MAP REVEALS THE HOTSPOTS FOR CONFLICT OVER DEPLETED SUPPLIES IN THE NEXT 100 YEARS

New research has revealed the areas where real-life riots are most likely to happen as a result of depleted water resources. Researchers mapped the areas where future global conflict is most likely to break out as a result of climate change-fueled water shortages.

Researchers believe vulnerable areas could face ‘hydro-political issues’ due to water shortages within the next 50 to 100 years.

A team of scientists from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) used a novel machine learning method to identify ‘pre-conditions and factors’ that might lead to depleting water resources in certain areas, particularly those that contain water sources shared by bordering nations.

They also determined that the two dominant factors leading to ‘hydro-political issues’ are climate change and increasing population density.

While water scarcity isn’t the only trigger for warfare, it’s a major contributor.

‘Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,’ the scientists explained.

‘Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between riparian states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase regional instability and social unrest.’

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Global Environmental Change, comes in the wake of a landmark report by the United Nations, which warned that the world has just 12 years to halt global warming before the planet is plunged into extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.

‘The scope of our study is two-fold. First, we wanted to highlight the factors which lead to either political cooperation or tensions in transboundary river basins,’ Fabio Farinosi, the lead author of the study, said in a statement.

‘And second, we wanted to map and monitor the likelihood of these kinds of interactions over space and time and under changing socio-economic conditions.’