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What People Get Wrong About Water Wars
When people think about potential water wars in the 21st century, they often think of a post-apocalyptic wasteland like Mad Max or Fallout, with People fighting tooth and nail over water resources and other kinds of resources to maintain the dimming light of human civilisation.
However, let me articulate a more accurate picture of what water wars will be like.
We like to imagine nations without water or lacking water resources will take water from countries that have plenty of access to water as a resource.
Water wars will be the other way round, with water-rich states taking what little water nations have that don’t have access to water to maintain themselves.
That is already happening with Turkey and Syria taking more and more water from Iraq.
This started when Turkey and Syria began developing hydraulic projects on the two rivers in the 1970s.
Water flow to Iraq started to dwindle, compromising supply for irrigation, drinking, and industrial purposes.
Civilisational Development
States that lack water industrialise much later than states that have water and can build sophisticated civilisations that go on to build up empires and industries to survive.
