Thirst is a threat – and a business opportunity

Elliot Wilson

Elliot Wilson says that scarcity of clean water will soon be as big an economic issue as scarcity of carbon fuel, and explores how global corporations such as Coca-Cola are addressing it

Resentment can quickly turn to conflict: remember that China’s most recent external war, in which it was both the aggressor and the loser, took place less than 30 years ago, just inside its border with Vietnam.

Worse may be to come. In his co-authored book Water: The final resource, William Houston envisages a time when severe water shortages cause internal strife in China, Pakistan and North Korea. He sees the countries potentially joining forces to invade three far more fertile regions: South Korea, Burma and the Indian state of East Punjab. Pie in the sky perhaps, but China, like the US, is already building coalitions of the willing within its own sphere of influence, and Beijing has a tendency to thrash around violently when confronted with the sort of internal uprising that occurs during famines and droughts.

‘Water is going to control the political, economic and social agenda over the next 20 years,’ Houston says. ‘It is going to be the major military issue in the world for the next generation.’

Potential conflict over water sources is not limited to the Orient. In eastern Africa, talks to establish a long-mooted multilateral agency, the Nile Basin Commission, have been put on hold, with Egypt, Uganda, and Tanzania, Kenya and the Sudan all differing on how the water in Lake Victoria and the world’s longest river should be used. Meanwhile many of America’s western states are in open conflict over the much-depleted Colorado River, which once carved out the Grand Canyon but now, ravaged by intensive farming in California and the Midwest, barely makes it to the Pacific Ocean.