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POWER STRUGGLES

Joseph Boughey* reviews Velma Grover's book on water and conflict.

The Canadian editor of Water: A Source of Conflict or Cooperation?, a CIWEM member, has edited similar collections on climate change, water and waste management. Contributions include four studies from Africa, but none from Europe. Many contributors are from universities, from varied disciplines, including an economist and professor of law in China. Overall, this volume presents much useful data and case studies and should provoke much thought.

Since the late twentieth century, figures from within bodies ranging from the World Bank to the CIA, have warned that wars might be provoked over water resources, in some of the 262 international river basins. Velma Grover's opening essay acknowledges that water resources can be implicated in conflicts over control and use, but stresses that the last war fought expressly about water was 4,500 years ago, in southern Iraq.

Statistics suggest that since the 1940s international co-operation has predominated, with violent conflicts limited, if notable on a local scale or between different users. Many international agreements over water have reduced potential conflict, often with inter-state compensation, side-payments or co-operation over non-water issues. Water shortages tend to be relative and localised, with evidence that while shared rivers are more closely correlated to conflict, other territorial factors, notably nationalism, have prevailed over water use.

After the introduction, much of the book comprises case studies. Whilst all are interesting, there is some repetition of points, with only one comparative study, between US and South Korean examples. What emerges is the need to consider the effectiveness of institutional arrangements in securing co-operation and solutions. Greater emphasis could have been placed upon political analysis, which would explain how varied power over resources provokes conflicts and determines their resolution. This would develop one understated theme in these studies - that although violent conflicts over water resources are rare, co-operation is not always based on consensus, but forced through relations of power.

*Joseph Boughey is ?Liverpool John Moores University

Water: A Source of Conflict or Cooperation?,is  edited by Velma I Grover and published by Science Publishers, Enfield, New Hampshire, 2007. It costs $64.40. ISBN 879-1-57808-511-8.