United Nations

Water Shortages & Crop Failures Causing Instability
United Nations, August 28, 2001

Two weeks ago, a United Nations-sponsored World Water Forum in Stockholm suggested that a shortage of drinking water could affect one-third of the world's population by 2025 and spark violent conflicts between those with water and those without. But events since that time suggest that the impact of water on international politics is likely to be sooner and potentially more destabilizing than even the experts at the UN conference predicted. And that possibility is leading ever more countries to take water into consideration as they elaborate their national security policies. At present, the UN conference said, some 450 million people in 29 countries from sub-Saharan Africa through Asia are suffering from severe water problems. Brought on by an unusual drought over the past several years, the problems of these countries in many cases have been exacerbated by crop failures and burgeoning population pressures beyond the capacity of their governments to cope.