As droughts expand and water supplies shrivel, is a world water war inevitable?

If your neighbor had plenty of water but you hadn’t enough to keep your family, your livestock and your crops alive, would you fight for it? Would you go to war? Lots of people – from multi-degreed behavioral psychologists to barroom philosophers – believe you would. To those whose wells are dry, it doesn’t matter whether the water shortage is caused by climate change or not. Politicians and government leaders can forever squabble about the cause, but those who are thirsty want water. Environmentalists in Europe claim the credit for first coining the phrase “World Water War” in the late 90s. But for almost half a century, the U.S. military has been planning for conflicts spawned by an acute shortage of water for drinking and farming. A world water war is no longer a question of if, but rather when, explains a Marine colonel who studied the potential for H2O-triggered battles at the U.S. Army War College. According to water experts at the United Nations, more than 45 percent of the world’s populations – more than 3 billion people – are already in need of more clean water. They cite research from The World Bank that shows that more than 80 countries now have water shortages that threaten their health and economies...coldtruth