Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine just over two years ago upset the larger foreign policy conversations surrounding global stability—and Russia’s role in it. Yet the conflict has brought the concept of water weaponization into the spotlight as well, especially after Russia’s destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam and other civilian infrastructure wreaked havoc in the region.

Marcus King is a scholar in the discipline of environmental security who has long been a leader in the water and conflict space. He has produced significant research on the weaponization of water during conflict, including his recent book, Weaponizing Water: Water Stress and Islamic Extremist Violence in Africa and the Middle East. We spoke with Marcus about the global challenge of water’s weaponization in war to better understand what this looks like in the context of Ukraine. The following is a condensed transcript from that interview.

You frame occurrences of water weaponization in six categories: Strategic Weaponization, Tactical Weaponization, Coercive Weaponization, Unintentional Weaponization, Instrument of Psychological Terror, and Instrument of Extortion or Incentivization. How do these categories differ? Where do they overlap? Which among them is most harmful to civilian populations?

MK: When I put together this list of categories, I thought about how water could be used as a weapon across what I call “the conflict spectrum.” In pre-conflict situations, how water might be involved as a cause of conflict itself? During an ongoing conflict, how water can be weaponized? How can water be used as an instrument of post-conflict, reconstruction, and peacebuilding?

Strategic Weaponization and Tactical Weaponization involve usages of water as techniques on the battlefield.   Strategic weaponization might be something like capturing large water infrastructure, or destroying a large dam. It gives the perpetrator control over a large territory, and is something of strategic value in a battlefield or in a war situation. Tactical weaponization is the use of water in the conduct of war, but on a very particular battlefield, such as diverting a stream to wipe out   enemy formations.

Other categories deal with coercive usages, or involve water as an instrument of extortion or incentivization. When you think of it on that level, especially in insurgent groups, it’s more to do with the idea of capturing the hearts and minds of people in occupied areas. For example. cutting off water from certain villages to then levy taxes or raise money or to bend them to the to their will.

Another example is Unintentional Weaponization. As I write in my book: water is a blunt weapon in the sense that it does tend to backfire. This is when there’s damage to third parties or damage to areas that was not intended. It comes back in a boomerang effect to the perpetrator.

We just passed the two-year anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war. This conflict has brought the issue of water weaponization to the forefront of many people’s minds, particularly Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian dams. How has water weaponization manifested itself in this conflict?

MK: The Wilson Center hosted an event a while back with people from the municipality of Lviv and others which concentrated on one dynamic: the deliberate destruction of civilian water infrastructure. That has happened predominantly on the Russian side, and it is intrinsic to their warfighting methodology. When they besieged Mariupol, for example, they did things like intentionally cut off water as part of that maneuver. In areas where the Russians were occupying, denying access to water on a very local level is just one of the ways in which they held people hostage or terrorized the population.

Another related thing is that it always takes energy to move water, or it takes energy to run water treatment plants. So, the attacks on civilian infrastructure that have destroyed energy systems and grid infrastructure have been another indirect way in which the Russians have weaponized water.

I believe there have been attacks on workers in sanitation plants, and on those who have the technical ability to work on dams. Hydrology engineers are also some of those people have been   targeted by the Russians. It’s another example of how water has been indirectly weaponized.

So, a lot of it has been the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure. At a strategic level, you also have other things. All clues point to the fact that it was the Russians who breached the Nova Kakhovka Dam back in May 2023. That had to do with physical manipulation of the battlefield. They used water weaponization to the disadvantage of the Ukrainians, who weren’t able to attack across the Dnipro River after that had been done.

To some extent, Ukraine has also been culpable of using water as a strategic weapon. But this goes back more to the original war over Crimea which occurred in 2014.

In your book, you focus more on non-state actors’ weaponization of water, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa. How is this similar or different from what we’re seeing now in Russia and Ukraine?

MK: Water’s use as a weapon by sub-national actors is really part of a larger strategy of guerrilla-type warfare; what you might call asymmetrical warfare. Sub-national groups and extremist groups don’t have hard power. They’re trying to manipulate public opinion, and to create a greater impact than they can have physically with a small number of soldiers. So they’re trying to get some sort of a multiplier effect on the battlefield.

The actors that I looked at were al Shabaab, as well as Boko Haram, and ISIS. All three of those extremist groups have what I called a “caliphate project.” They were interested in establishing territorial administration, and weaponizing water was an intrinsic part of doing so. Part of what ISIS wanted to do was levy taxes and raise revenue in order to buy weapons, and so you saw them moving along those lines in terms of trying to create a state. They’re trying to be the administrators. It was less about the water, and more about what they were able to get from the people by virtue of controlling water.

How effective is this water management by nonstate actors?

MK: I think that that varies according to the situation of how much infrastructure there is. If you’re looking at the war in Syria and Iraq, you have existing water infrastructure like dams and irrigation and water treatment facilities. Part of the idea of occupation was to call up the people that had those skills, and to make sure that they were kept in place to be able to operate water in that way.

The other situations that I looked at were more of a desert-based hydrology, where there wasn’t really that sort of infrastructure. For example, al-Shabaab would go dig a borehole, rather than the larger infrastructure that requires technical expertise. In Northwest Nigeria, it was the same idea, but there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure there. So there wasn’t a lot of need for expertise. 

If non-state actors are focused more on gaining legitimacy through water, what are state actors’ motivations, specifically in Russia and Ukraine?

MK: With a state actor, they’re not trying to gain legitimacy. They already have that legitimacy. The question is: is water the best tool? I think that it is more of a question of practicality on the state level. It’s more looking at the correlation of forces on the battlefield.

A state actor probably has more constraints when it comes to the humanitarian cost of destruction of civilian infrastructure. So their calculations are a lot different. They are at that state level, and they do have to think a little bit more about condemnation from the international community. So there’s a different set of considerations that go into it.

But to me, water weaponization is not necessarily special. It can also just be collateral damage as part of this larger strategy of deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure that takes place.

In an explainer you wrote for the Center for Climate and Security, you suggest a few potential solutions to limiting the weaponization in this conflict and on a wider scale. How can the international community hold state actors accountable for water weaponization?

MK: Sub-national actors, especially Islamic extremist groups, are not going to be persuaded by international law, whereas, hopefully, state actors can be. One of the analogies that I’ve drawn before is thinking about what war crimes [Russian President Vladimir] Putin already has been accused of. For example, one is the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for that activity.

So, the question is, then, would there be an instrument to build deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure into that same sort of framework? There’s a little bit of precedent for that with President Bashir of Sudan. When he was brought before the International Criminal Court, part of the claims against him had to do with environmental destruction.

There’s also the Geneva Convention. If a country does belong to the Geneva Convention, there’s the additional protocol II, which prohibits the destruction of water-related infrastructure. There’s also the environmental modification (ENMOD) treaty for countries which are party to that, which prohibits the modification of the environment for purposes of war. So there is architecture out there.

The idea is that countries will follow international law. But, of course, the enforcement mechanisms can be lacking. So it would take states to go in and do things like impose sanctions. But look at all the sanctions that the United States is imposing to limited effect. So I think you also can bring environmental considerations into those larger ideas of how and why to impose sanctions.

On the non-state level, my idea has always been to try to address the scarcity of water that enables weaponization to begin with. The way to do that would be things like create more resilient water infrastructure, and provide more access to water, even in situations of climate impact. Mobilizing climate finance for water-resilient projects, for example, in order to shrink that footprint of global water scarcity. If you can shrink that footprint a little bit, then the amount of water which is out there to be weaponized continues to decline.

I also can think of things in terms of the three levels of US foreign policy: Defense, Development, and Diplomacy. On the international level, we’re really looking at diplomacy as the foregrounding vehicle to try to address water weaponization. Development is also key so we can continue to have resilient water infrastructure and support those projects. Defense would entail counterinsurgency approaches of understanding that water could be weaponized—and then putting that knowledge to work on the ground.   

You’ve been a leader on this issue for a while. Do you feel like the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza are creating a shift in the broader awareness of water weaponization? Does it elevate water in any way, or has it resonated beyond the water community, or the environmental security community?

MK: There is something between the war in Ukraine and especially the situation now in Gaza that has brought it more to the forefront of people’s minds. There was already a lot of focus on water weaponization in the environmental community, as you know. But I think what we’ve really seen now is the knowledge that those desalination plants in Gaza are down. People are thinking about just how important desalinization is and how important that energy-water nexus is.

So I think that nexus has been appreciated a lot more. It’ll be interesting to see if it does change how investments or policies advance. I think people will understand just how vital and intrinsic water is to the rebuilding effort in Gaza and Ukraine.