Water Scarcity and Conflict Between Upstream and Downstream Riparian Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
pp. 2150012
Author(s):  
Sahar Farid Yousef

More than one-quarter of the world’s population lives in water-scarce areas, while most countries share at least one transboundary river. If water scarcity is this prevalent, should we expect riparian countries to fight over the water allocation of shared rivers? To answer this question, I develop a modified one-shot three-stage river-sharing game where countries can resort to force to solve their water allocation problem. Using backward induction, I solve for the probability of the downstream country initiating conflict against the upstream country and the likelihood of the latter responding with force to the former’s hostile actions. I test the model empirically using a set of all upstream–downstream riparian dyads with available data from AQUASTAT and the Correlates of War Project for the years 1960–2010. The main contribution of this paper is that it demonstrates how upstream and downstream riparian countries differ in their decision to use force against the other country when experiencing water scarcity. I find that water scarcity increases the likelihood of the downstream country initiating the conflict, but it has no effect on the upstream country’s likelihood of responding with force. If history is a predictor of the future, then the results imply that as more riparian countries become water-scarce, militarized conflicts between upstream and downstream countries are likely to increase, especially if there is heterogeneity in water availability between the riparian dyad.

Author(s):  
R. Quentin Grafton ◽  
Long Chu ◽  
Paul Wyrwoll

Water insecurity poses threats to both human welfare and ecological systems. Global water abstractions (extractions) have increased threefold over the period 1960–2010, and an increasing trend in abstractions is expected to continue. Rising water use is placing significant pressure on water resources, leading to depletion of surface and underground water systems, and exposing up to 4 billion people to high levels of seasonal or persistent water insecurity. Climate change is deepening the risks of water scarcity by increasing rainfall variability. By the 2050s, the water–climate change challenge could cause an additional 620 million people to live with chronic water shortage and increase by 75% the proportion of cropland exposed to drought. While there is no single solution to water scarcity or water justice, increasing the benefits of water use through better planning and incentives can help. Pricing is an effective tool to regulate water consumption for irrigation, for residential uses, and especially in response to droughts. For a water allocation to be efficient, the water price paid by users should be equal to the marginal economic cost of water supply. Accounting for all costs of supply is important even though, in practice, water prices are typically set to meet a range of social and political objectives. Dynamic water pricing provides a tool for increasing allocative efficiency in short-term water allocation and the long-term planning of water resources. A dynamic relationship exists between water consumption at a point in time and water scarcity in the future. Thus, dynamic water pricing schemes may take into account the benefit of consuming water at that time and also the water availability that could be used should a drought occur in the future. Dynamic water pricing can be applied with the risk-adjusted user cost (RAUC), which measures the risk impact of current water consumption on the welfare of future water users.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kummu ◽  
D. Gerten ◽  
J. Heinke ◽  
M. Konzmann ◽  
O. Varis

Abstract. Interannual climatic and hydrologic variability has been substantial during the past decades in many regions. While climate variability and its impacts on precipitation and soil moisture have been studied intensively, less is known on subsequent implications for global food production. In this paper we quantify effects of hydroclimatic variability on global "green" and "blue" water availability and demand in global agriculture, and thus complement former studies that have focused merely on long-term averages. Moreover, we assess some options to overcome chronic or sporadic water scarcity. The analysis is based on historical climate forcing data sets over the period 1977–2006, while demography, diet composition and land use are fixed to reference conditions (year 2000). In doing so, we isolate the effect of interannual hydroclimatic variability from other factors that drive food production. We analyse the potential of food production units (FPUs) to produce a reference diet for their inhabitants (3000 kcal cap−1 day−1, with 80% vegetal food and 20% animal products). We applied the LPJmL vegetation and hydrology model to calculate the variation in green-blue water availability and the water requirements to produce that very diet. An FPU was considered water scarce if its water availability was not sufficient to produce the diet (i.e. assuming food self-sufficiency to estimate dependency on trade from elsewhere). We found that 24% of the world's population lives in chronically water-scarce FPUs (i.e. water is scarce every year), while an additional 19% live under occasional water scarcity (water is scarce in some years). Among these 2.6 billion people altogether, 55% would have to rely on international trade to reach the reference diet, while for 24% domestic trade would be enough. For the remaining 21% of the population exposed to some degree of water scarcity, local food storage and/or intermittent trade would be enough to secure the reference diet over the occasional dry years.


Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Barría ◽  
Ignacio Barría Sandoval ◽  
Carlos Guzman ◽  
Cristián Chadwick ◽  
Camila Alvarez-Garreton ◽  
...  

Chile is positioned in the 20th rank of water availability per capita. Nonetheless, water security levels vary across the territory. Around 70% of the national population lives in arid and semiarid regions, where a persistent drought has been experienced over the last decade. This has led to water security problems including water shortages. The water allocation and trading system in Chile is based on a water use rights (WURs) market, with limited regulatory and supervisory mechanisms, where the volume to be granted as permanent and eventual WURs is calculated from statistical analyses of historical streamflow records if available, or from empirical estimations if they are not. This computation of WURs does not consider the nonstationarity of hydrological processes nor climatic projections. This study presents the first large sample diagnosis of water allocation system in Chile under climate change scenarios. This is based on novel anthropic intervention indices (IAI), which were computed as the ratio between the total granted water volume to the water availability within 87 basins in north-central and southern Chile (30°S–42°S). The IAI were evaluated for the historical period (1979–2019) and under modeled-based climatic projections (2055–2080). According to these IAI levels, to date, there are 20 out of 87 overallocated basins, which under the assumption that no further WURs will be granted in the future, increases up to 25 basins for the 2055–2080 period. The results show that, to date most of north-central Chilean catchments already have a large anthropic intervention degree, and the increases for the future period occurs mostly in the southern region of the country (approximately 38°S), which has been considered as possible source of water for large water transfer projects (i.e., water roads). These indices and diagnosis are proposed as a tool to help policy makers to address water scarcity under climate change.


1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wlodek Rabinowicz

According to the standard objection to backward induction in games, its application depends on highly questionable assumptions about the players' expectations as regards future counterfactual game developments. It seems that, in order to make predictions needed for backward reasoning, the players must expect (i) each player to act rationally at each node that in principle could be reached in the game, and also to expect (ii) that this confidence in the future rationality of the players would be kept by each player come what may: even at the game-nodes that could only be reached by irrational play. Both expectations seem to be rather unreasonable: a player's initial disposition to rational behaviour may be weakened by a long stretch of irrational play on his part and, even more importantly, his initial confidence in the other players' future rationality may be undermined by an irrational play on their part. For different formulations of this objection see Binmore (1987), Reny (1988) and (1989), Bicchieri (1989), Pettit and Sugden (1989). (For defences of backward induction see Sobel (1993) and Aumann (1995) and (1996).)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prakat Modi ◽  
Naota Hanasaki ◽  
Dai Yamazaki ◽  
Julien Boulange ◽  
Taikan Oki

Abstract Availability of water per capita is among the most fundamental water-scarcity indicators and has been used extensively in global grid-based water resources assessments. Recently, it has been extended to include the economic aspect, a proxy of the capability for water management. We applied the extended index globally under SSP–RCP scenarios using gridded population and economic conditions from two independent sources and unexpectedly found that the gridded data were significantly sensitive to global water-scarcity assessment. One projection assumed urban concentration of population and assets, whereas the other assumed dispersion. In analyses using multiple SSP–RCP scenarios representing a world of sustainability (SSP1–RCP2.6), regional rivalry (SSP3–RCP7.0), and fossil fuel development (SSP5–RCP8.5) in the future, multiple GCMs, and two gridded datasets showed that the water-scarce population ranges from 0.32–665 million. Uncertainties in the SSP–RCP and GCM scenarios were 6.58–489 million and 0.68–315 million, respectively. The population distribution assumption had a similar impact, with an uncertainty of 169–338 million. These results highlight the importance of the subregional distribution of socioeconomic factors for predicting the future global environment.


1998 ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
N. S. Jurtueva

In the XIV century. centripetal tendencies began to appear in the Moscow principality. Inside the Russian church, several areas were distinguished. Part of the clergy supported the specificobar form. The other understood the need for transformations in society. As a result, this led to a split in the Russian church in the 15th century for "non-possessors" and "Josephites". The former linked the fate of the future with the ideology of hesychasm and its moral transformation, while the latter sought support in alliance with a strong secular power.


2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-224
Author(s):  
Alexander Carpenter

This paper explores Arnold Schoenberg’s curious ambivalence towards Haydn. Schoenberg recognized Haydn as an important figure in the German serious music tradition, but never closely examined or clearly articulated Haydn’s influence and import on his own musical style and ethos, as he did with many other major composers. This paper argues that Schoenberg failed to explicitly recognize Haydn as a major influence because he saw Haydn as he saw himself, namely as a somewhat ungainly, paradoxical figure, with one foot in the past and one in the future. In his voluminous writings on music, Haydn is mentioned by Schoenberg far less frequently than Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, and his music appears rarely as examples in Schoenberg’s theoretical texts. When Schoenberg does talk about Haydn’s music, he invokes — with tacit negativity — its accessibility, counterpoising it with more recondite music, such as Beethoven’s, or his own. On the other hand, Schoenberg also praises Haydn for his complex, irregular phrasing and harmonic exploration. Haydn thus appears in Schoenberg’s writings as a figure invested with ambivalence: a key member of the First Viennese triumvirate, but at the same time he is curiously phantasmal, and is accorded a peripheral place in Schoenberg’s version of the canon and his own musical genealogy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gusti Muhammad Ihsan Perdana

 Legislative election in distric Tapin was spotted with a vote, conducted by members of the Commission, M. Zainnoor Wal Aidi Rahmad win a legislative candidate from the Golkar Party, namely Bambang Herry Purnama the 2014-2019. Elections Honorary Council for General Election Organizer of the Republic of Indonesia as No. 15 / DKPP-PKE-III / 2014 has imposed sanctions on Zainnoor Wal Aidi M. Rahmad form of dismissal remain as a member of the Tapin district Elections Commission since the verdict was read. Rantau’s District Court in its decision No. 135 / Pid-Sus /2014/PN.Rta, Bringing the sanctions in the form of imprisonment for 10 months with the criminal provisions do not need to be run in the future unless is another command in the verdict that convicted before time trial during the 12 (twelve months) ends have been guilty of a criminal offense and a fine of Rp. 10,000,000.00 (ten million). Dismissal sanctions remain to perpetrators as member of the district KPU Tapin have sense of fairness, but the connection with the criminal charge of criminal trials less reflectjustice for his actions that allow offenders not sentenced to imprisonment and the other party can not do the same.Keywords: Elections Tapin distric, Inflation Voice, Sanctions


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