Ban Ki-moon warns that Water Shortages are increasingly driving Conflicts by United Nations News Service 1:16pm 7th Feb, 2008   6 Feb 2008    Many of today"s conflicts around the world are being fuelled or exacerbated by water shortages and climate change is only making the situation worse, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the UN General Assembly today.    Briefing an informal Assembly session on the crises in Kenya, Darfur and Chad, as well as his recent trip to Europe and Africa, Mr. Ban noted that he told the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month that "increasingly, fights are erupting over such basic human needs as water or arable land. I find this trend deeply worrying, especially because such shortages are only projected to grow in coming years," he said, adding that water also underpins many of the world"s key development challenges – food, the environment, health and economic well-being.    "Water shortages are at the core of many of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of which is to reduce by half the number of people without safe access to water by 2015. When you consider the health and development challenges facing the poorest of the world"s population – diseases like malaria or TB (tuberculosis), rising food prices, environmental degradation – the common denominator often seems to be water."    International cooperation is crucial to overcoming the problem, the Secretary-General said, calling for governments, business and civil society to form new and innovative partnerships. He also pointed out that the UN has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Sanitation and the UN Global Compact"s CEO Water Mandate is also coordinating work on the issue.    "Water is a classic common property resource. No one really owns the problem. Therefore, no one really owns the solution."
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