Word: waterous
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...drought. In Rwanda, there is an increasing consensus that Africa's other recent genocide is at least partly understood as a contest between too many people on too little cultivable land. The U.N. Development Program predicted as long ago as November 1999 that one in two Africans would face water shortages by 2025, and said it expected violent flashpoints to erupt along the Nile, and in the Niger Volta and Zambezi deltas...
Around the world, the U.N. is eyeing other ecological disasters for their conflict potential. There is the loss of half the Aral Sea to Soviet-era irrigation, and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers (which feed rivers from which 500 million people draw water); and there are Chinese plans to dam the upper Mekong, halving water flow to 65 million Southeast Asians. In a 2003 report, the U.N. Environment Program said water shortages already affected 400 million people and predicted that number would multiply tenfold by 2050. At that time, more than a sixth of the world's population...
...Corporation that described climate change as a "threat multiplier" in volatile parts of the world. The next day, then British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett hosted a debate on climate change and conflict at the U.N. Security Council in New York City. "What makes wars start?" asked Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies, too, but also to peace and security itself." Speaking outside the debate, Philip E. Clapp, former president of the New York City-based National Environmental Trust (who died this year), warned...
...Darfur be saved? We already know what needs to be done. The immediate priority is to end the fighting by brokering a truce and sending in peacekeepers. In the longer term, Darfur needs sensible land-use policies and careful water management, while the rest of the world has to cut emissions. But at the Security Council, Beckett faced opposition from China, the U.S. and the two main groups representing developing countries. They complained that the forum was an inappropriate place to discuss climate change. That is, they disputed that climate change leads...
Perhaps a visit to northeastern Chad would change their minds. As I drove out to the area in spring 2007, the first sign we were entering a dead zone was the carcass of a camel. Camels can go three weeks without water in the Sahara, so the heap of fur, hair and bleached bones was an ominous sight. We entered a mud-walled, straw-roofed village. Instead of giving the usual smiles and waves, the children ducked away. A few minutes later, we crested a rise in the road and were confronted by nine janjaweed horsemen, rifles over their shoulders...