Mega dams, canals and pipelines: water as part of large geopolitical chess games

Abstract

Transboundary rivers are increasingly a diplomatic card, and water is increasingly gaining a ‘transactional’ economic nature. Dams in the Nile, a diversion canal in Afghanistan and oil/gas fields in the Mesopotamia Marshes are three of the current critical hotspots where geopolitical and geo-economic forces act as both the cause and outcome of water conflicts.