I forrige utgave av tidsskriftet Nature skriver Barnaby om sine erfaringer. Nils Petter Gleditsch ved Prio har forsøkt å ta livet av myten her i landet.
Noen highlights:
A few years ago, I had just written a book about biological warfare and the publishers were keen for me to write another. “How about one on water wars?” they asked. It seemed a good idea….
Water management will need to adapt. But the mechanisms of trade, international agreements and economic development that currently ease water shortages will persist. Researchers, such as Aaron Wolf at Oregon State University, Corvallis, and Nils Petter Gleditsch at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, point out that predictions of armed conflict come from the media and from popular, non-peer-reviewed work…
My encounter with Allan”s work killed my book. I offered to revise its thesis, but my publishers pointed out that predicting an absence of war over water would not sell.
Book or no book, it is still important that the popular myth of water wars somehow be dispelled once and for all. This will not only stop unsettling and incorrect predictions of international conflict over water. It will also discourage a certain public resignation that climate change will bring war, and focus attention instead on what politicians can do to avoid it: most importantly, improve the conditions of trade for developing countries to strengthen their economies.
Al Gore could not be reached for comment.