Fighting, violence and death over water has started. People are starting to kill each other over water, and it will only get worse. What was once in ample supply is now something people will fight and die over.
Coming full circle, this post is very much tied to our very first post and the predictions we made back in April 2008 about what was called then Global Warming. That term Global Warming has since been replaced with the more accurate and urgent term of Climate Change. So what was once thought of by some as only a bad dream, has progressed through nightmare and now into reality.
Using Thailand as a template of what is happening and what is to come, we can expand to other countries in Southeast Asia as having similar water issues. We can see how this is starting to eat into the global food supply. In no particular order here are the stories that hit the mainstream news in recent months.
- Rice farmers have been told not to produce 2 rice crops this year due to lack of water.
- Rice Farmers have been told to grow alternate crops that do not require as much water as rice.
- Tap water will be turned off in some upcountry provinces due to dry reservoirs.
- Bangkok was told they only have enough water until July before rationing starts.
- Water runoff capture projects have cause heightened tensions between countries who rely on river water.
- Rice farmers defy government orders not to use water.
- Water pumps will be confiscated from water usage ban violators.
Globally Rice is the number 1 staple food with potatoes being number 2. Being told not to grow rice is the first step in a chain of events that will cause a shortage that will start to push the price of rice up that will eventually find its way into peoples wallets. This will likely lead into having more genetically modified food (GMO) enter the food supply. That food will be designed to need less water to grow. So keeping food that is not GMO off your table in the future will simply become harder and more expensive to do.
But now the sad part of the story is there have been fights and people have been injured and some have died to get water. This thought was unheard of unless you were watching one of the “Mad Max” post holocaust theme movies. But in reality, it has become that bad. Farmers need water to grow their crops and with the uncertainty of government stepping in to help, fighting for the right to drop a pump inlet line into a water supply seems to be a flash point. One of the most important things to note, this is not greed driven behavior, this behavior is being driven by our core instinct to survive.
So when it comes to going up against our core survival instinct, you can expect someone backing down unlikely to happen. The only way to stop them more or less is to kill them as turning off that core instinctual behavior is kin to extinction in any species. In other words, this is only the beginning.
