sodis.ch/about/eawag/index_EN).

38 Mark D. Sobsey, “Managing Water in the Home: Accelerated Health Gains from Improved Water Supply,” World Health Organization, http://www.emro.who.int/ceha/pdf/Doc-managing.pdf.

39 Navigating Peace Initiative, “Water Conflict and Cooperation: Looking Over the Horizon,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ECSPReport13_NavigatingPeace.pdf.

40 Wolf identifies the remaining ninety-six conflicts as resolved neutrally. (Aaron Wolf, et al., “International Waters: Identifying Basins at Risk,” 2003, Water Policy 5(1), 31–62. Cited in Aaron T. Wolf, et. al, “Water Can Be a Pathway to Peace, Not War,” http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ECSPReport13_NavigatingPeace.pdf.)

41 One reason hostilities seem more prevalent than cooperation, Wolf suggests, is that hostilities make news and agreements do not. In Oregon, for example, people tend to be aware of the controversy over water use in the Klamath River Basin because irrigation for agriculture was temporarily halted in 2001 to protect endangered salmon and lake fish during a severe drought. “But no one knows about the Walla Walla, the Umatilla, or the Grande Ronde,” he adds, “where tribes, ranchers, environmentalists and urbanites have all been collaborating quietly to work proactively to manage regional water stresses.” (Aaron Wolf, personal correspondence, Oct. 2, 2011)

42 Wendy Barnaby, “Do Nations Go to War Over Water?” Nature, March 2009, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/full/458282a.html.

43 Aaron T. Wolf, “Healing the Enlightenment Rift: Rationality, Spirituality and Shared Waters,” Journal of International Affairs, Spring/Summer 2008, Vol. 61, No. 2., p 60.

44 Vahid Alavian was a World Bank water advisor at the time of this conversation. He retired in October 2011.

45 Email correspondence with Vahid Alavian, November 2, 2011.

46 Wolf, “Healing the Enlightenment Rift,” p. 63.

47 Ibid., p. 55.

48 Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions, (HarperOne, 1992), cited in “Healing the Enlightenment Rift,” p. 63.

49 Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs include physiological needs, security needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualizing needs.

50 Wolf, “Healing the Enlightenment Rift,” p. 63.

51 Ibid., p. 63.

52 Sharing Water, Sharing Benefits: Working Towards Effective Transboundary Water Resources Management is available for download at http://www.scribd.com/doc/52803099/Sharing-Water-Sharing-Benefits-Working-Towards-Effective-Trans-Boundary-Water-Resources-Management-9789231041679.

53 Jerome Delli Priscolli and Aaron T. Wolf, Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts (Cambridge Press, 2009).