Physical Geography: Studying Water

By Francis A. Galgano Jr.

The study of culture and science is combined in the physical geography course offered at the United States Military Academy. This introductory-level course focuses on the scientific process of the natural landscape (weather and climate systems, the hydrologic cycle, landforms, and environmental systems), and includes a module on human and cultural geography that links people and their natural environments. The capstone exercise for the course is an area analysis in which cadets perform a detailed geographic assessment of a particular region's natural and cultural landscape as part of a hypothetical humanitarian assistance mission. During this exercise, the cadets—in this case, sophomores—assess the region, identify salient cultural dynamics that have generated a conflict, and determine how the natural environment may have ignited or exacerbated it. The course is supported by a series of vignettes examining such issues as water scarcity, carrying capacity, desertification, population growth, global warning, pollution, and urbanization.

One of the world's most critical resources is clean drinking water, and its variable global distribution is striking. Most rainfall occurs in the equatorial zone that stretches from Central America and the Amazon Basin into central Africa and across South and Southeast Asia. The supply of drinkable, fresh water is finite, unevenly distributed, and usually has no substitute. Its limited availability makes fresh water a precious commodity in some of the world's most unstable regions; when combined with volatile ethnic or religious enmities, water scarcity has the potential to ignite a violent regional war.

Efforts to manipulate the global supply of petroleum were a leading phenomenon of the final decades of the twentieth century, and the interest of Iran and other Middle East states in nuclear weapons demonstrates the lasting potential for oil to lead the world into a major conflict. However, given expected rates of global population growth, climate change, the imbalance of water supply and demand, and the inability of technology to provide fresh drinking water or alternatives to it, control of the sources of fresh water could be equally significant in the opening decades of this century. Most Americans take for granted a ready supply of inexpensive, clean drinking water, and the management and distribution of water supplies in the United States are fairly transparent and routine. This is not the case in much of the world. Most of the world's water—some 97 percent—is contained in the oceans and is of little use for essential agriculture, drinking, or most industrial uses. The seminal problem is that only 3 percent of the Earth's water is fresh and, of this, most (about two-thirds) is locked away in ice or deep groundwater aquifers and is unavailable for day-to-day use. Only 0.36 percent of the world's fresh water is sufficiently accessible to be considered a renewable resource. This problem is exacerbated because precipitation in large sections of the world, especially those with stability issues, is inadequate to support substantial agriculture, populations, or industry.

Land use patterns, often an expression of cultural norms, combined with exponential population growth, have increased the number of people living in marginal, arid lands, where survival depends upon the availability of sufficient water resources. At the same time, changes to the earth's climate and increasing periods of unstable weather and rainfall will magnify this shortage. Short-term climate perturbations such as El Niño demonstrate the susceptibility of many regions to problematical variations in the hydrologic cycle. Thus, a military leader thrust into a humanitarian support mission in this type of environment needs a fundamental understanding of cultural systems that may set the stage for a potential conflict and a clear knowledge of the destabilizing potential of critical features of the natural environment.

Water and Conflict

The fact that water does not lend itself to international trade regulations complicates the water resource dilemma. Unlike other commodities, water cannot be easily transported in the volume needed to satisfy the demands of even a small country. If regional conflict over this scarce resource is to be forestalled, steps must be taken to permit fair and equitable resolutions over its distribution. This is, of course, difficult in areas charged with ethnic and perhaps religious divides. Our graduates, charged with the responsibility to stabilize a situation, have to understand the cultural aspects of the conflict, water law, and fundamental scientific processes.

The process of determining sovereignty over transboundary rivers and aquifers is controversial, and most international or regional water disputes are approached through bilateral or multilateral negotiations rather than legal precedents. Unfortunately, history abounds with examples of violent conflict over water resources. Water conflict is most likely when multiple users share rivers and aquifers and ethnic, religious, or other long-standing historic tensions exist. One such place is the West Bank region of Israel, where religious tensions have been exacerbated by competition for water resources from a regional aquifer that underlies this contested landscape.

Given the clear links between water scarcity, ethnic or religious tensions, and conflict, what can be done to modify the conditions that could lead to conflict, or abate the effects of a conflict once it has begun? These are the critical lessons that we hope to impart to our students as they examine the immutable linkage between the human and natural landscape. We cannot prepare our cadets for every potential conflict, or have them develop answers to some of the most complex problems facing human society today. What we attempt to do, however, is familiarize them with the fundamental underpinnings of cultural and natural systems so that they know the right questions to ask when they are thrust into challenging and complex situations. —F.A.G.

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