Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis (Globalization) - Hardcover

Brahma Chellaney is a strategic thinker and a geostrategist tracking major international trends. He is a professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, a fellow of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, a trustee of the National Book Trust, and an affiliate with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. He has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the foreign minister of India and an advisor to India’s National Security Council.

As a specialist on international strategic issues, he has held appointments at Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and the Australian National University. He has also been a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at
the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C.

Chellaney is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan and Water: Asia’s New Battleground, winner of the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

The award-winning author believes that Mark Twain was right when he said, ‘Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over’... Chellaney’s fine work is an examination of the connection between water and conflict. ‘Hydropolitics’ promises to become increasingly contentious and nasty... Despots and dictators will use this liquid gold to disrupt peace, accumulate power, and force neighbors to submit. —Gordon Chang, World Affairs

Frightened about terrorism? Proliferation? Big-power rivalries? You had better start worrying about water. Brahma Chellaney tells you why, in a tour de force sweeping in its breadth, staggering in its detail, and sobering in its analysis. — Robert M. Hathaway, Woodrow Wilson Center

The risk of conflict over water is growing ever more severe, and here, at last, is a book that analyzes water through the lens of international peace and security. Brahma Chellaney performs an invaluable service by identifying the multiple causes of global water stress and showing what must be done if conflict over scarce and contested supplies is to be averted. — Michael Klare, Hampshire College

Brahma Chellaney’s Water, Peace, and War is the first work to make water the center of its concern and to argue that water is emerging as a more important issue for the fate of mankind than population growth, food supply, pollution, peak oil, other ‘peak’ commodities, and climate change. The author’s writing is fluid, and complex materials are handled with clarity. This is an excellent contribution to a tradition of important works that have argued in one way or another that the world faces some kind of ecological crisis. — Andrew Nathan, Columbia University

Chellaney calls for transparency, collaboration, and sharing across borders. But given the record of so many international initiatives in recent years, it’s hard to imagine much action will be taken until the rich and powerful see their wells running dry. — Christopher Dickey, Newsweek

Water, peace and war are each hugely complex issues in their own right, and the nexus between them is even more difficult to grasp, let alone untangle. In Water, Peace, and War, for once we have an analysis that lives up to its own publicity. —Jeffrey Mazo, Survival

This book argues that even though water is of fundamental importance to humans, we have undervalued it and have therefore failed to create institutional mechanisms at the international level to ensure its prudent use. This argument is developed in detail in five chapters, considering both the scientific and political implications of water use... The author concludes that in order to prevent water-based conflicts, a set of international rules, cooperative institutional mechanisms, and environmentally sustainable water management solutions will be needed... [He] provides a lucid account of the nexuses between water security and world peace. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. — Choice magazine

Conflicts over water have already embroiled states along the Nile basin, in Africa, and along the Tigris-Euphrates basin, in the Middle East, and the war in Darfur has at least partly been driven by clashes over access to water in Sudan’s far west. Chellaney makes it clear that such conflicts will become more common as water begins to be “used as a weapon,” as a recent U.S. intelligence assessment predicted, at least in a metaphoric sense, as upstream countries deny water to downstream ones. — G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

Chellaney brings his usual astute and critical analysis to the global water crisis with aplomb. I highly recommend this book for those interested in the geopolitics of water issues or those looking for new insights on international water concerns....In this book, Chellaney takes us on an all-encompassing analysis of global water issues, geopolitical battles, and international water politics, sweeping from critical site to critical site, recounting intra-national and international disputes from around the globe. The writing is along the style of Jarred Diamond or Carl Sagan weaving the big picture from a vast array of case studies, identifying themes and prospects, and pulling seemingly disparate facts into a coherent whole. -- Journal of Latin American Geography

"It is hard to find something more important for human existence than water. Readers will find in this book an in-depth overview of the topic, which will raise some alarm-bells... this book is essential reading for specialists and for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the politics of water resources.” -Global Policy

"Water,  Peace,  and  War"  is  noteworthy  for  its authoritative  approach  to  blending  science  and  policy  and is  recommended  for  academic and research libraries.--Eric Tans, Electronic Green Journal