Full Transcript

 

Aaron Wolf:
… you can, “fix” just about any basin in the world for what a day of war would cost. So as long as we remember that and remember that this is in all of our benefit… And then again, there’s a world record of 700 treaties in basins around the world and zero wars fought over water for the last 4,500 years. And I think that’s a pretty good record to go on.

Jay Famiglietti:
We all live downstream from something, but what happens when your water source starts and ends in different countries? Most of the world’s fresh water runs across borders. Decisions and water use in one country ultimately affect the water for its neighbor. I’m Jay Famiglietti, executive director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. 

On this episode of What About Water? we speak with Aaron Wolf about water conflict and cooperation. He says we can increase water security and adapt to prevent droughts and floods. Our guest today has helped mediate water conflicts for a number of international organizations, including the World Bank. Aaron Wolf is a professor of geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. He directs the Program in Water Conflict Management and Transformation. He also coordinates the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database and is a co-director of the Universities Partnership on Transboundary Waters. Aaron joins us now from Corvallis, Oregon. 

Aaron, welcome to What About Water!

Aaron Wolf:
Thanks, Jay. It’s a pleasure to be here and to see you again.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s so great to have you. We really, really appreciate it. Can we start off by explaining to our listeners what we mean by transboundary waters?

Aaron Wolf:
So transboundary waters or any water that crosses any kind of boundary whatsoever. So that could be a sectoral boundary, or a provincial boundary, or a state boundary. And if we are crossing countries we call those international waters. There are actually 310 international watersheds around the world. It’s about half the land surface of the earth. And about 80% of surface water originates in basins that are shared by two or more countries.

Jay Famiglietti:
And so that includes aquifers too, groundwater aquifers?

Aaron Wolf:
Aquifers if they’re connected to the surface water they’re included, but IGRAC which is an agency of UNESCO is actually counting separate aquifers and they’re finding some seven international aquifers around the world.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah, pretty amazing. I’ve done some work with that. Let’s see if I can get this right. It stands for International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre. And they’re doing a great job trying to accumulate and make available, make accessible groundwater data from around the world, really, really difficult work. So with all this transboundary water sharing going on seems like there’s the potential for conflict and for fighting. And of course this has been going on through history. What are people fighting about? What’s the big deal? Why can’t we all get along?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, we can, it turns out, it’s just difficult. The truism in water is that water management is conflict management. If there were enough for everybody to do everything they wanted we wouldn’t have a scare-free source and we wouldn’t have to worry about it at all. The trick is that there’s not enough for everybody’s uses within countries or certainly between countries. So the biggest indicator trigger of conflict between countries is one country, usually the upstream country, does something that impacts another country, the downstream country, and more often than not the something is a dam. So, if you look around the world at the Tensas basins right now, and the Nile, for example, or the rivers of south Asia, it’s upstream countries building dams over which there is no agreement for how to deal with the impacts of the dams.

Jay Famiglietti:
So, like an upstream country just says, “I’m going to build a dam?”

Aaron Wolf:
Yeah, often that’s the case. The problem is-

Jay Famiglietti:
That’s not good.

Aaron Wolf:
No, it’s not good. And I think this is a kind of general timeline that over shared waters is that countries tend to build unilaterally, tend to develop unilaterally, simply to avoid the headache and the potential conflict of impacting their neighbors. But at some point you do end up impacting your neighbors though. 

Pollution will cross the boundary, or maybe a diversion will decrease the flow to another country, or a dam will change the timing or the flow to another country. And at that point, the other country will react. And oftentimes that’s when politicians get very involved, so oftentimes when the international community starts to focus on the basin. And that’s when you start to see the headlines for impending water wars and the potential for conflict can be real and tangible in quite a lot of the world.

Jay Famiglietti:
So it sounds like we’re talking about sort of like a traditional normal pathway would be: there’s diplomatic discussions, and if those breakdown, then there’s the potential for something further. It may be some actual conflict, some sort of warfare.

Aaron Wolf:
Well, that’s what it looks like, if you will, on the front of the timeline. And this, as you point out, has been going on since time immemorial, wells that are impacting neighbors and irrigation that bypasses a neighbor, so on. But what tends to happen if we continue on with the timeline is precisely the urgency that brought countries to the point of potential conflict also creates the setting for collaboration. And so it’s that intensity of “it’s the press, it’s the political awareness, it’s the international communities bringing resources.” More often than not, it drives the countries to negotiate.

And this can take 10 or 20 or 30 years, but at the end of the day the general trend is for some kind of an agreement, some kind of acquiescence, some kind of joint management. And we now have some 700 treaties between countries that share basins over everything from hydropower, to water quality, to flow regimes. And so the longer story is this has the potential to really trigger conflict and it brings people to the point in negotiations and discussion, oftentimes even when they won’t talk about other issues and they do eventually come to some sort of an agreement.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah, it seems like water’s really in – when it comes to these transboundary bodies – that it’s in everyone’s mutual interest, right? To come together?

Aaron Wolf:
Sure. It is absolutely. Unfortunately, the forces of war and conflict oftentimes aren’t paying attention to mutual interest or to the potential benefit. But of course, it’s always better to collaborate with your neighbor. And if a country is intent on building a dam, which oftentimes should be upstream, should be in the headwaters to do less damage. That’s where the valleys are the right shapes for the dam. If you can do it collaboratively with your downstream neighbor it can be built in a way that benefits both parties.

Jay Famiglietti:
So you have any examples you can share with us maybe about an example where there’s been discussion that’s been productive and something has worked out well versus maybe an example where a country might be acting unilaterally and potentially creating problems?

Aaron Wolf:
Sure. If we look at the tensest basins of the world, or the tensests sets of relations in the world, Indians and Pakistanis on the Indus, Israelis and Arabs on the Jordan, Azeris and Armenians on the Kura Araks. All of those basins have had both sides of the story, have had tensions and even sporadic fighting and their treaties or implicit agreements on all three basins. And so I think that’s the lesson to learn, is that even Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, Azerians and Armenians will come to the table and negotiate, even when they won’t talk about other things and can come to some kind of implicit or even explicit agreement.

Currently, as I say, the tensest basins around the world are oftentimes driven by large dam projects. So we’ve seen on the Tigris-Euphrates the Ilısu Dam has triggered some concern. It’s built in Turkey and Iraq is concerned. I think on the Nile, Ethiopia is building the Grand Renaissance Dam, and of course, Egypt is deeply concerned about its impacts. And so these are more negotiations that are in process. But the record is that they will come to an agreement, and the agreement will be tremendously resilient over time.

Jay Famiglietti:
Are these regions that are also water-stressed? The ones you just mentioned?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, both. You can have… I mean, big water rivers have big water problems. So, if you think about places like the Mekong or the Columbia, your problem is about fish that migrate or it’s about transportation, access to barges, or big hydropower, which are hydroelectric facilities rather than irrigation. So you have water conflict even in the most humid environments. Even the Southeast United States – Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been fighting for, oh, decades, over their shared waters. So you don’t need scarcity to have tensions and more water doesn’t necessarily lead to a lack of tensions.

Jay Famiglietti:
We’ll continue this conversation in just a minute. Stay with us.

Jen Quesnel:
Hey, I’m Jen Quesnel. I’m one of the producers here at What About Water? Now, we don’t really do ads, but we do want more people to be like you. We want them to give this podcast a try. Give us a follow on social media. We’re @WhatAboutWater_. On Apple Podcasts leave us a review. Those reviews help more people find us. Okay, now back to Jay.

Jay Famiglietti:
Today we’re speaking with Aaron Wolf. He’s a professor of geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Aaron, do you see a role for organized religion to help out in any of these problems?

Aaron Wolf:
Oh, absolutely. I look for opportunities to elevate the conversation. When we’re talking about water it’s not just another resource. It’s not tungsten or gold or trees. It really is something that hits all levels of our being. And in my world I tend to think of four waters. There’s physical water that we move, that we touch, that we can feel. There’s emotional water: water tied to power, and sovereignty, and our histories, our narratives. There’s intellectual or mental water: the water that we calculate when we think about efficiencies or the price. And then, finally, there’s spiritual water.

And I think often in the West we’re very used to talking about physical water or mental water, the things that we can calculate and measure, but more often than not, the conflict is with emotional water or spiritual water. The water that’s tied to power, that’s tied to… Oh, Mark Zeitoun and others, Naho Mirumachi talk about hydro-hegemony, the power of relations between riparian countries.

And if we can elevate that conversation and remind us how much we have at stake with our shared water, bringing in the churches and the religious leaders around the world. The Catholic church here in the Pacific Northwest has been phenomenal in elevating the conversation on the Columbia. The Coptic Christians were tapped for a while to help mediate on the Nile because they have good offices between Ethiopia and Egypt. And I think just elevating the conversation. Certainly Indigenous peoples around the world, remind us how much – when we’re talking about spiritual water –  how much is at stake when we think about things like pollution or misuse.

Jay Famiglietti:
I’m wondering how climate change fits into this and maybe these transboundary discussions and potential for conflict. Is that another threat multiplier? What’s the role?

Aaron Wolf:
Right, I think that’s the term of art is “threat multiplier.” Look, when we come up with agreements over water they assume a certain hydrology. And when that hydrology changes, if the variability, for example, gets more variable, a lot of times the treaty now is being stressed. And so if you look at the US and Mexico on the Colorado, for example, that was signed assuming more water than there is anyway in a normal year, but certainly much more water than there is now in this multidecadal drought that we’re having. And so these are the kinds of stresses. And the other sets of stresses, I think, are as we shift away from coal and fossil fuels one of the shifts is towards more and more hydropower. And we’ve seen it already that dams can be a real trigger between countries. And so if they’re not done carefully, and artfully really, in a way that’s not environmentally degrades or in a way that’s not collaborative that also has the potential to trigger more conflict between countries.

Jay Famiglietti:
So let’s just pivot and start talking about solutions, because the theme of our podcast this season is really about adaptation and solutions. So you’ve got to get people to sit down and talk. And so you’re someone who mediates conflicts. Is it hard to get people to sit down and hash out agreements?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, I don’t think it’s hard to get the water people in the room. That’s generally not the problem. It’s been described as a community that has its own language, that sees across borders. And as somebody once noted, water people are just generally nicer than other people in the world. I subscribe to that. I think the problem is how much the water people are allowed to do politically. And so, oftentimes, there is a bit of a discord between what the water people want to do to benefit all parties in a basin, and what the political powers will allow to happen. And so, the water people can push. And I think, increasingly, oh, if you take people like EcoPeace in the Jordan has been wonderful about bringing the dialogue to the real grassroots, to the village level, to the youth, to the religious leaders, and that then has a tendency to push upward on the political power brokers in a way that really can enhance dialogue.

Aaron Wolf:
So I think it is hard, but it just makes too much sense not to. As somebody once pointed out, to pay for real tangible solutions to water or even desalination or drip irrigation, you can “fix” just about any basin in the world for what a day of war would cost. And so as long as we remember that and remember that this is in all of our benefit to be working together, and that more solutions are available when we do work together, I think there are incentives to keep us talking. And again, there’s a world record of 700 treaties in basins around the world and zero wars fought over water for the last 4,500 years. And I think that’s a pretty good record to go on.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah. I mean, if we were baseball players we’d be making trillions of dollars with a record like that.

Aaron Wolf: 
Absolutely.

Jay Famiglietti: 
So thinking about the future, the World Meteorological Organization says that in less than 30 years over five billion people will face water stress, but you see this as an opportunity. Why is that?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, the stress forces people to pay attention. I think there was a certain danger when water was, “easy” that you used it once that you polluted it and you sent it downstream. And so now, for example, I hear we have sharks in the Thames again because we brought ourselves to the stresses and now really, really have to pay attention. I think along with the increased stress that’s coming is increased awareness, and certainly, and you’ve been at the forefront of this, Jay, are the better tools that we have. We can now monitor dams and groundwater across borders from satellites so that we don’t have to worry as much about trying to trust the other party for data. We have access to understanding what’s happening in ungauged basins. We have a rich and growing community of champions who focus on dialogue around shared waters, and the toolbox in our toolkit is growing all the time, a number of degrees that are now focusing on conflict management and transforming conflict. And so I just see both our tools and our approaches are getting better and better precisely to deal with the growing threats that we’re facing.

Jay Famiglietti:
So what’s at stake if we don’t resolve conflicts?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, survival, I would say.

Jay Famiglietti:
The world.

Aaron Wolf:
The world. No, without water there’s nothing. We know this. There is no life, there is no culture, there is no civilization, there is no agriculture. This is about as fundamental a resource as it gets. 

And we love it so much. I mean, you ask any kid about their relationship to water and people just want to be near it. They want to hear it. They pray with it. It’s something that we have a very visceral and deep relationship with, and it would be heartbreaking to think what a world looks like without it. And I think that’s exactly the threat that keeps us going back to the table when the dialogues get tough. It keeps us talking precisely so that we can save this relationship.

Jay Famiglietti:
So, since climate change is here, it’s moving full speed ahead, we don’t have a tremendous amount of time, what do you want to see in terms of water conflicts and agreements right now? What’s on the Aaron Wolf hot button “for water” list?

Aaron Wolf:
Oh, God, I think the Nile is a real big one. And I think all of the countries, all of the basins that have headwaters in China have bilateral agreements. And I think there are, oh, I think about a third of basins around the world don’t have agreements on them. And so I think that is part of the wishlist, is to craft dialogue. But more than that, I think everybody who’s trained in managing water also ought to be trained in managing conflict. I think it just is the nature of the resource, is that… And we’re not trained in it, the people managing water or engineers or hydrologists or economists. And I think we really need also to learn how to listen better, to learn how to identify shared values better, to learn how to come in a room with curiosity and respect and empathy to have better dialogues. That’s my short list.

Jay Famiglietti:
So I’m curious, Aaron, how did you get into this field?

Aaron Wolf:
Well, I started as a lot of people. I grew up back and forth between California and the Middle East. And in both places as you know water and politics are deeply tied to each other. And so I thought initially that my approach to helping through water was technically. So I was trained. My undergrad degree is in geography and environmental science. And then I went for a master’s in hydrogeology, focusing on groundwater, groundwater flow modeling. And then found that really what was pulling me was what’s happening with the people in the room. So I went back for a PhD focusing on conflict management, policy analysis. And it’s that combination, I think understanding the science both to get a baseline of real deep understanding of what’s happening within a basin, but then also equally deeply how can you have better conversations around the resource? Because, ultimately, it’s going to be small groups of people who are bringing solutions about.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah, I think it’s a very powerful combination that you have with that science background, and then the actual training in conflict management, conflict resolution. It’s pretty rare. So, no surprise why you’ve been successful. And so, yeah, let’s go back to the four waters thing. Is that going to be the name of your next book? The Four Waters of Aaron Wolf? I like it.

Aaron Wolf:
I appreciate it. No, the last book is actually… Oh, gosh, I just blanked on it. It’s called…

Jay Famiglietti:
Your own book?

Aaron Wolf:
My own book. It’s a really impressive book and it’s-

Jay Famiglietti:
Wow, that’s awesome. Well, we’re going to find it and we’re going to have a link to it for sure.

Aaron Wolf:
I got it. It’s called The Spirit of Dialogue. And what it draws on really are the tools of spiritual traditions, faith traditions, Indigenous traditions, to help have better conversations, because as somebody who’s trained in the West so much of my training is around the rational approaches to conflict and conflict resolution. And just like the science, it’s a wonderful basis, but it only gets you so far. To really understand how to listen, you learn from a Buddhist monk not from a lecture in computer science. And so, it’s drawing from those communities to really help us have better conversations.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, sounds great. And now that you remembered the title I’m going to go look for it. Thanks so much for joining us today, Aaron, we really appreciate it.

Aaron Wolf:
It’s a pleasure to see you again, Jay. Thanks so much. And for what you’re doing it’s really important.

Jay Famiglietti:
Right back at you. 

Religion and organized religion often go hand in hand with conflict and war, but as Aaron Wolf points out, faith and spiritual traditions can also open up a dialogue when it comes to water conflict. Reverend Michelle Singh became an ordained Interfaith Minister at The New Seminary in New York. She’s the executive director of Faith & the Common Good. Her job is to run this national interfaith charitable network. That means Michelle is dedicated to helping religious congregations and spiritual groups take action on sustainability together.

LAST WORD

Michelle Singh:
Organized religion has often, I would say, played a role in resolving different types of conflicts. When it comes to water, I think one of the things that religions can do is, first of all, help people get back to the source. So that may include their texts and oral teachings as well. One of the ways that I think sometimes we fail is by making assumptions. And in order to interrupt that and to be able to understand where people are sitting we’ve got to listen, we have to listen to each other. We also have to, I think, relate to each other on the same level.

I have all these visuals passing through my mind of baptisms and when Muslims do Wudu where they clean their hands and their faces before prayer, and how Buddhists use water in ceremonies. My earliest memories are associated with water. The sea that I often went to with my family where we saw baptisms in the sea. I remember one of my very first memories as a young child is being at a cremation that was beside a river. That was a very comforting experience for me. Water is the connection that everything on this planet is connected to.

Jay Famiglietti:
Reverend Michelle Singh runs Faith & the Common Good. We reached her in Toronto.

Well, that’s it for this episode of What About Water? We record and produce this podcast on Treaty 6 Territory, the Homeland of First Nations and Métis people, and we respect that relationship. What About Water? is produced by Walrus Lab and the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. Check out whataboutwater.org as we continue to post water-related stories and resources. Our crew here at What About Water? is Mark Ferguson, Erin Stephens, Laura McFarlan, Fred Reibin, Jesse Witow, Shawn Ahmed, and Andrea Rowe. Thanks to Wayne Giesbrecht, our studio technician, and to Farha Akhtar and to Jen Quesnel at Cascade Communications who put it all together. What About Water? available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. I’m Jay Famiglietti. Thanks for listening.