The myth of water wars
Few phrases sell newspapers like “the next war will be fought over water.” It is dramatic, it feels intuitively true, and it is almost always wrong. The final chapter of The End of Abundance takes that headline apart, and it is worth explaining why — because the myth of water wars quietly pushes us toward exactly the wrong solutions.
History points the other way
When you actually count them, shared rivers produce far more treaties than battles. Nations that distrust each other on almost everything still manage to sign and keep water-sharing agreements, because the alternative — fighting over a resource that keeps flowing whether you win or lose — is ruinous for everyone. Water is too important to go to war over and too continuous to conquer. You cannot occupy a river and make it rain.
Water does not cause wars. Bad institutions cause conflict, and water is simply the thing they fail to share.
The real conflict is domestic, and it is about rules
The book's sharper point is that the conflict worth worrying about is not between countries but within them: the farmer versus the city, the upstream town versus the downstream wetland, this generation versus the next. These are not fought with armies. They are fought in courtrooms, water boards and legislatures — and they are won or lost on the quality of the rules.
Where rights are clear, measurement is honest, and there is a legitimate way to settle disputes, scarcity produces negotiation and trade. Where rights are murky and the referee is captured or absent, the same scarcity produces resentment, theft and the slow drying-up of whoever has the least political power. The water is identical; the institutions decide whether it ends in a deal or a grievance.
Why the myth is dangerous
Believing in water wars leads to fortress thinking — build more dams, grab more supply, treat the neighbour as a threat. That is expensive, it damages rivers, and it often makes the underlying allocation problem worse. The book's prescription is the opposite and far cheaper: invest in the boring machinery of agreement. Clear entitlements, shared data, enforceable contracts and a trusted process to resolve disputes do more for water security than any wall or reservoir.
If this connects with you, read the companion pieces on scarcity versus shortage and why pricing water correctly matters — both are really about building the institutions that keep scarcity from turning into conflict.
