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Water cooperation for a secure world

The Blue Peace framework provides a new opportunity for cooperative approaches to the management of global water resources.
People bathe and wash clothes in the Senegal river outside the town of Kaedi, Gorgol region, in Mauritania June 1, 2012. A full third of the country's population, amounting to around a million people, are at risk of malnutrition if rain doesn't fall by July, according to estimates from Spanish Non-Governmental Organization Accion contra el Hambre (Action Against Hunger), which has been warning about food crisis since the beginning of the year after poor rains in 2011. REUTERS/Susana Vera (MAURITANIA - Tags:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly emphasized the need to explore the linkage between water, peace and security. Now, new research by the Strategic Foresight Group demonstrates that he has been right to do so. Empirical evidence in 148 countries and 205 shared river basins indicates that any two nations engaged in active water cooperation do not go to war.

Of the 148 countries covered by the report "Water Cooperation for a Secure World," 37 are at risk of going to war over issues other than water, including land, religion, history and ideology. These also happen to be precisely the 37 countries which do not engage in active water cooperation with their neighbors.

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