How can we build peace over shared waters? 3 questions to Kerry Schneider

From your perspective as a shared waters expert, why is water important for peaceful cooperation?

The distribution of freshwater resources around the world is uneven and uncomfortably inequitable. At best, climate change makes the availability of water less predictable and at worst threatens the supply entirely in some places. While availability and predictability of water oscillate with increasing discordance like the last wobbles of a spinning top giving up hope, our rapidly growing global population is as certain and reliable as taxes further skewing the dynamics of supply and demand.

As indisputable and as hard as these trends are to ignore, we, as humans, and the custodians of planet Earth must focus on the connectivity of water. At a very basic human level, water connects us wherever we are and at every scale. Water connects us as individuals, it connects us at the community level, and water eagerly crosses the lines on our maps so it defiantly connects us internationally. Water connects us to the places and the ecosystems that surround us and support us even in the most urban environments and it does so even when we aren’t paying any attention to it. Water plays a defining role in our identities religiously, culturally and historically.

Water is there to be fought over just like oil or diamonds or any other commodity- but to what end? History tells us water management and development would rather hold hands with peace and cooperation so this is something we simply can’t afford to ignore.