Could India and China go to war over water?

Thanks JanforGore, any petitions you have, I will gladly sign.
I love India. This is very serious.

Wars do not determine who is right but who is left.

Machiavellian as I may sound but with their populations that big, war just might be the only solution for them to cut their resource consumption to a manageable level.

And so it begins...

Now, or in the very near future, would be an excellent time for the United States, as well as other nations, to further develop and/or refine their water desalinization processes.

Welcome to the future. Now is the time to understand & safeguard your own sources, as potable water is becoming a luxury around the world.

The crooked businessmen are always looking for the new thing to rip people off with and water is too precious to be too trusting...

If a war really starts, this will be proof that the world can't learn. We have more problems than we do solutions, and another war will just complicate other global situations.

The Chinese government doesn't seem to give a sh!t about what they do or how they do it.

This issue is actually due to global warming. Water is melting away between China and India and the increased scarcity has driven people to this point. They probably wont go to war, though this increases the ever-growing rivalry between the rising nations in a political, economic, and social sense. Neither can due without water, and this might drive people to war though we'll have to see what the governments do. Hopefully they are aware that water is evaporating and glaciers are melting which is the cause of this mess and we all know what causes the warming, which in itself is to many people a subscription to belief, not yet fact. Perhaps they should do their research.

i think thats really sad something that we use everyday all the time and now people are fighting over it i hope that this doesnt happen to us

if china & india go to war against each other it will only exacerbate their problems...but i'm sure the u.s. & european military industrial complexes will see it as a good thing because it means fewer non whites they'll have to murder to provide access to clean water for all of us "westerners"!

is my sarcasm being lost in text???

There couldn't be a winner when fighting for water. One country lets the other country people die or move. The "winner" gets that water source the was over. But then that water source will be gone soon and it will happen again. Violence cannot not solve violence it can only hold it back for so long.

I we all find a way to solve our water problems. In the future I do not want my kids reading and their kids to being reading about "The Great Waters Wars"

This is something that is going to happen between different region within countries as well. Take a look at the western states in the US.

Eveyone should watch this video... it discusses the exponential growth of the population and the consumption of finite resources.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Because our earth's resources (food, water...) are being used up, I bet there will be more resource wars. Especially between undeveloped countries.
It is so sad and quite disgusting that we (US) consume 24% of the of the worlds energy while the whole of the worlds undeveloped countries consume 25%
It seems like we need to learn how to cut back.

cheeseandcrackers: Population is the key, as is the waste and mismanagement of resources. Could we have a population that is increasing and still have a sustainable planet if the resources were managed fairly and intelligently? Perhaps.

You aren't being morbid, you are being realistic. We are handing the reigns of our destiny as a species over to world governments that do not care about that destiny because greed blinds them. I would say we need to wake up, and now.

We are getting closer to a "Pre-Apocalyptic" world,... where greed, wanton destruction & stupidity reign. A war over water? Wars over land, food, fear, power, et cetera will fill our society until we destroy ourselves into oblivion. And non-human Earthicans will be innocent bystanders.
I do not want to sound cynical or morbid,... but if we don't wake up now,... our future will be lost.

no wonder china wanted to seize (errr, i mean liberate) Tibetan lands...

The Chinese should learn from history, particularly the demise of the Aral Sea by the human hand and diversion.

cont:

It is at the Great Bend that China plans to divert water, in addition to its hydroelectric power project that is expected to generate 40,000 megawatts of power. The diversion of the waters is part of a larger hydro-engineering project, the South-North water diversion scheme, which involves three man-made rivers carrying water from the icy Tibetan plateau to the arid north. This water diversion scheme will draw from the waters of the Yalong, Dadu and Jinsha rivers, which rise in the Tibetan plateau, and channel them to the Yellow River. The aim of the project is to provide water for human use, including farming and industry in China's water-scarce areas in the north and northwest. This water diversion project involves three diversion routes - the eastern, central and western routes. The diversion of the Yalong Tsangpo at the Great Bend is the western route of the project - the most technologically challenging and controversial of the three routes.

For Beijing, the argument in favor of the water diversion project is simple. More than a quarter of China is classified as desert. Its north and northwest areas are water scarce. Increasing consumption of water, rapid industrialization and pollution have rendered the waters of many of China's rivers unusable. Besides, sections of the Yellow River run dry. In contrast, rivers that rise in the Tibetan plateau's glaciers have much water. Once completed, the water diversion scheme is expected to transfer over 40 billion cubic meters of water annually to China's water scarce areas, relieving China's thirst to a significant extent. It is true the Tibetan plateau is a source of much water. It is Asia's principal watershed and the source of 10 of its major rivers, including the Yalong Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Indus. China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, indeed 47% of the world's population, are dependent on water rising in the Tibetan plateau. But while rivers with sources in the icy Tibetan plateau are rich in water, critics of the water diversion project say they are not inexhaustible, as Chinese officials claim. The Tibetan plateau is ice-covered but it is an arid desert with very little rainfall. The source of much of its water bodies and rivers is glaciers, which are melting due to global warming.

If, alongside the impact of rising temperatures on glaciers, China diverts water from its natural course, Tibet will be a water-scarce region in a few decades. Critics also point to the environmental and ecological destruction it is likely to cause. The water diversion project at the Great Bend spells disaster not only for the Tibetan plateau but also for the lower riparian countries - India and Bangladesh. These countries view the project with some concern as it represents a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people living downstream. With the Yalong Tsangpo's waters being diverted, the amount of water in the Brahmaputra will fall significantly, affecting India's northeast and Bangladesh. It will severely impact agriculture and fishing there as the salinity of water will increase, as will silting in the downstream area.

A shortage of water in the Ganges has already affected the lives and livelihoods of millions in Bangladesh, pushing them to migrate to India, especially to its northeast. This migration of Bangladeshis has changed the demographic composition of vast tracts in the northeast (especially in Assam) and triggered serious ethnic conflicts there. A shortage of water in the Brahmaputra will accentuate these problems to dangerous levels. There is concern too that with the water diversion project taking off, China will acquire great power and leverage over India, worsening tensions between these two countries.

From the article:

India quakes over China's water plan
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - Even as India and China are yet to resolve their decades-old territorial dispute, another conflict is looming. China's diversion of the waters of a river originating in Tibet to its water-scarce areas could leave India's northeast parched. This is expected to trigger new tensions in the already difficult relations between the two Asian giants. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported during his recent Beijing visit to have raised the issue of international rivers flowing out of Tibet. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation". The river in question is the Brahmaputra, which begins in southwestern Tibet where it is known as the Yalong Tsangpo River.

It flows eastwards through southern Tibet for a distance of about 1,600 kilometers and at its easternmost point makes a spectacular U-turn, known as the Shuomatan Point, or the “Great Bend”. This is just before the river enters India, where it is joined by two other major rivers; from this point of confluence it is known as the Brahmaputra. It then snakes into Bangladesh, where it is joined by the Ganges River to create the world's largest delta before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.