Water is the New Gold.

As climate change begins to ravage communities worldwide, water has become the new gold. The regions that are likely to become drier because of climate change include Central Asia and northern Africa. Up to 250 million people in Africa could suffer extra stress on water supplies by 2020, disruptions may threaten farming or fresh water supplies from Africa to the Middle East.

Water now plays a central role in debates on food security, peace, climate change and recovery from the financial crisis.  And efforts to combat global warming will themselves put more strains on water because of rival economic demands — such as for irrigation, biofuels or hydropower. Now efforts to manage water supplies are started by counting how much water goes into products — from beef to coffee.

One study showed that it took 15,000 litres to produce a pair of blue jeans.  Making industries aware of water use could help shift to conservation. The world might reach a “millennium goal” of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015, but it is failing in a related target of improving sanitation. About 2.8 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.

And yet there are also opportunities for resolving communal conflicts through water cooperation, as it has an impact on all parts of our life as a society, on natural systems, habitats. The potential for conflicts, such as that seen in Darfur in Sudan, where water has been a contributing factor to conflict can be converted into cooperation, if negotiators see it as the starting point for peaceful agreements. Since no community can survive without water.

Water had often proven a route for cooperation. India and Pakistan have worked to manage the Indus River despite border conflicts and Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have cooperated in the Mekong River Commission.

More trans-boundary development and peace-building projects should share the lessons learned along shared waterways, such as the Nile which runs from Egypt down to Sudan, passing diverse peoples of with different lifestyles and faiths but all connected by the golden thread of water.

Photo Credit: The waters of River Nzoia flow over some rocks in Lugari District on the way to Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake.