Author: Gauri Bansal
In May 2024, Delhi faced an umusual contradiction. As temperatures approached 50’C, parts of
the capital struggled with water shortages and residents depended on tankers for supply. A few months later, Nepal experienced the opposite problem. Between 26 and 28 September 2024, intense rainfall triggered floods and landslides that killed 224 people, injured 158 andleft 24missing. These events may appear unrelated, but together they reveal ai important reality: water insecurity does not simply mean having too little water. It can also mean having too much water at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or without the infrastructure needed to manage it.
This raises a larger question: could water become the next strategic resource?
oil shaped much of twentieth-century geopolitics because it powered transport, industry and
economic growth. Water is different. It is not simply another input into the economy; it is
neccssary for life itself. Agriculture, energy production, public health and ecosystems all depend on it. For this reason, water may become an even more fundamental strategic concern in the twenty-first century.
Climate change makes the problem more complicated. The IPCC reports that climate change is
intensifying the global water cycle and affecting physical water security. Around half of the world’s population already experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. At the same time, dlimate change is inereasing risks associated with heavy rainfall and flooding.
The important point is that scarcity and abundance are not opposites when it comes to water
security. A city can receive heavy rainfall and still experience water shortages later. Urbanisation helps explain this contradiction. Roads, buildings and otherimpemmeable surfaces reduce the ability of land to absorb rainfall. More water therefore becomes rapid runoff instead of
replenishing groundwater. The result can be flooding during intense rainfall followed by shortages
when stored wateris needed. The IPCC identifies urbanisation, changing rainfall patterns and
inadequate infrastructure as important contributors to urban waterinsecurity
The Himalayas provide another example of the diffieulty of managing water extremes.In
August 2025, a flash flood and landslide struck Dharali in Uttarakhand after heary rainfall, killing people and leaving dozens missing. Such events should not antomatically be attributed to a single cause.Mountain geography, rainfallintensity, infrastructure and human development can interact in complicated ways.The broader lesson is that water security also depends on whether
development respects the physical environment in which it takes place.
The gcopolitical dimension becomes clearer when rivers cross national borders. The Nile
commects Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. The Indus conmects India and Pakistan. The Brahmaputra originates in China before flowing through India and Bangladesh. In each case, deeisions made upstream can affect people downstream. This creates a basic imbalance: an upstream country may have greater physical control over the river, while downstream countries may depend heavily on its continued flow.
The scale of this issue is considerable. According to UN-Water, 153 UN Member States depend
on water that flows from or into another country, while transboumndary rivers account for around 60 percent of global freshwater flows. Yet cooperation remains incomplete. The 2024 UN-Water assessment found that a significant share of transboundary basin areas is still not covered by operational cooperation arrangements
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam illuıstrates how diffieult these relationships can become.
Ethiopia sees the dam as an important source of hydropower and development, while Egypt and Sudan are concemed about how the filing and operation of the dam could affect downstream water availability. The disagreement is therefore not simply about a dam. It reflects a wider
tension betweeni development needs upstream and water security downstream.
The Brahmaputra presents a similar strategic dilemma. China, India and Bangladesh all have
interests in the river, but their positions are not identical. The river is economically and socially important to communities across the basin, while its upstream-dowmstream geography gives diferent countries different forms of intluence. Competition over water does not automatically mean war, but it can make existing political tensions more diffieult to manage.
This is why it is misleading to desoribe future water politics simply as a coming era of “water
wars.”Water stress is more likely to act as a threat multiplier. It can worsen food insecurity,
increase pressure on livelihoods, contribute to migration and deepen existing political or economic
tensions. Whether those pressures eventually produce conflict depends on wider political circumstances and, importantly, on the institutions available to manage disagreements.
Water can also create incentives for cooperation. Countries sharing rivers have practical
reasons to exchange information about rainfall, river levels, pollution and dam operations.
Cooperation becomes partieularly valuable when uncertainty increases because of climate change.Bangladesh’s accession to the UN Water Convention in June 2025 is a recent example. It became the first South Asian country to jointhe convention, strengthening the intermational framework available for mamaging shared water resources.
There is also a domestic side to water security. A country cannot be considered truly water-
secure if reliable access is available mainly to people whio can afford private storage or alternative supplies.During shortages, poorer households can face greater difficulties accessing water, while during floods they may also be more exposed to inadequate infrastructure. Water security
therefore involves not only the quantity of water available but also its accssibility, quality and governance. The IPCC simnilarly treats water security as a broader concept than physical scarcity alone.
The response, therefore, camnot be limited to finding new sources of water. Governments need to improve groundwater recharge, protect wetlands, reuse wastewater, strengthen urban drainage and storage, and make water infrastructure more resilient. Across borders, countries need better data-sharing systems and functioning agreements for shared rivers and aquifers. Local
commumities also need a meaningful role because water management ultimately affects everyday life. Wateris unlikely to replace oil in exactly the same way that oil shaped twentieth-century
geopolitics.It is too different a resource, and its politics are shaped by geography, climate,
agrieulure and govermance. Yet water could become one of the defining strategic issues of this century.
The central challenge will not simply be who controls water. It will be whether countries can
manage a resource that ignores political borders. Water can create competition because countries need it, but that same dependence can encourage cooperation. The future of water geopolitics may therefore be defined not by “water wars” alone, but by the struggle to tumn a shared vulnerability into a reason for countries to work together.
