Water Fight

The Songhua river in northeastern China doesn't have the history of the Mekong, the spirituality of the Ganges or the sheer power of the Yangtze. But in November 2005, this 1,200-mile (2,000 km) waterway made headlines when a chemical plant in the Chinese city of Jilin spilled massive amounts of the toxic chemical benzene, creating a 50-mile (80 km) noxious slick. The chemicals oozed toward the sea, and Chinese cities that drank from the Songhua were forced to cut off supplies, leaving millions to fend for themselves. As the slick passed over the border to the Russian city of Khabarovsk, a problem that began in a single Chinese chemical plant suddenly became an international incident between two powerful nations with a history of bad blood.

The Songhua incident is a reminder that in Asia, a region of the world where water is often scarce and often polluted, managing that indispensable resource is vital. Asia is already the world's driest inhabited continent per capita, and as its population, urbanization and dirty industrialization grow — and global warming dries out the region — clean water will only become more precious. As a just-released report by the Asia Society argues, water will become the key to regional security in the 21st century — and Asia isn't ready. "This is a fundamental resource that we need to survive," says Suzanne DiMaggio, director of the Asia Society's Social Issues Program and the report's director. "The emerging picture on water is very worrisome."

That doesn't mean we should expect Asian nations to immediately start shooting wars over access to the Mekong or the Yalu — though all bets are off if climate change leads to the loss of the Himalayan glaciers whose seasonal melt provides water for billions in Asia. In fact, the history of cross-border water disputes has been surprisingly conciliatory so far. India and Pakistan have fought three wars and currently point nuclear weapons at each other, yet the Indus Waters Treaty — which divvies up the two countries' trans-boundary waterways, overseen by a joint commission — has survived for decades. And even though nations can be quite possessive over water (India and Bangladesh have skirmished repeatedly over the shared Mahananda River), they trade it all the time in other forms like rice and grain that require millions of gallons to grow.

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