Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2021 (101. évfolyam)
2021 / Különszám
112 Hidrológiai Közlöny 2021. 101. évf. különszám A metrics-based approach mapping precursors of water conflict Vörösmarty Charles J.***, Green Pamela A.*, Fekete Balázs M.*-** * CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, Graduate Center, New York, USA ** Civil Engineering Department, The City College of New York, CUNY, New York, USA Abstract This brief analysis demonstrates the feasibility of combining existing data sets and an integrative framework to generate a geography of the sources for potential disputes and conflicts over fresh water. While our aim has not been to predict water-derived conflicts per se, our initial assessment indicates a general pattern of agreement with an observed conflict database across a continental domain that includes much of Europe and parts of the Middle East. We think that this preliminary success can be attributed, in part, to capturing an essential geography that links threat producing biogeophysical factors generated upstream to affected downstream populations, and as modulated by additional societal indicator data (i.e. transboundary nature of the basin in question; presence/absence of fragile states). An important development on the horizon involves the use of more complex statistical models and the use of machine learning to better develop this capability. Keywords Water-derived conflicts, modelling, metrics-based approach. INTRODUCTION Water security, long the concern of the water science, engineering, and policy communities, has also captured the attention of the mainstream media and it is not difficult to locate headlines announcing the “global water crisis” {Moore 2018, Long 2019). The World Economic Forum (2019) even goes so far as to rank water among the top 5 challenges to the global economy both in terms of its severity and the probability that it will actually occur. Freshwater constitutes, but 2.5% of the global stock of all water on the planet, with renewable and accessible supplies that must serve a large and economically expanding human population estimated at just 0.03% {Gleick 2000). Approximately 80% of the global population lives in the drier half of the Earth (<50th percentile of available, renewable water supplies), corresponding to regions with high current and anticipated population growth and economic development (Vörösmarty el al. 2005). In developing countries, up to 90% of sewage is discharged globally without any treatment (UN-Water 2016). These combined pressures conspire to produce conditions whereby 80% of the world’s population is served by water supplies with substantial levels of threat {Green et al. 2015). Beyond human impacts, these threats affect freshwater ecosystems, as indicated by species extinction rates that are orders of magnitude higher than in terrestrial or oceanic domains on a per unit area basis (Strayer and Dudgeon 2010). The Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2019) prescribe a comprehensive agenda for societal well-being and protection of the environment to year 2030. Among the goals are aspirations to support the most basic of human needs, like the elimination of the worst forms of poverty, an end to hunger, and water for survival and economic prosperity. The water goal, SDG-6, seeks universal access to clean and reliable water supplies, and while improvements have been made at the global scale - for example recently reaching a level of 90% of the population covered by basic drinking water service - there is a significant lack of forward momentum at the sub-global scale (WHO/UN1CEF 2015). Globally, some 750 million people (mostly in rural areas) lack access to an improved source of drinking water and almost 2 billion people have used a source of drinking water with faecal contamination (WHO/UNICEF 2015). Overall, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia are stagnating and/or losing ground (SDGCA/SDSN 2018, UN-ESCAP 2019), not to mention the countless local-scale examples of severe water stress found on those continents and in many other parts of the world. These trends signify that water will remain a critical challenge, and mounting water-related problems, if left unaddressed, will burden human development and degrade the environment. The crisis, thus, has many dimensions, not the least of which is concern regarding water conflicts. These concerns arise from the conjunction of two important factors: • The first is biogeophysical in character, which determines the basic spatial and temporal distributions of (i) water quantity arising from interactions with climate, geosphere, and biosphere and (ii) water quality, articulated by the resulting chemical and biological characteristics. These distributions define geographic areas with relatively abundant endowments of water, but also scarcity as well as exposure to extreme water events like droughts and floods creating populations of “have’s”, “have-nots”, “have-too-little”, and “havetoo-much”. • The second major determinant involves human institutions, motivations, cultural contexts, and economic incentives that give rise to decision-making on how best to manage any water challenges. In this paper, we formulate and then explore a prototype, metrics-based geography describing some of the first-order bio-geophysical and human dimension factors that set the stage for potential water conflict. Progress in observations, data assimilation, modelling of the hydrosphere enable such a picture to be formulated (Fekete et al. 2015, Famiglietti et al. 2015). Important advances in blending models with near real time, high spatial resolution observations, e.g., US National Water Model (NOAA
