by Nathan Wada

Created on: September 14, 2009   Last Updated: September 16, 2009

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem may need amending; even his "water, water everywhere" observation may not hold up in the foreseeable future.

Dubbed "new oil" by a few gloomy prognosticators, water has recently been generating a lot of press, much of it dealing with its absence - and what its absence may mean to global security. Current and prospective water shortages are serious, immediate, widespread and a potential source of conflict for many areas around the world. Throughout history, countless wars have been waged over matters decidedly less fundamental to human survival than adequate water supplies.

If current and future leaders ply political wheeling commensurate to the greed and ineptitude past leaders employed in failing to circumvent wars over oil, land, race, sovereignty, and religion, then future wars will unfortunately be fought over water.

Water's importance to humanity and civilization extends far beyond the reasons we're intuitively aware of. Were water's value limited to merely being something humans need to drink in order to survive, then reasons to protect and maintain its adequate supply by any means necessary would still abound. But the myriad uses for water beyond being something to drink compound its value and potential to be seen as worth fighting for.

Even as "black gold says its long, long goodbye," as Foreign Policy wrote, water may merely replace oil as a coveted source of fuel. The New York Times reported that plug-in cars such as GM's Volt, increase water use because they employ electricity from plants that need to be cooled. Furthermore, water earned the coinage "new oil" because of the massive water supplies needed to create certain types of alternative energy.

Even under a "traditional" evaluation of the levels of water that are either potable or to be used for food growth or production, the present and near future appear grim. The combination of rising human population and drought has cut a fierce swath through the water supplies of the planet that has not spared any of the largely-populated continents.

BBC reported "the main conflicts in Africa during the next 25 years could be over that most precious of commodities - water, as countries fight for access to scarce resources. Potential 'water wars' are likely."

In the Middle East, "Water disputes threaten to disrupt the newly warm relations between Turkey and its neighbors (Iraq and Syria) and complicate wider efforts to bring stability to the region, as the populations of the

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