The global challenge for securing access to clean water persists for about two billion people and its demand keeps rising. Beyond threatening our basic individual human needs, this scarcity also poses a risk to our collective prosperity and peace.
Today, March 22, 2024, is the 31st World Water Day, with the theme, “Leveraging water for peace”. Under the ‘World Water Assessment Programme’, UNESCO led the development of the 2024 edition of the flagship United Nations World Water Development Report, “Water for Prosperity and Peace” as a part of UN Water (an interagency coordination mechanism on water and sanitation of 35 UN entities along with 48 other international partners).
Throughout history, water has been a pivotal resource for some of the greatest civilisations such as those that arose around the Indus, the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. But it is also true that in these civilisations, conflicts arose on account of this resource, like the well documented tensions between the Mesopotamian cities of Lagash and Umma. This conflict, one of the oldest known wars in human history, centered around a fertile piece of land and water resources. Notably, this historical episode also yielded what is considered the world’s first peace treaty, the Treaty of Mesilim, recognised as one of humanity’s oldest legal documents.
