[00:00:22] Bridget Scanlon: I would like to welcome David Michel to the Water Resources Podcast. David is a senior fellow for water security with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and his work is within the Global Food and Water Security Program at CSIS. And before joining CSIS, he was a senior researcher with the Environment of Peace in 2022 Initiative at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Prior to that, transboundary water department with Stockholm International Water Institute to promote cooperative resources governance in major basins across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Terrific background and I really appreciate your taking the time today, David.
[00:01:10] David Michel: Great to be here. Bridget. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:12] Bridget Scanlon: And today we're going to focus discussions on water and conflict and various aspects of that. And some of that will be David will be presenting as a podcast called Hidden Depths Podcast, as part of his CSIS work.
But I guess before we start talking about the Hidden Depths work and the different episodes and stuff, maybe you can talk a little bit about CSIS, and give the listeners some background on what the organization is, and what they do and things like that.
[00:01:42] David Michel: Sure. So the Center for Strategic International Studies, CSIS, was founded in 1962. It's a bipartisan or nonpartisan, nonprofit policy research organization, dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world's greatest international and foreign policy challenges. The Center has a staff of over 250 full-time staff and a large network of affiliated scholars.
We have over 40 different programs and projects, organized in four major departments around defense and security issues, economics and technology geopolitics and foreign policy, as well as global development. We have major programs in all key regions of the world, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, as country specific programs and projects. And also, topic specific programs on issues such as missile defense, American leadership, American innovation, the global water and food security program, with which I work. And we are funded about equally from the US government and other governments, corporate grants, and foundations.
As well as individual contributions. So we are a bipartisan or nonpartisan institution, dedicated to examining the key international and foreign policy issues of the day.
[00:03:03] Bridget Scanlon: That's really fascinating and it's nice that you have that range of support. And also, are your staff mostly from the global north? Or do you have a large representation in the global south, or are they mostly, you network more with the global south?
[00:03:18] David Michel: We're based in Washington DC. We don't have any offices abroad, but we do partner with many institutions and researchers abroad in our affiliate network. Our home staff is international. We do have, oh, I'd say more than a dozen, 20 different nationalities, represented on the staff, but for the most part from the global North.
But, across the institution, folks from all around the world.
[00:03:45] Bridget Scanlon: And a lot of interaction between the US government and European Union, and other governments. Would you say that's?
[00:03:52] David Michel: It depends on the program area. So certainly the program on Europe and Russia, for example, has close connections, with European institutions. But then as you can imagine, the respective, other area program such as Latin America or Africa have close collaborations and partnerships, with institutions and individuals in their respective regions.
And then the global issue programs such as global food and water security. We cooperate, and have projects with the US government, but also UN institutions, such as the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. And also with individual countries, Denmark for example, depending on the area of research.
[00:04:34] Bridget Scanlon: And we are going to talk some about this Hidden Depths podcast. And my husband was at the library the other day and one of the books he saw was Everybody has a Podcast. I think he was trying to make fun of me.
But, this podcast, you will be airing soon and the episodes cover water and conflict issues. And you described, you've got a total of six episodes. And I think we'll start talking about the first one, which was the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, and where you spoke with Peter Gleick and some other people. And we had Peter on the podcast earlier, so maybe we will start talking about this episode of the thing on the water issues related to the Ukraine.
[00:05:15] David Michel: Sure. Well, I am one of the people included in now Everybody has a Podcast, that I've been working on water security and natural resource management issues, for more than 20 years. And this is the first podcast that I've produced. And, part of our reason for taking up this new media is that we wanted to be able to reach new audiences.
To reach our existing audiences in new ways and also to tell the story of water conflict challenges and, water cooperation opportunities in a new format that it, like you and I are doing right now, to engage in discussion. To bring in different experts and different viewpoints.
So the Hidden Depth podcast is six episodes, you were saying. We talked to more than a dozen different experts, academics, policy analysts, journalists, and dig into different elements of water cooperation challenges and, I'm sorry, water conflict challenges and water cooperation opportunities.
The first episode, as you mentioned, look at the weaponization of water resources, that when we talk about water security issues and water conflict issues, it's important maybe to first define what we mean, when we're examining water security, water conflict. Water managers, international organizations like the United Nations, define water security as the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water, in order to sustain livelihoods, ensure our human wellbeing and socioeconomic development, to provide protection against, waterborne pollution, water related disasters, and to preserve ecosystems and ecosystem services all in climate or an atmosphere of political, stability and peace.
So you could say that there are four pillars to water security. Availability, access, water quality, and then governance, governance or management institutions. But all of these aspects of water security, they are under increasing pressure from environmental strains, growing demands, rapid urbanization around the world, unsustainable management practices.
So the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, projects that global water withdrawals will climb 55% by the year 2050 over the year 2000 levels. But already many major river basins around the world, groundwater aquifers, reached or surpassed the limits of their renewable resources.
So one recent global assessment found that some two to 3 billion people today live in regions of the world where total net water withdrawals already outstrip the locally available renewable water supplies for up to half the year and for half a billion people around the world net demand already outpaces supply all year round.
So there are rising pressures on global water resources, and many observers look at these projections, look at these numbers, and are concerned that where countries, communities share the same water resources, these rising pressures on those shared supplies could give way to increasing competition or tensions around decision making, access to availability of those water resources.
And this could feed into water related conflicts. And for CSIS and for the Hidden Depths podcast, when we talk about water conflicts, what we mean is armed conflict or physical violence involving deaths, or injuries, or significant material damage that's related to water systems, or water resources.
And this could include conflicts where there are significant threats of violence such as armed mobilization or shows of force. And, let's give a couple of examples of what we mean when we, when we raise this specter of water conflict.
In recent years, there have been demonstrations across western France where hundreds of people have been injured, clashing with police. Protesting irrigation schemes, irrigation infrastructure, building of reservoirs that they believe is directed towards serving industrial interests, industrial farming interests, and not to local farmers.
In Mexico, farmers have burned down buildings, taken local politicians hostage and seized control of a dam on the Rio Grande system, protesting water deliveries from that dam going to the United States under treaty obligations between the United States and Mexico. This whole southwest of the US and and northern Mexico has been suffering from droughts in recent years, and farmers in Mexico that seized control of this dam in opposition to sending water north to the United States.
And then there have been, even more serious, violent clashes across the Sahel region of Africa where farmers and herders, are coming to blows, often with multiple fatalities over access to shared water points. And in recent decades, the incidence of water conflict, the occurrence of violent incidents, has been rising sharply. So there's a, a think tank, a research institution in California called the Pacific Institute, with which CSIS cooperates that maintains a water conflict chronology where they track incidents, of violence, incidents of water conflict.
The earliest incidents go back to antiquity, to go back to 2,500 BC and, and clashes in Ancient Sumaria, but over 90% of the events that they have recorded have occurred in the 21st century. And the period that the second decade of the 21st century, that this period, 2012 to 2021 was already seen four times more conflict than the period 2000 to 2011.
Violent incidents in 2023, were 50% higher than in 2022. While in 2022, witness double the number of conflict incidents of the proceeding year in 2021. So water conflicts are rising and we're interested in investigating the drivers dynamics of these water conflicts. And using that information, that analysis to help find cooperative solutions to these issues.
[00:11:26] Bridget Scanlon: So we were going to talk about Ukraine.
[00:11:29] David Michel: Oh, sure. So Ukraine is an example of the weaponization of water or the usage of water as a tool of warfare, and the water conflict chronology. And our research, divides these water related conflicts into three categories. There's a category where water is itself weaponized, a category where water resources, water systems are victims of conflict. So I think of collateral damage to conflicts where, we see, for example, in in the Gaza conflict, but also in Russia, where combat the shelling of densely populated, urban areas destroys water treatment plants or water systems.
And then there's also a category where water resources, water supplies, water systems, and tensions around those water systems can contribute to catalyzing or generating conflict. And, the Ukraine is a case where we've seen both the victimization of water infrastructure, and the weaponization of water infrastructure. And prominent example of this weaponization of water supplies was the destruction by Russia of the Kakhovka Dam, in Ukraine back in June of 2023. The Kakhovka Dam was a large dam on the Dnipro River flowing through central Ukraine. The Dnipro River formed the front lines of the war at that point in time, and the Russians blew up the dam in order to flood areas downstream.
Both to flood possible landing zones where Ukrainian troops could have crossed the river, but also to deny hydropower to Ukraine. The Kakhovka dam was a hydropower facility and to sow confusion, and downgrade, degrade social cohesion in Ukraine by destroying this infrastructure, which it destroyed 50,000 buildings, flooded 620 odd square kilometers of land, cut off electricity to millions, cut off drinking water to 800,000 to a million people. So it was a tactic to challenge the Ukrainian military, and challenge Ukrainian society. And we've seen other similar examples around the world where military forces or non-state actors have destroyed water infrastructure, or taken control of water infrastructure to use it, in pursuit of their war aims.
So that dam and the associated reservoir, it's about half the size of Lake Mead, which is our largest reservoirs of maybe 18 to 20 cubic kilometers or similar million acre feet. And destroying that, then all that water went downstream. And, so it was about, I think it was about a 350 megawatt capacity hydropower plant. And so the reservoir or the destruction of the dam released about 20 billion, gallons of, of water. And in addition to destroying the hydropower facility, there were about 30 different irrigation schemes that also depended on water from that reservoir. Now, the total agricultural area of Ukraine before the war was a bit over 41 million hectares of agricultural land, only about 2.6 million hectares were irrigated. But irrigation schemes were particularly important to this region of Ukraine, a frontline region in the war, and to agricultural communities in that region. So in addition to the near term, the immediate damage of draining the reservoir, flooding territory, destruction of the hydropower facility, disruption of the electrical grid, there'll be significant damage to agricultural production in this part of Ukraine. And even after the end of the conflict, which we hope for someday, it will take years to rebuild this dam, and to reestablish those irrigation schemes. So the, the economic, the agricultural damage is lasting, in addition to the ecological damage of having drained this reservoir and flooded areas downstream with sediment, with contaminants from the release of these flood waters, et cetera.
[00:15:24] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, I think it may be ecologically, it may have been somewhat positive. I think their wetlands restablishing and stuff now that the reservoir is drained, but. So where does CSIS come in on this sort of situation then? You mentioned earlier on that you are, you look at the long term, 20 to 30 years out.
Do you help Ukraine or do you work with organizations that are trying to help with recovery, or do you just try to analyze the situation? Or what do you do in your work?
[00:15:56] David Michel: Sure. Well there a couple of different pieces to that Ukraine specific. One stream of work in the Global Food and Water Security program is to look at the possibilities for coordination, or integration of policies to support water and food security. So, a case like Ukraine where water infrastructure, water systems were vital to the the maintenance, the operation of agricultural production in irrigated areas. The post-conflict reconstruction of Ukraine, the revival of agricultural AgriFood systems in Ukraine, will be key to the rebuilding of the Ukrainian society.
So in the longer term, we will be looking at strategies and policies to resuscitate, to revive and strengthen Ukrainian agricultural production in the longer term. But we're also looking at issues like the demining of agricultural land in Ukraine that the conflict has led to the creation of large swaths of territory where you have minefields, unexploded ordinance.
And by the way, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the flooding that resulted swept minefields downstream. Typically when a military, when an army lays a minefield, they map quite explicitly where those mines are placed, but then when the flood sweeps over the minefield and carries this unexploded ordinance downstream, we lose track of, we don't know where these mines have gone, the dangers that they might represent. So we also work on issues of how do we meet that challenge of locating and, and handling these mines in this unexploded ordinance. Elsewhere around the world, much of our work focuses on these longer-term challenges.
These kind of strategic policy issues of building resilience in food and water systems to those pressures, those challenges of growing demands, and environmental pressures, extreme events, growing industrial pollution, et cetera. And there are too focusing on these linkages between agrifood systems and water resources.
If we think of natural disasters, water system, hydrological natural disasters, whether it be floods or droughts, agricultural production suffers about two thirds of the damages from these extreme events, these natural catastrophes, floods, and droughts. About two thirds of the damage from those events falls on agrifood systems.
How do we construct policies? How do we grapple with the challenges of building resilient systems in the face of those pressures?
[00:18:33] Bridget Scanlon: That's very interesting. So, Ukraine was a huge exporter of food. And so a lot of countries were reliant on importing food from Ukraine. So their own food security, I don't think was that impacted by the war, but their large, except in terms of economic development and their exports.
And I hadn't thought about the unexploded ordinances, but I had a colleague many years ago who was working with the US Army Corps here on using geophysics to find these unexploded ordinances. And I can't remember where he was working, but that's a very interesting trying to demine before you can cultivate again.
[00:19:13] David Michel: And that, that dynamic that you are mentioning of the relationship between a conflict in Ukraine that impacts agricultural production in Ukraine, but also other ramifications of the war, the closure of the ports on the Black Sea that transported agricultural exports from Ukraine to the rest of the world.
How that ramifies to food security in other countries. So that's one of the pathways. One of the mechanisms of water related conflict that we are interested in unpacking. And one of the pathways that's not always immediately evidenced. So if we think back to, for example, the food price crisis, the global food price crisis of 2007, 2008, there were a number of factors that played into that, including agricultural policies in the United States, in the European Union, fostering the growth of different agricultural products, maize, for example, for biofuels, placing, pressures on the global, trade in maize, in corn by, creating another source of demand, biofuels. There were also shortages, relative shortages in global reserve stocks of grains at the time. But there were also a series of recurrent droughts in major producer in major export nations, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Australia, Argentina, such that by some calculations, the droughts in Australia alone contributed around a fifth of the global price shock in wheat markets that then reverberated around the world. Drove a kind of a hoarding mentality where importers, fearing that prices could be even higher tomorrow, rushed to build up their stocks today leading to a global price spiral through wheat markets, through rice markets.
And as a follow-on of these price shocks, many countries that were not producer nations that were not hit by these droughts, that were not hit by these extreme water events, not hit by the water shocks, they were hit by the food price shocks leading to instability, political disorder, bread riots in dozens of countries around the world, and even contributing to the overthrow of the government in Haiti, and change in leadership in Mauritania.
Violent outbreaks in dozens of countries around the world. So these chains that can see water resource challenges, water resource shocks contribute to other elements of political instability disorder, and even violent conflict, can be quite complex.
[00:21:58] Bridget Scanlon: And it's never just one thing. That's fascinating. I hadn't realized that drought in Australia was part of the millennium drought that went from the late nineties through to 2009. So that was a very long-term drought. And then some of these other regions and then through food trade, global food trade, which helps, then they can be more vulnerable. But, if you have food storage, I really don't know much about it, but it seemed like we store water in reservoirs and managed aquifer recharge to get us by from wet to dry cycles and things like that. I really don't know how much countries store food, or we have a petroleum reserve here in the US and things like that.
I don’t know much at all about food storage and how long they can maintain it or then if they lose it.
[00:22:47] David Michel: That, that was food storage was another element of the equation. But so were the politics around food storage. So one of the pieces of the puzzle of this, the psychology of the food price shock, where I importer nation's fear that they need to build up their reserves today because, with droughts or with supply restrictions, the prices will be even higher tomorrow.
What we saw was exporter nations introducing barriers, introducing bans on export to keep those stocks at home in countries that already had reserve stocks, holding those reserve stocks rather than releasing them onto the market because of the same fears about the spiraling costs.
So it was when, in this case of the 2007, 2008 food price shocks, it was in part when Japan agreed to release parts of its reserve rice stocks that this influenced this new supply on the market helped reduce the pressures and diffuse the food price crisis at the time. But it's an example of how the political decisions, the political choices, can be as important a component of the conflict dynamics, as the shortages of the physical resource itself. That's one point that's borne out by the discussions that we had in our in depth podcast, and in our research is that, the water conflict dynamics, water security challenges, they often revolve around policy choices and decision making and access to decision making as much as they do around access to or availability of the physical resource itself. So management choices, they can in fact be part of creating the water security challenges. And one example of this is the building of water infrastructure. That a country upstream that may choose to build a dam on a shared river in order to increase its possibilities for irrigation, agriculture production, to increase water storage as you were mentioning, to provide flood protection. When that country upstream builds that dam, countries downstream can worry that dam could alter water flows to them. Changing the quantity, changing the quality, changing the seasonality. And so if we look around the world at places like the Nile River, where Ethiopia is building a large dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam upstream from Egypt, the downstream country Egypt worries about the impacts of that dam.
If in South Asia Pakistan worries about Indian infrastructure upstream on that shared river, and likewise in the Mekong and other shared rivers around the world. So, how we manage these resources is as much a part, not only of formulating solutions, but can also be part of the dynamics that shape the potential water conflicts to begin with.
[00:25:47] Bridget Scanlon: So it's not just a biophysical thing, it's a governance thing, and it's, and what you describe, about hoarding food and stuff like that. That is human behavior. If we have a cold front, the stores are full and the shelves are getting empty, and it could be nothing. Just psychology.
[00:26:04] David Michel: Absolutely. Yeah. No, so we're all, we can all empathize, we're all familiar with that dynamic.
[00:26:09] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I guess one of the examples that you talk about in your upcoming podcast is Myanmar and hydropower, and the conflicts about reservoirs there, and, I wasn't really aware of that before, but I've participated in some of the Mekong River Basin Commission discussions, and presentations and stuff. Trying to work together, upstream, downstream and things like that, to manage things. But, Myanmar was one of the areas that you covered in, and I'm not very familiar with the situation there, but I guess it was a large reservoir, that was being proposed for hydropower. And then, the communities that would be flooded, and downstream fisheries and agriculture opposing it.
[00:26:52] David Michel: Yeah, yeah So Myanmar is really interesting because often, when we think about the possibility for water wars, or water conflict, we imagine countries or communities competing over scarce supplies. Myanmar possesses abundant freshwater resources.
According to the FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Myanmar only uses for hydropower, for agriculture, for industrial and municipal needs, for all its water needs. Myanmar only uses about 3% of its available renewable water supplies. So the government in Myanmar has long looked at the major rivers, the Irawaddy, Salween, crossing Myanmar as a source of potential hydropower opportunities that experts estimate that the Myanmar's rivers, they command 100 gigawatts of unexploited hydropower.
The government of Myanmar sees this as a source of providing electricity to its own population. Also, generating hydropower and selling it to neighboring countries, particularly China. So that Myanmar could be the battery of Southeast Asia. But the majority, more than two thirds of Myanmar's hydropower capacity lies in regions in the north and the west that are populated by ethnic minorites.
And since the independence of the country, there have been civil conflicts of ethnic insurgencies. Various ethnic groups, contending for power against the central government, and even vast areas of the country that are really effectively managed and controlled by these ethnic groups.
So that when the central state sought to take control of these hydropower sites to seize the land in order to build hydropower facilities, often contracting with China and Chinese companies to build these hydropower facilities and then sell the hydropower more to China than two local populations.
These ethnic insurgent groups, these ethnic minorities saw this as being not only excluded from decision making, but the military ex-appropriation of their own natural resources. Of their own water resources. When the military, Myanmar moved to take control of this territory, this gave way to armed clashes and so explicitly, that some of these armed groups actually, they sent letters to the central government, Myanmar, saying, telling them that although there was a time at that time in place, a ceasefire agreement, they were telling the central government that if the central government, if military forces moved to seize the land in order to begin building these hydropower sites, that could rupture the ceasefire and lead again to the outbreak of civil war.
And that's exactly what happened in, in some cases. Was the military moved in, the ethnic forces resisted violently, and the ceasefire broke down. So there's long been an element of control and decision making around natural resources that's played into this long running civil conflict in Myanmar.
And it revolves in part around not water scarcity, but decision making about the how to develop, how to use, who has authority to make decisions about water resources in Myanmar.
[00:30:15] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, I hadn't been familiar with it at all. And so I guess Myanmar was formerly Burma and then obtained independence in the late forties, 48 or something. And, then, developing the sequence of dams along the Irawaddy, Salween or whatever to generate electricity and I guess, only about half of the population has access to electricity.
It seemed like an important thing to provide electricity to the people. With the population, I guess of about 60 million people or something like that. And then, as you say, also export electricity to neighboring countries. But then the optimal locations for these reservoirs then seemed to be in conflict areas.
And then it just didn't work out. But I guess, do you think Ethiopia, similar situation, building the GERD the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. They probably want to develop electricity and then export it to neighboring countries and things like that. Hydropower from the GERD, that's a very large reservoir also.
[00:31:12] David Michel: Yes, so the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the, dam being constructed by Ethiopia on the Nile River. The logic for the construction of that dam from Ethiopia is exactly to provide electricity to their population that lacks connection to the electrical grid. That lacks a power source.
And also to supply electricity to much of the rest of Africa. And the dam is located only a few miles from the border with Sudan, high up on a plateau. So Ethiopia contends that the purpose of the GERD is a, you're saying really for hydropower and not for irrigation.
Not for expanding agricultural land necessarily, which is important because downstream, Egypt worries that as a country that depends for over 90%, over 95% of its water resources come from the Nile. There's very little rainfall in Egypt. So Egypt is a child of the Nile, but the water in the Nile, over 80% of the flow in Egypt begins as rainfall in the Ethiopian plateau.
So that Ethiopia were to construct a dam on the Nile, between upstream, rainfall and downstream Egypt. Egypt worries that would give Ethiopia the possibility to control to regulate flows downstream and to withhold water from Egypt. So when Ethiopia argues that, in fact, the purpose of the GERD is to generate hydropower, what they're in effect saying is that, no, they will continue to want the Nile to flow through the dam to generate hydropower, the water has to flow through the turbines so that Ethiopia, claims that it will not divert water from Egypt because the whole purpose of the dam is to generate hydropower.
But, and yet the very possibility, of these controlling the flow and the fact that it has taken some time as Ethiopia has filled the reservoir behind the dam, Egypt's concern was that this would delay or slow flows to Egypt downstream. And we have seen, through WikiLeaks for example, and other sources, or Egyptian authorities actually being caught on television on a live microphone once discussing how they might deal with the construction of this dam, and actually postulating that they might try and attack and blow it up. So important are the flows of the Nile to Egypt, and their fears of the possible repercussions of building the stand.
[00:33:44] Bridget Scanlon: Basically what you're saying then, if Ethiopia says it's primarily for hydroelectricity, it wouldn't, it shouldn't impact the flow once they filled it. But, do you, I mean they have the potential to control it then by having the dam. So do you think it's up in the highlands, Ethiopian Highlands, that's where the GERD is being built. So they're not going to be diverting water for irrigated agriculture up at that elevation. But I guess they could divert it anywhere downstream.
[00:34:15] David Michel: Well, there are a couple of pieces of this question. One is that between Ethiopia, and Egypt lies Sudan. Which hopes to use some of the water from the Nile to expand its own agricultural production. Although Ethiopia claims that it does not intend to use large portions of the water from the reservoir behind the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to irrigate its own territory.
Sudan could take advantage of the management of water flows to increase its own agricultural production, which could impact flows to Egypt. Another part of the question is the possibilities of, increasing drought years in the region and what policy choices Ethiopia would make about managing those hydropower operations about storing water to ensure the continuity of those hydropower operations during drought years. So in a drought period, would Ethiopia reduce flows downstream in order to retain more water, behind the dam in order to ensure that it could maintain operations of the hydropower, by storing water today to release tomorrow through the turbines, to meet the needs of the hydropower consumers.
So there are multiple moving pieces to this puzzle.
[00:35:35] Bridget Scanlon: So as you talk about a lot of these things, then, you have to gather a lot of data and information. You have a network of groups and institutions that you interact with, but you also, are you looking. I know one of the people that you interviewed was one of the directors of the World Resources Institute, which has a water peace and security early warning tool. Maybe you can describe a little bit what data you rely on and how you come up with, your ideas about what is going on and how you can, understand it better and help with situations.
[00:36:08] David Michel: Right. So, we spoke with Charlie Island, who's the Director of freshwater initiatives at the World Resources Institute. And the WRI has developed with, some partner institutions in the. Netherlands a water peace and security initiative that builds on a water resources dashboard, Aqueduct. That's been created by WRI, which projects water stress based on a number of drivers, out to a few decades in the future. So out to 2030, out to 2040. And to use that data capacity, and machine learning tools. Combined with other variables about governance, about the strength of institutions, about demand for water resources, in order to create a water conflict early warning system that looks anywhere from a couple of months into the future up to about a year in the future and looking at weather patterns, looking at water usage, looking at water demands, project the potential strains on water resources, the impacts that this could have on food security, on livelihoods. And thereby gain some insight into the possibilities for emerging water conflicts.
And in fact, so this tool has been operational for a couple of years now, and so far, it correctly projects about 80% of water conflicts that do in fact occur. At the same time, however, it generates a lot of false positives. Meaning that about four fifths of the conflicts that it does predict don't actually take place.
So from a policy, the standpoint of policy foresight, it's a mixed result. Because, if policymakers have challenges determining which conflicts may or may not actually arise, then where should they devote attention and resources. But yet having a some type of early warning tool, in order to intervene or act to mitigate or prevent conflicts before they arise, would be an important way to diffuse tensions, before they, they devolve into violent conflict.
[00:38:21] Bridget Scanlon: I guess, David, there can be a trade off there, if you think it's going to happen and it doesn't happen, and you divert resources, economics, or others, and, that could be used for something else, that may have been more important. Or else, industries might be considering developing in some regions. And then when they see this sort of thing, then they may consider not to go there and stuff. So, so t there are a lot of trade offs then, with putting out this sort of information, it's very complicated.
[00:38:52] David Michel: So that's right. And, but, and one of the things that we see over time that if we look at the time series of forecasts, month to month, year to year. From this early warning tool or from other early warning tools. So think of the famine early warning system that FEWSNET, developed by U-S-A-I-D in cooperation with partners from dozens of countries around the world.
This often the same drivers contributing to the same tensions in the same hotspots, over time. So there's a kind of a band of countries and regions where the possibilities for water tensions and water conflict are recurring. But a lot of the mitigation strategies, the response strategies to managing potential water conflicts are viable and important, not only in the perspective of armed violence around water systems. So we were talking earlier about water storage, and food storage policies and systems so that when there are pressures on these resources that we have a buffer that we can turn to that's important to increase water storage, to increase food storage supplies around the world, even outside of the prospect of water or food related conflicts. Building up cooperative management systems, decision-making institutions, that, that are accountable, and transparent and evidence-based.
These serve for good water policymaking. In all circumstances, not only in the perspective of water tensions or conflicts between, between users of shared water resources. So being able to identify these areas, these regions over time, that are vulnerable to and witnessing water challenges or water tensions, is in itself valuable for then taking the steps necessary to increase societal resilience, to build up the institutions and the policies to address those threats.
[00:40:53] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I was playing with the WRI tool, and they discuss areas of ongoing conflict and then emerging conflict. And, then they also can overlay that with their drought data. And so this band, as you mentioned, across SubSaharan Africa, the Sahel region, parts of Southern Africa, Southeast Yemen, and India and Pakistan and stuff. There's a lot of overlap then, with their drought map. And so these sorts of vulnerabilities and as you mentioned, to becoming more resilient and recognizing the co-benefits of having this anyway. It is like having a savings account, whether you have a disaster coming or not.
[00:41:34] David Michel: Right. And the conflict itself is an indicator of vulnerability to future conflict. That when societies are at odds over decision making, over the distribution of power, that makes the recurrence of conflict more likely. And in this combination of fragile and conflict affected countries, vulnerabilities to drought and water resource challenges, the causalities can go both ways. So that stresses on water resources and frictions over decision making and governance of water resources, they can contribute, mediated by political decisions, institutions, economic and technical capacities.
There are a number of factors that sit between pressures on water resources and ultimate water conflict, but where these pressures may contribute to generating conflict, that those conflicts themselves can then degrade water resources, degrade water infrastructure, damage water systems. Degrade social trust and cohesion, making it harder to solve those resource problems if your water infrastructure has been destroyed.
If elements of your society are at loggerheads over decision making over the distribution of power, then that makes it very difficult to resolve environmental challenges. So that we can see a kind of a downward spiral where fragility contributes to resource challenges, the inability to solve resource challenges contributes to fragility.
So it, it's important to imagine ways to intervene in this cycle and to address both the natural resource challenges to, to try and provide infrastructure and systems and management practices, to use resources more efficiently, more effectively, more equably. But also to create the institutions that govern and make decisions about water infrastructure, water management systems, and thereby you cut off the risks of these interconnections between resource challenges and political conflicts.
[00:43:43] Bridget Scanlon: And so David, when we spoke recently, one of the things that you pointed out that I hadn't realized was you know how much effort goes into operating water systems and maintaining them. So it's not just if they get blasted, it's just maintaining operations and keeping them up to speed and everything.
So when there is some sort of general conflict and everything, so a lot of that maybe goes out the window. And then they gradually degrade. And so it's a positive feedback loop then that amplifies the situation and as you say, the downward spiral. So just maintaining operations and when I was talking to somebody recently about Ukraine, they don't have the people, people are fighting wars.
They don't have technical expertise. We forget about these basic things, that.
[00:44:31] David Michel: Yeah, no, that's right. Whether it's in Ukraine or in Gaza or in Syria, in Iraq, not only do we see the physical damage and destruction of hard water infrastructure, just as you're saying, that the professionals that operate these systems, that the people flee or are engaged in the fighting, you can't get the supplies of chemicals and material to maintain, and upkeep the water systems. So it's not just the immediate conflict damage that degrades water systems. It's the whole dynamic of conflict on the infrastructure, but also on, on societies, on supply chains, et cetera, that, that destroyed the water systems.
[00:45:10] Bridget Scanlon: And I think we are thinking about the US. There's a lot of emphasis recently putting in funding to maintain water infrastructure and to upgrade it, because we haven't invested in it that much over the last several decades. So I think that's important. But you also mentioned, some new issues with cybersecurity and stuff with the water utilities.
Maybe you can describe that a little bit. And we talked about whether it'd be better to have, a lot of decentralized small systems for treatment or wastewater, water treatment, or larger systems that had the capacity then to have up to date cybersecurity.
[00:45:48] David Michel: Yeah. So the cybersecurity risks are actually in a way connected to this question that we were just discussing, of the maintenance operation and upkeep of water systems that cybersecurity risks are new risks to to water systems that the water sector has come a little bit later to.
The application of data analytics, machine learning, AI, the digitalization of the sector relative to think of the energy sector. But now today we're increasingly seeing the interconnection of the operating systems, of water treatment plants, water pumping stations, and the information systems of the water utilities that are running them.
So previously, if in order to intervene in or to, attack a water treatment plant or water supply, you essentially needed to gain physical access to the water infrastructure that, in the terms of cybersecurity risk analysts, previously the operating systems, the valves, the gauges, the pumps in water treatment plants, and the IT systems, they were separate. They were air gapped. But as they had been increasingly integrated for efficiency and operations purposes, that, because that integration, engineers can monitor water systems remotely, operate them remotely, repair, systems remotely. So the integration has a value, but it makes these integrated systems vulnerable to cyber criminals, hackers, who can whether it's through a phishing email or the introduction of a virus, gain access to take control of, ransom, or manipulate water infrastructure, water services. And we've seen attacks on water systems in Europe, in Canada, in the United States from sometimes state backed actors, such as Russia, Iran, but also hackers and cybercriminals. And oftentimes we're not even publicly aware of the nature of the extent of these risks because the victims, the water utilities, the water managers are often reluctant to divulge that they have been hacked.
But, to this question of operations, maintenance, security, the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, recently, did a survey where they determined that 70% of the many tens of thousands of water authorities, and utilities in the United States, are not meeting the security codes to defend against cybersecurity risks.
So the fragmentation, the decentralization of the US water systems, where you have these thousands and thousands of water authorities, it's a source of vulnerability because many of these authorities don't have necessarily have the professional and technical capacities to, to meet these risks.
It's also in, in some ways, a break or a firewall against vulnerabilities because the separation of the water systems into these many different pieces hinders cascades of risk from one utility, or one system, to another. So there are trade-offs between the centralization or the decentralization of water systems.
[00:49:03] Bridget Scanlon: Thank you so much, David, for chatting with me today. And, my last question would be, you are working in this for many years now, transboundary issues, conflict, all of these things. Are you optimistic about how we will be able to cope with these things, how will we be able to adapt to these issues and become stronger in the future? Or are you pessimistic?
[00:49:26] David Michel: The challenges are certainly daunting. We have serious issues to address in order to ensure water security globally, and provide adequate safe water supplies to the billions of people around the world, who still today do not have access to improved water sources or improved sanitation systems. But I'm optimistic in the sense that we have the practices and the technologies to meet these challenges, whether it's water storage, nature-based solutions, reuse and recycling.
The innovations in AI and machine learning and data analytics. We have the tools that we need to meet these challenges. But face the questions of political action policy choices to, to apply, these tools that we do have. That in many ways our policy choices, and the dilemmas of of policy choices. That, that example that we were talking about of the water security dilemma of, I want to build water storage to enhance my water security, but that has ramifications for you. We do have these tools, but their application isn't simple in the sense that they require some navigation, some trade-offs, prioritizations, in order to make effective choices. And that's where our real challenges lie, but I'm optimistic that we can, can overcome them and meet these questions.
[00:50:46] Bridget Scanlon: So my guest today is David Michel, and he is a Senior Fellow for Water Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and he will have an upcoming podcast series titled Hidden Depths Podcast, and I'm sure it will be advertised on the CSIS website. And, we'll also include it on the website for this podcast.
So everybody has a podcast. And here's another one coming. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you, David.
[00:51:14] David Michel: Thanks so much, it's been great talking with you.
