The World Needs a Water Treaty

Hallinan, Conn
http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/16/the-world-needs-a-water-treaty/
Date Written:  2019-07-16
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23765

Climate change is making water into as valuable a commodity as oil with similar national tensions resulting.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

"Our government has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan," said Indian Transport Minister Nitin Gadkarikin on February 21. "We will divert water from eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab." India controls three major rivers that flow into Pakistan.

If India had followed through, it would have abrogated the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) between the two counties, a move that could be considered an act of war.

In the end, nothing much came of it. India bombed some forests, and Pakistan bombed some fields. But the threat underlined a growing crisis in South Asia, where water-stressed mega-cities and intensive agriculture are quite literally drying the subcontinent up....

There is no such thing as a local or regional solution to the water crisis, since the problem is global. The only really global organization that exists is the United Nations, which will need to take the initiative to create a worldwide water agreement.
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