by Minda Magero

Created on: May 28, 2008

Would you care about water use if you knew it could trigger the next world war? Despite the fact that many people think oil will precipitate the next world conflict, water, a valuable commodity more essential to our daily lives, is already at the center of several conflicts worldwide.

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in a 2005 Issues Brief titled Water and Violent Conflict, reported that available water resources are being strained by increasing demands from rapid population growth worldwide, greatly affecting societal stability.

Fresh water resources are unevenly distributed around the world, with acute shortages experienced mostly by developing countries. Living Water International (LWI), which provides communities in developing countries with clean water, has labeled water a health issue, an economic issue and an education issue.

Water is a health issue because water-related diseases are the major cause of death in infants in developing countries. LWI reports that "at any given time, close to half of all people in developing countries are suffering from health problems caused by unsafe water."

Water is also an economic issue, especially for those who live in poverty. Whether a lack of water causes poverty, as in the case of subsistence farmers whose crops fail for lack of water, or whether poverty results in people lacking access clean water, like slum dwellers who have no running water and no resources to purchase clean water, there is an inevitable relationship between water scarcity and poverty. LWI states that "the money lost from missed work opportunities due to water-related illnesses exceeds the amount of aid and debt relief to [Sub-Saharan Africa]."

As an education issue, water comes to the forefront in developing countries where children miss many days of school in a year due to water-related illnesses. An even graver situation involves the girl-child, whose education is often curtailed because of her time-consuming duty of searching for and collecting water.

Ernest Waititu, writing for the Common Language Project, tells of conflicts among pastoralists in Ethiopia. The ones he comes into contact with have traveled many miles to a group of wells at a place called Dubluck to find water for their families and livestock. The water table is as deep as 160 feet in some places.

This dry land is plagued by drought, insufficient rainfall and the resultant disappearance of water sources,

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