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Mainstream media seldom gives us the real reasons behind the many wars being waged around the world. We hear obscure reasons as "War on Terror" or "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Other times we are just told that the fighting parties are fighting because of religious differences. Christians fighting Muslims, Jews against Muslims or Sunnis fighting Shias.

But when you investigate a bit, you will nearly always find that there are very material reasons behind the conflicts. In the Middle East, often about oil resources, but other resources are also important here. Control over water is for example an essential issue in the Palestinian conflict. Israel stole the Golan Heights from Syria in the 6-day war, because this area is crucial in order to have control of the Jordan River. A 2012 UN report describes 56 springs that have illegally been taken by Israeli settlers whereby the Palestinian farmers have lost access to their irrigation water.

The Darfur conflict is also about water resources. Rainfall decreased to about one third of previous levels during the 20th century, forcing the nomadic herds people from the northern areas further south into the mainly agricultural areas further south. Without efficient political leadership and will to solve the water issue, this of course turned into a violent conflict. But it is portrayed as a conflict between Muslims from the north and Christian from the south.
As the world heats up, we will see more conflicts over scarce resources such as water and arable land. A place that will be especially vulnerable is Northern India and Pakistan. The temperatures are already at the limit of many of the crop plants, and groundwater is disappearing fast (depleted by 1-3 m every year!). Combine this with the huge amounts of people, then this really challenges the leaderships of the two countries. But so far they act as all politicians do. They think of the next election. And therefore continue to support the big farmers with subsidized prices for pumping up and away the scarce resources. They want their votes now and care nothing about the mess they are creating. (And exactly the same can be said about Obama and the other candidates in the US, who continue to give huge subsidies and tax holidays to the big oil companies, also in the hope that this can keep oil prices down, and thereby win votes - with no thoughts for the consequences of heating our planet).

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