Water, Africa, Conflict?
This blog series has examined the potential for conflict over the Cubango-Okavango River Basin, between Angola, Namibia and Botswana. Water is “ blue gold” (Treszkai 2018, 11 ) meaning that competition over the increasingly scarce resource has the potential to lead to conflict. Over 6 blog posts, I have detailed potential causes of water-related conflict, examined a case study in the Basin, and outlined the legislation put in place to manage the Cubango-Okavango. Lastly, I looked ahead to climate change threats for the basin. All of this was to examine the question: Will there be conflict over water in Africa? Various answers to this question exist. There is a belief that diminishing water resources will trigger serious conflict ( Rosegrant 1997 ; Smith and Al-Rawahy 1990 ; Gleick 1993; Ohlsson 1995; Homer-Dixon and Percival 1996 ). ‘Water wars’ ideology assumes that communities and governments will have little choice but to use conflict as a response to resource competition.