The Human Face of Water Insecurity

Abstract

The timely availability of fresh water has for decades been recognized as a global concern. In addition to matters of availability and quality we now recognize that the world will soon be redefined by changing precipitation patterns associated with an increase in the mean temperature of our planet’s atmosphere. This will result in droughts in some places becoming deeper and more persistent making human presence in some parts of the world impossible to sustain. While it did not receive the same attention in the media, the announcement of UN’s 2030 Transforming Our World global sustainable development agenda was at least as important as the climate negotiations held in Paris 2 months later if only because it deals with damage we are doing to other elements of the Earth system that are exacerbating and being exacerbated by climate change. The goals in the agenda of improving the management of water globally and acting on climate change need to be elevated to special importance because success cannot be achieved in addressing other critical global sustainable development challenges, which include huge challenges such as eliminating poverty and hunger and bringing about peace and stability, unless we manage water more effectively, a goal that can only be achieved by stabilizing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. This chapter argues that if we do not make water security and water-related climate stability a global imperative at the national and sub-national level, the result will be greater regional tension, conflict and involuntary migration related in large measure to water insecurity.