KWar, conflicts and poverty make a country a place full of starving people and victims of violence, but they can also literally export many problems, existential crises. Water crises for example. The crisis is coming to countries where there is calm and perhaps even peace, but where water shortages are part of everyday life, where climate change is exacerbating the shortages and where the influx of refugees is further destabilizing the volatile water situation every day.
An international team of scientists led by environmental economists from the University of Notre Dame in the American state of Indiana is drawing attention to this escalating development – a possible destabilization.
Of course, the researchers know that calculating the “water footprint” of refugees, which they chose as the subject of their study, is a politically sensitive issue. In their analysis in the journalNature Communications” They therefore warn “in view of the increasing rhetoric coming from right-wing circles against refugees and migrants” that the victims of violence are labeled as triggers for crises in other countries. Rather, they try to persuade the recipient countries to take more precautions and education. In fact, some countries would need to better adapt to the new development by adjusting water management plans and also by building new food supply chains.
Between 2005 and 2016, as far back as the researchers’ data analysis goes, the water footprint of refugees worldwide increased by 75 percent. The water footprint includes the water consumption (per capita) of cross-border emigrants on the one hand, and the amount of water that has to be found annually to feed the newcomers – from production to food distribution – on the other.
In most countries of the world, this water index has changed marginally due to refugee movements. According to the scientists, significant “water stress” due to flight is only generated in a few countries in the Near and Middle East: above all in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. There, the water “demand” has increased massively in recent years, in particular due to immigration from the conflict regions in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. In all other parts of the world, refugees have increased the demand for water by at most a few percent.
The European Union, which has already taken in numerous refugees, is practically unaffected in this respect – although there are also areas with significantly increasing water deficits. According to the researchers, this is also due to the fact that the refugees come to areas where consumption of goods that consume a lot of water has long been part of everyday life. Those fleeing conflict regions not only have a much smaller water footprint compared to the locals, but also compared to emigrants who leave their country for economic reasons.
According to the UN refugee agency, around 80 million people worldwide were registered as victims of conflicts and tyranny by 2021, 30 million of whom fled across national borders. In the study period between 2005 and 2016 alone, the number of refugees doubled from 12.1 million to 23.1 million. Syria and Jordan are regarded as particularly striking examples of the exported water crisis. In southern Syria, many houses and farms along the Jordan River had already been abandoned during the civil war. More than a million Syrians fled to neighboring Jordan and within a few years exacerbated the water shortage that had been worsening there for decades in agriculture and water supply.
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