by Chiranjibi Paudyal

Created on: April 20, 2008

War is inevitable for the ownership of water as we have seen there are small scale fights,conflicts and quarrels taking place in community level across the globe specially in the developing countries. There are already disputes and conflicts over water in India, South America, Middle East and African continent.

Ismail Serageldin,former senior official of the World Bank, has rightly sensed that conflict. A decade ago, he said: "wars of the next century will be over water." The history has clearly shown that it is the human nature to have ownership over the resources. Since ancient time, even from the stone age, human being have shown their greedy nature to have something- to own and make it their own private. Even the attractive stones used to be kept even during the nomadic life. So it is clear that human being are not like animal, who do not want to have anything in their possession except to eat and fill their bellies.

There is water every where around the world. But due to the lack of proper management of water resources, increasing corruption and lack of priority in some developing countries, it has become like "water water every where but not a drop to drink." More than half of the world's population have no clean and safe drinking water. Nearly 60 percent of the population have no enough access to water for other activities than drinking purpose and daily use. The state of sanitation is miserable specially in the developing countries. There are alarming signs already seen over the issue of water- the most important basic need for all living beings.

Conflicts over water

There are conflicts around the globe over the issue of water. According to a newspaper report, most of the conflicts and quarrels in the community were on water in Latin American countries. People have to wait to get a few liters of drinking water from the public taps in many countries of African continent. There are long queues to get even drinking water in some countries of Asia including India, Nepal and China. People have to walk miles to bring a gallon of water in Africa, Asia and South American countries. A large number of people report of being injured in the quarrel and fights while debating and quarreling with their neighbors for water in Nepal, the Himalayan nation with abundance sources of water resources. This is the second richest country in the world in water resources but more than half of the population do not get clean drinking water.

There is scarcity of clean drinking water

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