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Oil and Water: The Contrasting Anatomies of Resource Conflicts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jan Selby
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Abstract

It is often said that while many of the twentieth century's wars were fought over oil, those of the twenty-first will be fought over water. This paper seeks to counter this argument, as well as the assumption implicit in it that the two resources engender, or will engender, broadly similar types of conflict. Specifically it argues 1) that within the context of the contemporary global capitalism, oil and water are marked by starkly divergent political economies; 2) that the two resources thus have starkly contrasting impacts upon patterns of state formation; 3) that these factors together militate against the development of violent international water conflicts; and 4) that notwithstanding the above, water is already a significant cause of local violence in many parts of the global South.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , 2005 , pp. 200 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005.

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References

1 Cited in Gibbs, David, ‘Washington's New Interventionism: US Hegemony and Inter-Imperialist Rivalries’, Monthly Review, 53: 4 (2001).Google Scholar

2 On the notion of ‘securitization’ see especially Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 1998.

3 Gordon Young, James Dooge and John Rodda, Global Water Resource Issues, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 20; Starr, Joyce, ‘Water Wars’, Foreign Policy, 82 (1991), p. 19.Google Scholar

4 Joyce Starr and Daniel Stoll (eds), The Politics of Scarcity: Water in the Middle East, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1988, p. ix.

5 Joyce Starr, Covenant Over Middle East Waters: Key to World Survival, New York, H. Holt, 1995.

6 John Bulloch and Adel Darwish, Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, London, Victor Gollancz, 1993, p. 198; A. Caelleigh, ‘Middle East Water’, in Joyce Starr (ed.), A Shared Destiny: Near East Regional Development and Cooperation, New York, Praeger, 1983, p. 122.

7 Financial Times, 7 August 1995, as quoted in Mustafa Dolatyar and Tim Gray, Water Politics in the Middle East: A Context for Conflict of Co-operation, London, Macmillan, 2000, pp. 8, 22.

8 Butts, Kent, ‘The Strategic Importance of Water’, Parameters: US Army College Quarterly, 27: 1 (1997), p. 65.Google Scholar

9 Nachmani, Amikam, ‘Water Jitters in the Middle East’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 20: 1 (1997), p. 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Jim Yardley, New York Times, 16 April 2001, p. A1.

11 Paul Simon, ‘In an Empty Cup, a Threat to Peace’, New York Times, 14 August 2001, p. A17.

12 For a recent example and summary of such critiques see Dolatyar, Mustafa and Gray, Tim, ‘The Politics of Scarcity in the Middle East’, Environmental Politics, 9: 3 (2000), pp. 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As with many other such rebuttals of water wars discourse, Dolatyar and Gray's argument is based not only (and quite reasonably) on historical counter-claims, but also (and much less defensibly) on ahistorical assumptions about the rationality of state action vis-à-vis water, and the necessarily cooperation – rather than conflict-inducing character of water scarcities. For discussion, see Jan Selby, Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East: The Other Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, London, I. B. Tauris, 2003, ch. 2.

13 Nurit Kliot, Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East, London, Routledge, 1994, p. 12.

14 -Independent on Sunday, 6 May 1990, as quoted in Anderson, Ewan, ‘The Political and Strategic Significance of Water’, Outlook on Agriculture, 21: 4 (1992), p. 250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Figures for January 2003, calculated from Oil and Gas Journal, 100: 52 (2002), reproduced by the Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov).

16 Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil: The Industry, The State System and the World Economy, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991.

17 Anthony Sampson, The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Made, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1975, p. 21.

18 ‘Monopoly capitalism’ is a term associated above all with Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1966, but see also in particular Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

19 John Blair, The Control of Oil, London, Macmillan, 1976, p. 49.

20 On 1 May Exxon Mobil reported quarterly corporate profits of US$7 billion, the biggest such sum in history (Guardian, 3 May 2003). With rising oil prices, profits again approached record levels during 2004. During the second quarter of 2004, for instance, Exxon Mobil recorded profits of US$5.8 billion.

21 Igor Shiklomanov, ‘World Fresh Water Resources’, in Peter Gleick (ed.), Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 20–1.

22 Peter Beaumont, ‘Conflict, Coexistence, and Cooperation: A Study of Water Use in the Jordan Basin’, in Hussein Amery and Aaron Wolf, Water and Peace in the Middle East: A Geography of Peace, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000, p. 33.

23 Shiklomanov, ‘World Fresh Water Resources’, p. 13. The latter figure is calculated from Oil and Gas Journal's January 2003 estimate of known oil reserves of 1,212.881 billion barrels of crude (reproduced by the Energy Information Administration, www.eia.doe.gov). Thanks for Alex Hilliam for helping me with this.

24 Malin Falkenmark and Jan Lundqvist, ‘Looming Water Crisis: New Approaches are Inevitable’, in Leif Ohlsson (ed.), Hydropolitics: Conflicts over Water as a Development Constraint, London, Zed Books, 1995, p. 183; Falkenmark, Malin, ‘Fresh Water: Time for a Modified Approach’, Ambio, 15: 4 (1986), p. 192 Google Scholar; Worldwatch Institute, ‘Populations Outrunning Water Supply’, press release 23 September 1999; Starr, ‘Water Wars’, p. 17; and Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water, London, Earthscan, 2002, p. xiv.

25 David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Oxford, Blackwell, 1996, p. 147.

26 J. Anthony Jones, Global Hydrology: Processes, Resources and Environment, Harlow, Longman, 1997, p. 320.

27 J. A. Allan, The Middle East Water Question: Hydropolitics and the Global Economy, London, I. B. Tauris, 2000. See also J. A. Allan's article, ‘Water in the Environment/Socio-Economic Development Discourse: Sustainability, Changing Management Paradigms and Policy Responses in a Global System’, above.

28 Allan calculates that the total water and food production needs of the present populations of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza are 7.5 billion cubic metres per year, which, if correct, would suggest that two-thirds of their total water needs are imported from abroad in barely noticed virtual form; J. A. Allan, ‘Water in the Middle East and in Israel-Palestine: Some Local and Global Resource Issues’, in Marwan Haddad and Eran Feitelson, Joint Management of Shared Aquifers: The Second Workshop, Jerusalem, Palestine Consultancy Group and Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, 1997, pp. 31–44.

29 Vivendi Environment's water-related revenue increased from $5 billion in 1990 to $12 billion in 2002: see ‘Vivendi's Empire Building’, Corporate Watch News, 16 May 2003, at corporatewatch.org.uk/news/vivendi.htm. RWE's corresponding water revenues were €2.85 billion. Indicative of the profitability of the water sector, however, RWE's water division contributed more than 20 per cent of group profits, even though it was responsible for only 6.1 per cent of revenues: see ‘RWE: Positive News but is there a Gathering Storm?’, Global Water Intelligence, 4: 4 (2003)Google Scholar, available at www.globalwaterintel.com/.

30 Barlow and Clarke, Blue Gold, pp. 104–5.

31 Shawn Tully, ‘Water, Water Everywhere’, Fortune, 15 May 2000.

32 See for example ‘Vivendi's Empire Building’, Corporate Watch News.

33 For details of this latter case see Jim Shutz, Globalization and the War for Water in Bolivia, Cochabamba, Democracy Center, 2000; and for a very different analysis, Geraldine Dalton, Private Sector Finance for Water Infrastructure: What Does Cochabamba Tell Us About Using This Instrument?, SOAS Water Issues Group, Occasional Paper 37, 2001.

34 Such practices are commonplace in water-short areas of the periphery. For discussion of such ‘arts of getting by’ within the West Bank, see Selby, Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East, ch. 8.

35 On the former see Marian Kent, Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil, 1900–1920, London, Macmillan, 1976.

36 M. E. Yapp, The Near East Since the First World War, London, Longman, 1991, p. 76.

37 Personal communication with Gareth Stansfield, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, 30 May 2003. See his Iraqi Kurdistan: Political Development and Emergent Democracy, London, Routledge Curzon, 2003.

38 On rentier states see especially Giacomo Luciani (ed.), The Arab State, London, Routledge, 1990.

39 Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil, ch. 4.

40 Ibid., p. 161.

41 US Defence Secretary Alexander Haig, as quoted in Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the US–Israeli Covert Relationship, New York, HarperCollins, 1991, p. 328.

42 Anthony Cordesman, ‘The US and the Middle East: Energy Dependence, Demographics, and the Myth of Oil Wealth’, Center for Strategic and international Studies, 26 December 2002, at www.csis.org/burke/mees/us_mideast_energy_depend.pdf; my italics.

43 As Alex Callinicos depicts the international dimension of New Labour's ‘Third Way’ project; see his Against the Third Way: An Anti-Capitalist Critique, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001, ch. 3.

44 See for instance Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1957; and J. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1991.

45 It is often asserted that water is of peculiarly ideological importance to the Israeli state and society; see for instance Itzhak Galnoor, ‘Water Policymaking in Israel’, in Hillel Shuval (ed.), Water Quality Management Under Conditions of Scarcity: Israel as a Case Study, New York, Academic Press, 1980, pp. 287–314; and Alwyn Rouyer, Turning Water into Politics: The Water Issue in the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict, London, Macmillan, 2000, ch. 3. Following Gershon Shafir's Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, I prefer to think of this as the product of the specific pattern of Israeli state formation; see Selby, Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East, ch. 2.

46 John Waterbury, The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2002.

47 A useful summary account is provided by Avi Shlaim, ‘The Middle East: The Origins of the Arab–Israeli Wars’, in Ngaire Woods (ed.), Explaining International Relations Since 1945, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 219–40.

48 Interview, 5 April 1998.

49 Sandra Postel and Aaron Wolf, ‘Dehydrating Conflict’, Foreign Policy (September/October 2001), p. 61.

50 See Selby, Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East, ch. 7; and also Julie Trottier, Hydropolitics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, PASSIA, 1999, ch. 2.

51 ‘Thirst for Water and Development Leads to Conflict in Yemen’, Choices: The Human Development Magazine, UNDP, March 2003.

52 Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, London, Pluto, 2002, p. 9.

53 Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development in India, London, Zed Books, 1988, p. 82.

54 On Ghana see, for instance, Christian Aid, Master or Servant: How Global Trade Can Work for the Benefit of Poor People, London, Christian Aid, 2001; and Integrated Social Development Centre, Water Privatisation in Ghana: An Analysis of Government and World Bank Policies, Accra, ISDC, 2001. On South Africa see for instance Glenda Daniels, ‘Water Privatisation Test Case “A Total Debacle” ’, Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, 16 November 2001. On Argentina, see Barlow and Clarke, Blue Gold, pp. 101–4. For more general discussion see ibid., and also Shiva, Water Wars.

55 According to the World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making, Report of the World Commission on Dams, London, Earthscan, 2000, p. 104, an estimated 40–80 million people globally have been displaced by dam projects.

56 See especially Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West, New York, Pantheon, 1985.

57 Ibid.

58 Selby, Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East, ch. 7; Trottier, Hydropolitics, ch. 2.

59 Stephen Pelletiere, ‘A War Crime or an Act of War?’, New York Times, 31 January 2003, p. A29. Thanks to Julian Saurin for drawing this piece to my attention.

60 Bulloch and Darwish, Water Wars, p. 161.

61 Thomas Homer-Dixon, ‘The Myth of Global Water Wars’, Toronto Globe and Mail, 9 November 1995.