In focus: The geopolitics of water – DW – 04/21/2022

Symbolbild | Wasseroberfläche

Whether it's a dispute over dams, polluted water from the extraction of raw materials or from industry and agriculture - the lack of water and the handling of this vital resource is increasingly in the spotlight in the age of the climate crisis.

Image: Yang Zheng/Imaginechina/picture alliance

Sharing cross-border water resources: Cooperation or conflict?

Water and power: The politics of dams

Around the world, megadams can boost economic growth and serve as a symbol of status and power. But what happens to communities downstream?

Image: GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images

GERD: A show of pride

At 145 meters high and almost 2 kilometers long, the 5GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is set to double the country's electricity generation. Without agreements from downstream countries, GERD was refused funding from the World Bank, but crowdfunding the $4.8bn-project through private donations and government bonds has made it a still-greater source of national pride for many Ethiopians.

Image: Gioia Forster/dpa/picture alliance

Life on the Nile

Egypt and Sudan fear the consequences of GERD. With it, Ethiopia will have control of the waters they depend on to keep Nile Delta farmland flourishing. As a hydropower project, water should keep flowing, but its neighbors aren't convinced by Ethiopia's assurances that it won't use the dam to divert waters to irrigate its own land, particularly as climate change threatens to make water scarcer.

Image: Joerg Boethling/imago images

Mekong megadams

Since the 1990s, China has built 11 giant dams on the Mekong River, which help make the country the world’s biggest producer of hydropower — its second biggest source of electricity after coal. But with Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia all dependent on the Mekong, too, this construction spree has caused consternation downstream.

Image: Yang Zheng/Imaginechina/picture alliance

Drought in Cambodia

Downriver, the Mekong Delta has suffered as China's dams change the timing and flow of its waters. Droughts have become more frequent and fish stocks have suffered, with fishing and farming communities in Thailand and Cambodia particularly hard-hit, even as satellite data has shown above-average snowmelt and rainfall adding to Chinese stretches of the river.

Image: Heng Sinith/AP/picture alliance

China's global hydropower reach

China is also investing in hundreds of hydropower projects abroad, from Laos to Portugal, Kazakhstan to Argentina, and across Africa — including the Souapiti dam in Guinea. Previously, these colossal infrastructure projects were often financed by the World Bank, but China is increasingly taking over a major funder, and doesn't require agreements from countries sharing the same river basins.

Image: Sadak Souici/Le Pictorium/imago images

Displaced by the dam

The Souapiti dam in Guinea, financed by China International Water and Electric Corporation, will provide 450MW of power in a country where only a minority have access to a reliable electricity supply. But to create its giant reservoir, flooding 253 square kilometers of land, some 16,000 people from more than 100 villages have been displaced, according to Human Rights Watch.

Image: CELLOU BINANI/AFP

Bridging the border?

The Itaipu dam on the Paraná River between Brazil and Paraguay flooded huge tracts of forest well as one of the world's most impressive waterfalls, and displaced 65,000 people. It also caused tensions between the two countries, which signed an agreement to work together on the jointly owned hydropower project in 1973. But with the bulk of the power going to Brazil, the dam remains controversial.

Image: Fotoember/imago images

Daming the Colorado

The Mexico-US border might conjure images of migration and Trump's dream of building a wall to divide the two countries. But as well as tensions over people heading north, there have been worries over the Colorado River’s flow in the opposite direction. By the time the river reaches Mexico, it has passed through seven US states and numerous dams that divert its waters to irrigate US crops.

Image: Elliot Spagat/AP/picture alliance

Watering the Mexicali Valley

But the two countries have been working together to use the Morelos Dam on their shared border to water the Mexicali Valley, with a "pulse" system mimicking the river's natural flow into the Colorado Delta. Water politics expert Scott Moore says it shows "cooperation between the US and Mexico, but also between environmental groups, farmers, irrigation districts and ecological management."

Image: GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images

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