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I strongly suspect that there will eventually be war over the ownership of water, and with the ongoing crisis in the Darfur region, you could say that to some extent it's already happened.

Backed by the Sudanese military, nomadic Arab tribes have tried to move south in search of grazing land for their herds. The land in the north, which was hardly tenable to begin with, has been overrun by desert encroachment from persistent drought conditions, something that is almost universally attributed to climate change.

African farmers in the south, with the backing of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, have resisted the nomad.s movement onto their farmland, resulting in the violence and unrest in that region. There are of course other factors at play, but we are still on the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to drought and climate change, a situation that is changing rapidly.

Across the globe, clearcut forests, pollution, changing weather patterns, and disappearing glaciers are all contributing to the diminishing availability of clean and easily accessible drinking water. As the situation worsens, which it certain to do before it improves, less and less arable land is going to be available to feed a global population that's expected to near 10 billion by 2050. Those crops and all of those people are going to need water.

I live in a part of the world where water is quite plentiful and is wasted in large amounts on a daily basis, though conservation measures are improving. It can be hard for us in industialized countries, with our modern infrastructures, to relate to someone who must travel to a distant river or community well for water that isn't necessarily healthy. Unfortunately this situation exists in many parts of of the globe, where some have access to all the clean, fresh water they need, while others face a daily struggle to find enough.

Many major cities impose water restrictions every year as their freshwater productions systems or reservoirs can't meet the demands of an ever-increasing population. Eventually, with more and more of the world's population centering on urban areas, this situation will only become further aggravated without a massive increase in the worldwide infrastructure for purifying and delivering water.

As in Darfur, there are other regions of the world that are falling prey to desertification caused by rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, forest clear cutting, and soil erosion from over-farming.

If these trends continue, and it appears they will, then more and more once fertile land will become inhospitable to human life, forcing people to move to areas where they can survive, thusly increasing the likelihood of conflict.

Here in Canada, there has been an ongoing concern for many years about whether trade agreements are opening up our water resources to foreign investors who may see it as a commodity to be bought and sold. Treating water as a saleable commodity rather than a human right gives someone the power to control who receives it; an unacceptable situation.

Over the centuries war has been fought over much less, and if it ever comes to the point where the only people who can get water are the ones who can afford it, then there will definitely be an uprising like never before, because next to the air we breathe, nothing is more valuable to human life and people will do absolutely anything necessary to get it. After all, what choice would they have except to die?

Learn more about this author, John Hummel.
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