Links between water and conflict seem to crop up everywhere one looks these days. The Horn of Africa will soon face a sixth consecutive failed rainy season in 2023—its worst drought on record. Not only is this drought a consequence of global climate change, but it has also led to widespread food shortages and local civil conflicts. And over the past year in Ukraine, Russian troops have directly damaged that nation’s already vulnerable water systems, including pipelines, pumping stations, and treatment facilities. These repeated attacks on water infrastructure have not only undermined local livelihoods in Ukraine, but they have also polluted surface waters and threatened biodiversity.

In both cases, water plays a key role, serving as a trigger or a weapon in violence—and even as a casualty of violence. And the conflict it sparks demonstrates the high potential for catastrophic consequences for people and the environment. Yet, when managed effectively and cooperatively, water serves as a critical pathway for conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and even sustainable development.

USAID’s recent revision of its Water and Conflict Toolkit provides guidance on how water practitioners can incorporate conflict-sensitivity into water programming to improve the effectiveness of development assistance while mitigating conflict risks. First published in 2014, the toolkit details the ways in which water management intersects with conflict, cooperation, and peacebuilding. Water’s integral role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—and, in particular, SDG 6’s call for universal access to clean water and sanitation for everyone by 2030—makes it imperative for the humanitarian and development communities to design stronger, more conflict-sensitive water interventions in fragile and conflict-affected areas.    

Centering Water, Conflict, and Cross-Sectoral Considerations

Much like the 2014 version did, the latest USAID toolkit begins with a primer on water, conflict, and peacebuilding. This background material spotlights various examples of water-related conflicts across local and transnational scales where competing interests over water quality, quantity, timing, safe access, and availability are directly or indirectly involved.

Yet the new toolkit takes a different tack from its predecessor by presenting consolidated information on both conflict impacts and water’s role in stabilization. Besides infrastructure damage and water contamination, these conflict impacts range from reduced government capacity to enforce water regulations to population displacements. When displaced people compete with host communities, the risk of conflict consequently increases. (This was the case, for instance, when refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war added additional stress to scarce local water supplies in northern Jordan.) Long-term recovery in fragile and conflict-affected settings requires that water interventions be flexibly sequenced and adaptive to changing conditions, such as climate change.

The revised toolkit also breaks new ground by elevating the need for water programming to address several cross-cutting themes: institutional challenges, marginalized groups, climate change, and data and transparency.

For instance, the latest toolkit emphasizes the ways in which marginalized groups—including women, children, Indigenous people, LGBTQI+ people, and persons with disabilities—face unique challenges in accessing water and often have unequal power in its management. Women and children bear the brunt of domestic water collection, which increases their risk of gender-based violence. Indigenous people may be excluded from decision-making due to discrimination and lack of recognition. Addressing such identity-specific vulnerabilities as part of programming requires promoting inclusive development.

Another new section explicates the interdependencies between water, conflict, and other development sectors. The toolkit spotlights six instances: 1) disaster risk reduction, 2) human migration and demographics, 3) agriculture and food security, 4) energy, 5) health and well-being, and 6) environment and ecosystems.

While disasters often are linked by the challenge of having too much or too little water, they also can act as windows of opportunity to encourage cooperation between water users. Investments in climate-resilient infrastructure can help communities hasten recovery, but they must be done in ways that do not increase risks or cause harm. (For instance, when these efforts incorporate inclusive design, or avoid building in hazard-prone areas.)

Water is also critical to agricultural production, and, in turn, food security and agriculture-based livelihoods. Yet agriculture as a sector is the world’s largest consumer of water. (These activities account for almost 90 percent of Yemen’s water use, for instance.) Competition over limited water can spark all sorts of disputes between farmers and herders, or between local people and private or government stakeholders. Water supply interventions should incorporate water’s multiple uses, such as for human, agricultural, and livestock access, to mitigate conflict risks.

Spotlighting Water Programming Strategies

A large part of the new toolkit showcases USAID activities that demonstrate best practices in managing conflicts over water. The aim is to help implementing partners anticipate interactions between water and conflict risks in diverse local contexts. The toolkit divides these cases into three buckets—water programming related to conflict prevention, water programming in conflict-affected contexts, and water programming related to stabilization and peacebuilding—though these specific instances are not mutually exclusive.

To illustrate efforts to mitigate conflict risks, case examples from Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, and Southern Africa show how strengthening local water agencies, supporting community-led initiatives, and leveraging nature-based solutions can build shared resilience. Building space for stakeholder engagement and prioritizing rapid consensus-building can be especially critical to adapting to changing local conditions.

Cases from the Philippines, Niger, Burkina Faso, and South Sudan provide examples of programming in conflict-affected contexts, and demonstrate the need for humanitarian and development actors to coordinate. They also show how to address the needs of displaced populations and host communities, enhance inclusive water resource governance, and prevent gender-based violence.

Effective water management and service delivery can reduce the risk of relapsing into conflict. Examples of USAID activities in Haiti, South Sudan, and Jordan offer lessons in the value of strengthened local institutional capacity, increased access to sustainable water services, and engaged communities to manage water demand—all of which are viable ways to support peacebuilding.

Supporting Effective Water Program Implementation

Without adequate attention to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), water programming can hardly be effective or improve. The toolkit underscores that MEL activities should monitor and evaluate interactions between interventions and contextual conflict dynamics. In this way, practitioners can identify when programming should be halted or adapted to protect target populations and staff. One way to make MEL approaches conflict-sensitive is to incorporate context-specific theories of change, which can help implementers determine what evidence is needed to assess the programming.

A conflict analysis guide for water programming is the final element in the new USAID toolkit. This guide includes key steps and resources to help practitioners follow a structured process for identifying and evaluating conflict risks and interventions. Using this guide and other resources identified in the toolkit can help practitioners promote conflict-sensitive water interventions in fragile areas that exist in the overlap between short-term humanitarian aid and long-term development initiatives.

At a moment when conflicts over water are a growing feature of the global landscape, the revised toolkit not only offers practical aid in addressing them, but also complements other USAID toolkits that also incorporate conflict integration into the agency’s programming.