Who Owns the Water?

By: Alfred Diebold

This is one of the biggest question of our time!

Source: Deutschlandfunk Radio Program announcement

link: http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/wasserzeichen-gabe-gottes-wirtschaftsgut-und-menschenrecht.1184.de.html?dram:article_id=282538

This is an excerpt of a radio program, which was broadcasted by The Deutschland radio in German laguage.

Water is life, it has a special meaning in many religions and is often at the beginning of the story of creation. The stories of the Old Testament reflect the experiences of people in the Middle East with water shortages and show the respect they paid to both the life-giving and the destructive power of water. But water is often the source of disputes at different levels, be it between people in small villages or entire states.

Experts even warn of possible wars that could be fought in the future due to the scarce resource of water. It is always about the use and benefits of water. How can we deal with the non-enforceable human right to water? Which interests are represented by which groups? What is the status of the international discussion? Using the example of Central Asia, the countries of the Silk Road, the large rivers that used to feed the Aral Sea, Alfred Diebold’s essay seeks answers to the question asked at the beginning.

Alfred Diebold, born in 1953, lives in Rome and Almaty. He holds a doctorate in economics, trained as a photographer and filmmaker at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, and worked for the United Nations, non-governmental organisations and private companies in Asia, Africa and Europe. Sustainable management of water resources, the integration of economic, ecological and political considerations in cross-border water resource management are his topics. As Technical Director of the Executive Committee of the International Aral Sea Foundation in Almaty / Kazakhstan, he published the book “From the Glaciers to the Aral Sea” in 2012 . Today he teaches at the German-Kazakh University in Almaty.

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