Climate Change as Catalyst for War

Can We Stop the World's Water Crisis or Is Darfur Only the Beginning

Feb 11, 2008 Jaci Burton

UN CEO Water Mandate calls for corporate and government action but goes largely ignored. Only 20 of 1000 companies who attended the World Ecoonomic Forum have signed.

According to dozens of sources around the world, the underlying cause of the war in Darfur is drought. Every year, the Sahara desert increases its boundaries southward resulting in conflict over land and water in the region. Josh Braun of Seed Magazine, reports, “Darfur may well be the first war influenced by climate change.” And even though we are aware of this, there has been very little done to stop or reduce the Darfur drought cycle, not to mention to prevent this from happening in other regions.

In July 2007, The UN Global Compact, along with the Swedish Government and several large corporations, developed the UN CEO Water Mandate to find and implement solutions to the world’s water availability and sanitation problems. In the mandate, governments and large corporations are being called upon to educate themselves on the water crisis, pledge to change any water-damaging practices and allow open access to documents so that an oversight committee can keep tabs on the state of earth’s water. Since that time, only 20 companies have agreed to abide by the bylaws of the mandate, although 1000 attended the Davos World Economic Forum, where the world’s water problem was brought into focus.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated in his address to the World Economic Forum, that we must “call for cutting in half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. When you consider the health and development challenges facing the poorest of the world's population, diseases like malaria or TB, rising food prices, environmental degradation, the common denominator seems to be water.”

Although companies such as PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Ltd and Nestlé have joined the treaty, they are frustrated that there isn’t more concern among big businesses over water. In addition, some have pointed out that agriculture uses 70 percent of all water resources. With the recent surge in the creation of bio-fuels, this is likely to get worse. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and chief executive of Nestlé’s Food and Drink Group, estimated that it takes roughly 1000 gallons of water to create a single gallon of bio-fuel.

In effect, this makes the push for independence from fossil fuels more damaging to the environment, a horrifying thought. Whether willfully or by accident, there has been a lack of projection of the actual environmental cost of creating bio-fuels from food crops. Food takes a lot of water to grow but is necessary to sustain life, just as the water is. However, bio-fuels are costing much more water than we can presently afford. And yet we continue to produce it.

Mr. Ban projects that by 2015 China will be unable to support the needs of its citizens. In addition, he says that the United States, along with many other countries, is experiencing water stress. Although Darfur may be the first conflict directly linked to climate change, it almost certainly won’t be the last. Without sufficient drinking water and less edible food as a result of the lack of clean water, people in every corner of the world will soon experience shortages in their areas. In addition, scarcity will cause the prices of food and water to soar out of reach of earth’s poorer people, making a future in which only the wealthy can survive.

Sources

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s Address to The World Economic Forum

Josh Braun of Seed Magazine

UN CEO Water Mandate

The copyright of the article Climate Change as Catalyst for War in Poverty/World Development is owned by Jaci Burton. Permission to republish Climate Change as Catalyst for War in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Drought