CHRONICLES publishes the core part of the article by our collaborator Bernardo Quagliotti de Bellis, which the University of Valencia published in its magazine “Constrastes” (No. 34) dedicated to Mediterranean river cultures, a topic that was raised at the recent Ibero-American Summit by the President of the Spanish Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
The water problem is presented as the priority point on the social and economic agenda of the 21st century. My analysis starts from a geopolitical vision, trying to focus, briefly, on the most prominent topics of problems related to water, one of the most important factors in nature that allowed the sustainable growth of human groups that, in a secular process of migrations in search of better conditions for life and development, they were shaping the current world. Through the history of water, both surface and that of the seas and oceans, it is possible to understand how the different civilizations reached the development of more advanced water cultures. The hydrological engineer Fernández Jáuregui -expert from the United Nations- states on the subject:"Access to water has become, since the most remote antiquity, a source of power or the block of discord that has caused great conflicts."
In the opinion of the World Water Commission, there are three possible crisis scenarios:
a) First scenario: world development will be positive during the 2005-2015 period, as the demand for water will increase with population growth; but at the end of that period, the water system will become increasingly vulnerable due to the increase in scarcity, contamination with its attendant problems, issues that are not resolved.
b) Second scenario: The economic factor and the diffusion and application of technologies, which will help to provide solutions to health and food security problems, among others, become important.
c) Third scenario: It will be focused on the rescue of human values, the strengthening of international cooperation - giving great emphasis to education related to water - and an increase in solidarity with changes in behavior and lifestyles in the peoples of the planet.
Geopolitical and neoeconomic appreciation
Asia has 60% of the world population and only 36% of the water resource. Europe has 13% of the population and 8% of the water resource. In Africa, 13% of the world population resides and has 36% of the water resource. The Americas (North-Central-South) with 14% of the world population, enjoy 41% of the resource in question. Of this figure, 26% belongs to South America.
In the “World Summit Against Hunger” (Rome / 2001), the very serious shortage of drinking water suffered by 1.5 billion people was highlighted, which could affect double that amount in 2005, for which reason the NGOs present in This forum requested that access to water resources be considered as a common good of humanity. Unfortunately, this point was not approved, as well as the right of all humans to food, since both were rejected by the United States, for fear of hypothetical legal actions.
Another similar event occurred at the “World Water Forum” held in The Hague, when the power nations, in communion with the World Bank and the large companies in the water market (Nestlé, Danone and the Biwater, Thames Water districts), Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux, Vivendi, Saur Bouygues, among others - opposed access to water being inscribed in the "Final Declaration" as a human right.
The Italian Ricardo Petrella -author of the "Water Manifesto" in a strong and fair position, argued in that forum for a world water contract based on a set of basic principles:
1) Water is a source of life and as such is a common good: it does not belong to countries but to the whole of planetary society.
2) Access to water is a right not subject to any discussion.
3) The responsibility for access is collective. It is the public communities that must be managed, because the so-called "water stress" affects not only the surface aquifer reserves, but also its regulatory reserves, the underground ones, which store almost all of the fresh water in a liquid state.
Water as a strategic factor
For large companies in industrialized countries, the control of geopolitical spaces in any part of the planet where large reserves of strategic resources such as fresh water are found (in South America the Guaraní aquifer, the Raigón, the Amazon, the Argentine Patagonia, the fluvial confluence of the so-called Triple Border, Lake Titicaca, among the main sources, are presented as, areas of high economic and geopolitical value because - and I reiterate it - the so-called "freshwater tsars" have set their objective in controlling, exploit and manage this resource as other “tsars” have done in the oil and natural gas areas, which in many cases are found in extensive areas that, in turn, keep large water reserves, as is the case in the Eastern territories Near.
Therefore, the dreaded shortage of fresh water is presented today as a strategic issue, just as in certain historical periods it was used as a weapon of confrontation. I remember two clear examples in this regard: around 2500 BC, the Sumerian states of Lagash and Umma had a long dispute over the control and use of water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. In the 16th century Machiavelli and the illustrious Leonardo da Vinci encouraged the geopolitical decision to divert the Arno river to leave the city of Pisa with which Florence was at war shortage.
Closer to our time, Israel intended to divert the waters of the Jordan - among others, the reason for the Arab-Israeli conflict - although such an attitude did not, fortunately, reach serious consequences. In South America, Chile and Bolivia diplomatically confronted the waters of the Laucsa River to irrigate part of the Atacama desert. Ecuador and Peru in their border zone by the Cenepa river. In the Plata basin, a long-held controversy took place regarding the international rivers bordering the next course as a result of the construction of the Itaipú dam and the diversion of tributaries of the Alto Paranmá (Tieté river) with the purpose navigation, field irrigation and dam construction by Brazil.
Such situations cause a geopolitical and neo-economic revaluation of certain areas of the planet that is also accompanied in terms of their cultural, social and political dimensions, mainly food. The future is uncertain.
The “Atlas of International Agreements on drinking water”, prepared by the United Nations, identifies 18 points of conflict between 158 river basins of the 261 that are known in the world.
