Collective Action with International Water Disputes

Abstract

American author and humorist Mark Twain famously quipped, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Commentators wildly disagree over whether water disputes lead to actual armed conflict on the international level. Aaron Wolf occupies one extreme, with his assertion that the last international armed conflict over water occurred over 4,500 years ago, with the intervening millennia being more accurately characterized as international water cooperation. The Pacific Institute occupies the other end, pointing to at least 111 instances of international armed conflict over water, with the most recent observed in 2015 when Iranian border guards allegedly shot and killed at least 10 Afghan villagers who were collecting water from the Hari Rud River that separates Afghanistan and Iran. The divergence in the perceived magnitude of the problem stems from the former looking for traditional wars over water, while the latter looks for any type of violence over water, no matter how significant or insignificant as the case may be. Both have an overly simplicity view of international water disputes as having to be the sole cause of the conflict. This lecture recognizes the complex causes of international armed conflict and looks for water-related elements of broader international disputes, which helps paint a more sophisticated picture of the frequency of such matters arising and how the international community attempts to respond to such matters. A review of references to water-related matters in Security Council Chapter VII resolutions helps provide this more sophisticated picture, which represents a new and useful alternative in assessing the connection between international water disputes and international peace and security. Moreover, it provides a more objective basis for determining the instances where international water disputes and international peace and security connect, inasmuch as prior commentators disagree on the level of hostilities and the level of involvement of water in a political dispute for it to be counted as an international water dispute, whereas it is relatively easy to determine when the Security Council has acted under its Chapter VII powers to resolve an international water dispute.