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What is Global Warming ?

Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. As the Earth is getting hotter,
disasters like hurricanes, droughts and floods are getting more frequent.

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See the most important facts of the UN Climate Change Report 2007 at a glance
 

Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of the air near the Earth´s surface has risen a little less than 1° Celsius (0.74 ±
0.18°C, or 1.3 ± 0.32° Fahrenheit). Does not seem all that much? It is responsible for the conspicuous increase
in storms, floods and raging forest fires we have seen in the last ten years, though, say scientists.
 
Their data show that an increase of one degree Celsius makes the Earth warmer now than it has been for at least a thousand years.
Out of the 20 warmest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980. The three hottest years ever observed have all occurred in
the last ten years, even.
 
Earth should be in cool-down-period
But it is not only about how much the Earth is warming, it is also about how fast it is warming. There have always been natural
climate changes – Ice Ages and the warm intermediate times between them – but those evolved over periods of 50,000 to 100,000
years.

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See the best ways to use renewable energies (Photo: Reuters)
 

A temperature rise as fast as the one we have seen over the last 30 years has never happened before, as far as scientists can
ascertain. Moreover, normally the Earth should now be in a cool-down-period, according to natural effects like solar cycles and
volcano activity, not in a heating-up phase.
 
What is more, climate change won’t be a smooth transition to a warmer world, warns the Tipping Points Report by Allianz and WWF.
Twelve regions around the world will be especially affected by abrupt changes, among them the North Pole, the Amazon rainforest,
and California.
 
 
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Page 1

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All these facts lead scientists to infer that the global warming we now experience is not a natural occurrence and that it is not
brought on by natural causes. Man is responsible, they say. What did we do? Read more about the man-made
causes and impacts of global warming in the following articles.
 

Climate Tipping Points

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Twelve regions will be most affected by global warming, among them the Amazon rainforest and California.

The Oceans’ SOS: Save our Seas

Earth is a blue planet, but its color is fading fast. The world’s oceans, two thirds of the planet’s surface, are in rapid
decline. Climate change and overfishing lead the list of culprits: to save our seas we must cut carbon and put away
our nets.

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Discover the reasons for the sorry state of our seas (Photo: Reuters)
 

Species extinction is a sure sign of a dying ecosystem. So when scientists from the Zoological Society of London said in October
2009 that the only way to save coral reefs was to cryogenically freeze them, it was a stunning declaration of the sickly state of our
seas.
 
Life began in the oceans and still depends on them. Oceans make the weather—what if the Gulf Stream stopped?—they absorb
about a third of our CO2 emissions, and provide food for billions. Now that they are in trouble, we are in trouble too.
 
The Turning Tide
Failing coral reefs are not even the worst of it.
 
The North and Norwegian Seas, the South and East China Seas, and the North American northwest Atlantic are actually the
unhealthiest oceans, according to a map published in 2008 by the University of California, Santa Barbara.
 
In these areas the ecosystem in the poorest shape is the rocky continental shelf—the area offshore 60 to 200 meters deep where
most fisheries operate.
 
The researchers found that over 40 percent of the world’s oceans are heavily degraded while less than 4 percent are relatively
pristine.
 
There was a direct correlation between ocean degradation and human activity. The pristine areas are under polar ice. The sickliest
ecosystems are near coasts, hit by overfishing, climate change, land pollution, invasive species, and oil and gas exploration.
 
The map did not even include tourism, coastal engineering, or non-cargo shipping because of a lack of data. “Things are probably
worse than our estimates suggest,” says lead author Ben Halpern.
 
Climate Change & Fishing
Globally, by far the biggest threat to the oceans is climate change. Once kelp forest temperatures rise above 15 degrees Celsius
they wither. Other ecosystems have their own thermal tipping points.
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Climate change will also change rainfall patterns, washing more pollutants off the land into the sea. More intense storms and higher
winds may also reduce oceans’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
 
About half the CO2 produced in the past 200 years by burning fossil fuels has gone into the seas, making ocean surfaces 30 percent
more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution.
 
Rising acidity could eliminate creatures that make calcium carbonate shells, like coral and shellfish. Even more important are the
phytoplankton known as diatoms, the base of the marine food chain. “If they go it would be like having no grass on land,” says
Halpern, “nothing else could survive.”
 
“We could trigger a mass extinction on a scale not seen for 100 million years,” warns Richard Norris, Professor of Paleobiology at
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Ocean acidification is a bigger problem than global warming.”
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Pacific Garbage

Commercial fishing is the next biggest threat after climate change. Since the 1950s, stocks of sixty percent of the fish we eat have
collapsed because they are no match for modern fishing methods. “The continental shelf is plowed land, it’s no surprise you don’t
have long-lived species,” says Norris.
 
Enter the Dead Zone
Meanwhile on land, fertilizer runoff and pollution are major problems. Nitrogen-rich fertilizer, sewage, and particulate matter from
burning fossil fuels feed bacteria, algae and vegetation. These ‘blooms’ use up all the dissolved oxygen in the water, suffocating
other creatures and creating ‘dead zones’.
 
Since the explosive growth of fertilizers from the 1960s, coastal dead zones have doubled in number each decade, decimating
fisheries; the Baltic Sea would be a third to a half more productive without the dead zones, estimates a 2008 report by Robert J.
Diaz (Virginia Institute of Marine Science) and Rutger Rosenberg (University of Gothenburg).
 
The solution is simple, they say: keep fertilizers out of the sea. Since 1989, the loss of Soviet-era fertilizer subsidies has eliminated
a 40,000 square kilometer dead zone in the Black Sea.   
 
Then there are the chemicals we dump, the oil that runs off our streets, and the tide of plastic trash that deposits solid petroleum
into the seas. The Pacific Garbage Patch is larger than the United States, but it is only one of five ocean zones where fish eat plastic
as well as plankton.
 
Sending out an SOS
The future looks bleak, but there is hope. “Oceans are resilient, says Halpern, “if we act soon they can recover.” Dead zones can be
eliminated. Whales and seals hunted to near extinction did recover once protected.
 
Some sectors are acting. Merchant shipping is cutting the risk of oil spills by banning single-hulled ships from 2010, and trying to
reduce the spread of invasive species via ballast water.
 
More stubborn is the fishing industry. The obvious answer is to fish less. As The Economist magazine points out, “nothing did so
much good for fish stocks in northern Europe in the past 150 years as the Second World War”. Trawlers stuck in port allowed
fisheries to revive.
 
Abolishing government subsidies for fishing, and for trawler fuel, is one strategy. Individual transferable quotas, or ‘catch shares’, is
another, giving partial ownership of a fish stock.
 
This has worked in Iceland, New Zealand, and the western United States. “Fishers become very interested in making sure the stock
is healthy and sustainable when their income depends on it,” says Halpern. It could also protect stocks in developing countries from
marauding foreign factory ships.
 
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 Sea Change: A Carbon Sink on the Brink
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Marine reserves are a proven solution, argues Norris. “We have to move from hunter-gatherer mode to having the oceans more
tightly managed.” Coral reef reserves in Indonesia and Kenya, and kelp forest reserves in New Zealand and South Africa, have
successfully revived biodiversity.
 
They would also maintain the seas as effective carbon sinks, says the United Nations, which wants a global ‘Blue Carbon’ regime
(like REDD for forests) to protect ecosystems like mangroves and salt marshes.  
 
The oceans can no longer be a free-for-all. A combination of preservation, regulation, and ownership—‘marine planning’ or
‘ecosystem management’—is the best bet to save our seas. Otherwise the places where life started will become lifeless.
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Climate Impacts
Click on the image to see how climate change could affect our environment and how we can adapt.
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Climate Tipping Points
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Climate Change: The Costs of Inaction

As governments negotiate a global climate treaty while navigating a global economic downturn, policymakers and the
public are asking: What are the costs of climate change?

Waves batter a train as it passes along the coastal railway line at Dawlish in Devon,
England. Climate change impacts could harm more than a fifth of global GDP if nothing
is done to halt greenhouse gas emissions (Photo: Reuters)
 

Climate change is the most significant, reckless market failure the world has ever seen. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have
polluted without paying for it because we did not value the environment and the climate, racking up a colossal ecological debt.
 
What is that debt, and what will it cost to balance the books? Is it even possible to calculate? How do we figure out what happens to
Vietnamese farmers when Tibetan glaciers shrink because trees are felled in the Amazon?
 
Which sectors of the economy and society will be hit hardest? Water supply, agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, fisheries, tourism,
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health, and energy are all key areas. What will be the costs of inaction on climate change to these building blocks of human
society?

Picture Gallery (click on the image to start)

See how the climate change balance sheet stacks up. Count the costs of climate change and the costs of protecting the climate. (Graphic: Asian
Development Bank)
 

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006, is the most influential attempt yet to draw up a climate
change balance sheet. It concluded that, in a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, the total costs of climate change would be equivalent to
losing between 5 and 20 percent of global GDP “now and forever”.
 
In 2007, the UN climate panel estimated the costs of adaptation strategies in agriculture, coastal zones, forestry, fisheries, health,
infrastructure, and water supply sectors combined could reach 44 billion dollars to 166 billion dollars per year by 2030.
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These are conservative estimates, many now say, because more recent climate science predicts more rapidly increasing
temperatures and a greater likelihood of catastrophic climate changes. Alex Bowen, senior economist on the Stern team, tells
Allianz Knowledge that: “the impacts of unrestrained climate change would be higher than 20 percent of global GDP.”
 
How will we support the 50 percent growth of the world populationfrom six to nine billion people by mid-century, if we
simultaneously lose more than a fifth of the world’s wealth? See below how unrestrained climate change will erode some of the
foundations of human society.

Australian Bushfires: Changing Climate Fans The Flames

The continent’s worst natural disaster in more than a hundred years has claimed nearly 200 lives and left thousands
homeless. In the wake of the tragedy, the search for the causes begins.

A bushfire burns through a forest on the outskirts of Labertouche, east of Melbourne

(Photo: Reuters)
 

Australia’s recent bushfires were the continent’s worst natural disaster in a century. Wildfires in the southern Australian state of
Victoria wiped out entire towns, destroyed more than 1,800 houses and left 7,000 people homeless. More than 200 people died.
 
Opinions differ on how the fires started. Police have arrested alleged arsonists, while local courts are investigating a local utility, SP
AusNet, which provides electricity to areas of Victoria affected by the disaster. One of the company’s power lines collapsed and may
have sparked some of the fires.
 
In a different setting, none of these events could have triggered such a terrible catastrophe, but the weather preceding the
Victorian bushfires was extreme, nearly one week of maximum daily temperatures in excess of 45 degrees Celsius. Even at night
temperatures never dropped below 30 degrees. Melbourne even recorded its hottest day ever.
 
“These conditions meant the bush was tinder dry and large areas of the State were on Extreme Fire Alert,” says Nicholas Scofield,
General Manager Corporate Affairs at Allianz Australia.
 
Scientists are always wary of linking such extreme weather events to climate change, but there is ample evidence that global
warming is at least partially to blame.
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As early as 2007, scientists from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported with “high confidence” that
Australia and New Zealand were already experiencing impacts from recent climate change. “Heat waves and fires are almost certain
to increase in intensity and frequency,” they stated in the Fourth Assessment Report.

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Australia experienced its worst natural disaster in decades. Find out why (Photo:
Reuters)
 

A more personal view of the changes comes from climate activist Tim Flannery, an Australian biologist and zoologist from the
University of Macquarie. “The long, wet and cold winters that seemed so insufferable to me as a young boy wishing to play outside
vanished decades ago,” he writes in an article in the Guardian, “and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established
itself.”
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Flannery’s assessment finds a sad illustration in the state of Australia’s most important river. After more than a decade of drought,
the Murray River has lost much of its water. The last two years have seen the lowest inflows into the Murray since records began
116 years ago.
 
In an area with little rainfall but relatively intensive agriculture, the Murray-Darling River Basin is a lifeline for many communities.
To adapt, many local communities have started building dams and rationing water.
 
But if the IPCC assessment is anything to go by, the recent fires have only been a taste of what is to come.
 
The panel predicts a tendency for decreased annual rainfall over most of southern and sub-tropical Australia and up to 20 percent
more droughts over most of Australia by 2030. As a result, fire danger in Australia will increase. Bushfires will happen more often,
with increased intensity and they will spread faster, the IPCC says.
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Every summer hundreds of natural wildfires spring up across Australia. Even if this time arsonists or faulty power lines triggered the
fires, a changing climate has fanned the flames and turned a natural event into a disaster.
 
 Australian Bushfires: Changing Climate Fans The Flames
 Bushfire-Interview: Rebuilding from the Ashes

Deforestation: Sawing off the Branch We Are Sitting On

The rate of deforestation has jumped dramatically - fueling climate change and the destruction of an
invaluable resource. A new approach to conservation could help.

Wolfgang Cramer, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

"About a fifth of current greenhouse gas emissions are from deforestation - this is often overlooked in the public debate"
 
(Photo: PIK)

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that during 1990-2000, net forest loss was a
staggering 8.9 million hectares per year. Since 2000, this annual rate has decreased only slightly - to 7.3 million hectares
per year, roughly the size of entire nations of Panama or Sierra Leone. According to the FAO, much of this deforestation
occurred in developing countries, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
 
There are many reasons for this dramatic increase. Certainly, industrialization, urban sprawl and population growth has
played an important role in widespread deforestation. So, too, have political and economic conditions. In many cases,
cutting down forests promises short-term profit for farmers and landowners in developing countries who use the land for
cattle grazing or to grow cash crops, such as soybeans.
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Connected issues
In recent decades, researchers have established direct links between deforestation and climate change. Forests are vital
for absorbing and storing the world's carbon dioxide (CO2). When forests are cut and burnt en masse, the damage is two-
fold: the world's capacity to absorb CO2 is reduced, while large amounts of stored carbon are released into the
atmosphere.
 
"About a fifth of current greenhouse gas emissions are from deforestation - this is often overlooked in the public debate,"
says Wolfgang Cramer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.
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Picture Gallery (click the image to start)

 
Find out more about the most important reasons for deforestation

"Hence stopping deforestation is direct climate protection," adds Cramer. "Besides, there are some indications that Amazon
rainforestsmight be threatened by substantial losses of rainfall due to climate change. Therefore, stabilizing the climate
might also help stabilize these forests."
 
The problems of climate change and deforestation also reinforce each other through human economic and agricultural
practices. Some experts project that global warming will drive more people into poverty, and encourage the unsustainable
environmental and agricultural practices brought about by economic need.
 
Projects under way
"We have been seeing similar statistics about deforestation for twenty or thirty years now," says Steve Howard, CEO of
The Climate Group, an international NGO that advises governments and businesses about climate-friendly policies. "Now is
the time to make a push to do something about it."
 
Several like-minded NGOs and organizations agree. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Conservation International,
for example, are two NGOs deeply involved in protecting thousands of hectares of rainforest and old-growth forest, as well
as promoting consumer awareness,forest restoration projects, and sustainable forest management in many parts of the
world.
 
At the international policymaking level, there are some efforts to incorporate forestry issues in wider initiatives to slow
climate change. International policies, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme,
allow nations and companies meet commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by supporting projects that aim to
cut emissions and slow global warming.
 
The international community is currently discussing practical ways ofincorporating forestry and land-use activities - such as
afforestation (the planting of trees on non-forest land), reforestation (planting of trees after the destruction of a forest),
and avoided deforestation - into its policies, with the wider aim of slowing global warming.
 
Protection through better management
The Climate Group's Steve Howard acknowledges some movement on forestry in international politics. But the reality, he
adds, is that the global scale of protected and better-managed forests needs a "massive ramp-up" to make a positive
impact on the climate.
 
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Wolfgang Cramer of the PIK agrees, emphasizing the importance better forest management in breaking the dangerous
cycle of deforestation and climate change. "It is not sustainable, nor necessary, to build fences around the world's forests
and thereby limit access to forest products on local and global markets," says Cramer.
 
"But a lot more can be done in order to manage forests so that they can continue to provide the services people derive
from them, such as timber, water, recreation, biodiversity and biofuels. Much of current deforestation is the direct opposite
of sustainable forest management."
 
Cramer, Howard and others argue that locally adapted solutions will play a key role in promoting sustainable practices and
preventing illegal timber harvesting, since many factors - such as land tenure practices, poverty and governance -
converge to drive deforestation, and because these factors vary from place to place.
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 A Critical Link: Biodiversity and Climate Change
 Is the Blue Planet Running Dry?
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 Forests on the International Climate Change Agenda

"What is needed is a combination of local initiative and real commitment from the developed world to create a flow of
resources to promote local solutions," says Howard. "If we got it right, we could do something we could be proud of."
 

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How Hot is Too Hot? The Health Risks of Climate Change for All of Us

Jonathan Patz is a public health expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has looked closely at the
health impacts of climate change all over the world.

"A tiny bit of warming can make the difference between an epidemic and no
epidemic."
Jonathan Patz
 

Dr. Patz, we have heard about some of the serious health risks that global warming presents to the
developing world. But why should the "developed" world worry about the health impacts of climate change?
We certainly learned from the European heat wave that heat waves are killers, and that we are still vulnerable to those
types of direct effects. The fact that the developing world may be more at risk does not isolate us. We still live in an
international world with a lot of trade and transport, so an increase in disease anywhere in the world can affect any
country.

There are also unique dangers in the developed world, such as expanding urban areas, urban sprawl, and the issue of
intensifying urban heat island effect, worsening heat waves, and so on.
 
So, the developed world may also feel the health effects of climate change?
People argue, well, the United States has a lot of air conditioning.' But this turns into one of those ethical dilemmas where
if you are wealthy enough to have air conditioning then you are okay, while other people are that much worse off.
 
Meanwhile Africa has so much malaria and malnutrition, which are very climate-sensitive and are intensified with global
warming. But is Africa one of the main perpetrators of greenhouse gas emissions? I would say with the United States at 4
percent of the world's population and producing 25 percent of its emissions, there is sort of an equity issue there.
 
Were the European heat wave of 2003 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 "wake-up calls" for the West about the
potential health dangers of climate change?
Well, even though it is difficult to pin one or two major extreme weather events on long-term climate change, I think that
bit-by-bit, the public and policymakers are beginning to recognize that global warming is real. There are threats. Each time
you have a major event, you get a spike in awareness.
 
So, people are not arguing so much about global warming as they are about the numbers. They are now more likely to
say, ‘Okay, it's warming. What does that actually mean?' They recognize the impacts are quite broad and reach across
many sectors, including public health.
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Arctic Ice Melt

Where is current research about the connections between climate change and public health focused? What are
the unknowns that researchers are looking at?
I think one key question is whether or not there are thresholds that we need to be careful of. How hot is too hot for human
physiology? And then you need to think of insect-borne diseases. For cold-blooded mosquitoes carrying a parasite, a tiny
bit of warming can make the difference between an epidemic and no epidemic. So, I think identifying some of the
thresholds and trying not to go beyond them is one of the key fields of research.
 
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Another one is asking questions about how diseases move geographically. For example, in the African highlands, malaria
has increased, partly because of human migration and drug resistance, but there are recent studies coming out
documenting parallel warming trends in the African highlands. If you increase malaria transmission and it is climate based,
could that, in fact contribute to drug resistance? So, it gets very complicated quickly.
 
Are there other questions being asked by researchers in your field?
Another one is the issue of air pollution: ground-level ozone, photo-chemical smog - not to be confused with the good stuff
up in the stratosphere that protects us, but the ground-level pollution that exacerbates asthma and other respiratory
diseases. The new findings are showing - not surprisingly - that ozone could increase with warming.
 
Another big question is about stagnant air masses. I think climatologists are beginning to ask the question that if heat and
ozone are deadly, can we really do a better job of predicting the frequency of stagnant air masses that contribute to those
problems.
 
What would you say are the best-case and worst-case scenarios if we look ahead to the health impacts of
global warming over the next few decades?
I think the worst-case scenario would be if we continue to ignore this broad-scale environmental health risk. We need to
prioritize and look at the acute crises of today, such as tuberculosis and AIDS, but if we just continue to do business as
usual and ignore the long-term environmental risks, they will turn around and bite us in the future.
 
Climate change is one of these diffuse problems that is really hard to pinpoint and say ‘Aha, there's the problem. Let's just
turn the valve off right here, and we're fixed.' I think this is where we really have to examine - especially in the United
States - our consumptive energy policies and lifestyles, and begin to take some responsibility for what this means for
delayed or transferred impacts on the rest of the world, but also on ourselves.
 
And the best-case scenario...?
Well, the best case is to realize that it is a real problem and there are real solutions. And these solutions are not that hard.
Just keeping on the way we are going is hurting us in the long run because there is so much innovation out there now.
Simply by being smarter and conserving, I have heard that we could cut our energy consumption by 30 or 40 percent in
the United States - and that is by not even blinking or changing our lifestyle. We need to go beyond that. Kyoto Protocol is
just a first step, but absolutely not enough.
 
I think there is an opportunity. Businesses can make a lot of money being green and promoting environmental
stewardship. This is not one of these dilemmas of protect the environment or grow the economy dilemmas. I think that is a
false dichotomy.
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 Climate Change & Public Health: A Morbid Connection
 Is the Blue Planet Running Dry?
 Is the Blue Planet Running Dry?
Jonathan Patz is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Population Health Sciences at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. He is the lead author of the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
 
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Water Conflicts: Fight or Flight?

The specter of international water wars is often raised as a potential result of water scarcity. But how real is
the threat?

 
A Palestinian carries empty canisters (Photo: Reuters)

Water has always been both a blessing, and a source of conflict. There are biblical accounts of fights over water. The
English word “rivalry”, derived from the Latin “rivalis”, basically means “one using the same river as another.”
 
The tensions have grown with the number of people living on Earth. Recent humanitarian catastrophes, like the genocide
in Rwanda or the violence in Sudanese Darfur, have been linked back to water conflicts. The potential for more water-
related rivalry seems enormous.
 
By 2030, nearly half of the world's people will be living in areas of acute water shortage, said a report released by more
than two dozen U.N. bodies in March, 2009. Most of North Africa and the Middle East had already reached the limits of
their water resources, it said.
 
The waters of a number of major rivers — such as the Mekong, Indus, Nile, and Amazon — are shared between two or
more countries. International river basins cover 45 percent of the Earth’s land surface. They provide water for about 40
percent of the world’s population, and account for approximately 60 percent of global river flow.
 
If India wants to dam a Himalayan river that ultimately delivers water to Pakistan, tensions will arise. Likewise, Egypt has
an awkward relationship with Ethiopia, in whose highlands the Nile begins its journey to the Mediterranean.
 
Moreover, the damaging effects of climate change — shortened monsoons, drought, rising seas, and intense rainfall
causing soil erosion — could well restrict the natural supply of water just as demand is peaking.
 
Take comfort in history
History, however, shows that scarce water resources seldom lead countries to war. Competition for water can lead to
violent disputes at the local and regional level like in Sudan and Rwanda, but it is rarely the primary reason that countries
to go to war.
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Picture Gallery (click on image to start)

 
Eight gadgets and techniques that could help the world cope with water scarcity

“Those who have studied water conflicts find almost no conflicts where water triggered the conflict,” says Daniel Zimmer,
executive director of the World Water Council. “Water is ultimately a source of collaboration rather than war. It is so vital
you cannot afford to have a war over it.”
 
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Zimmer points to the agreement in March 2008 between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq to jointly establish a water institute to
study and monitor trans-border water resources. Instead of taking up arms, the three countries decided to take the first
steps towards a permanent, peaceful solution over their longstanding water disputes.
 
In the past, Iraq had frequently complained to the United Nations about Turkey's construction of dams on the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, arguing that Turkey had failed to release sufficient water from its dams. “Contrary to what some people
claim, a war over water resources in this region won't emerge,” said Turkey’s Environment and Forestry Minister Veysel
Eroğlu. “We prefer developing joint projects.”
 
Another potential flashpoint is the Mekong river basin, shared by Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China, countries
that fought wars against each other in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the Mekong River Commission has thus far
been able to deal with disputes peacefully, largely through its ability to distribute accurate information to all states
concerned.
 
Since 1948, approximately 295 such international water agreements have been negotiated, dealing effectively with issues
such as water quantity, quality, economic development, and hydroelectric power.
 
Local conflict, internal migration
But at the local level relations are often more fraught. Tension over the allocation of water resources is far more prevalent
within countries’ own borders. Increasing agricultural production by increasing water harvesting, for example, may leave
less water for downstream users.
 
In Darfur, access to water and land has been a major factor in a conflict between black farmers and Arab nomads. Drought
and desertification in North Darfur led the Arab nomads to move into South Darfur, where they came into conflict with
black African farmers.
 
In China, the government was criticized by local officials in north-western provinces for diverting water from these regions
to Beijing to flush out the city’s polluted rivers and lakes in time for the Olympics. This threatened the lives of millions of
peasant farmers, they argued. The average annual per capita water supply in China is 348 cubic meters, well below the
United Nations definition of “water shortage,” which is anything below 1,000 cubic meters. Beijing’s supply is only 235
cubic meters.
 
Despite these tensions, there is ample evidence that if water, and therefore food, is scarce, people are less likely to fight
for it than pack up and go looking for it somewhere else. Environmental refugees already number some 25 million,
according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). And UNESCO expects that between 1997 and 2020, some
60 million people will move from desertified areas in Sub-Saharan Africa towards Northern Africa and Europe.
 
Even so, this south-north migration is nothing, says Zimmer, compared to internal migrations within Africa itself. “The
Ivory Coast has almost tripled its population due to migration in the last 20-30 years, and that has caused a lot of
problems,” he says.
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 Climate Costs: Water Supply
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Page 12

 Climate Adaptation Case Study: Australia Feels the Heat

Most of these internal refugees settle in bloated megacities, a trend that is a bigger threat than any other linked to scarce
water resources, says Zimmer. Trapped in a deteriorating environment without access to fresh water and plagued by rising
food prices, refugees and locals alike may be prone to poverty, disease, and unrest.
 
Mexico’s “tortilla riots” in 2007, triggered by higher food prices, resulted in violence and political upheaval. “The crisis is a
food crisis, but that is, of course, very much linked to water because food is the first consumer of water,” Zimmer says.
Tensions related to water, it seems, are inevitable. History shows that cooperation between water rivals is the only way to
overcome these tensions for water is too precious a commodity to fight over.