The balance of national power, lives of millions of refugees and the fate of the earth’s food supply could be determined by who controls the earth’s major water supplies.

Erwin Klaas, former ISU professor in ecology, presented a talk on the potential for water wars in the 21st century Thursday at the Ames City Auditorium. He spoke to 140 members of the ISU College for Seniors, a program that offers weekly short courses for those 50 years and older.

“Mark Twain once said ‘there’s only two things worth fighting over: whisky and water.’ Since the very birth of human civilization millions of lives have been shaped by control of water supplies, at least as much as religions or ideologies,” Klaas said.

Water control affects many areas of society, especially the environment, he said. Irrigation, which is the principal means of agricultural development, is harming farmland worldwide.

“There are two problems with irrigation,” Klaas said. “The first problem is that it depletes aquifers, which are pre-historic water sources that are irreplaceable. The second problem is the buildup of salt — called salienization — in the farmlands. The land is slowly becoming poisoned.”

He pointed to China as the most obvious example of over-irrigation. With 70 percent of China’s farmland irrigated, the strains of water depletion will soon hit the country. In addition, the Three Gorges Dam, which will increase irrigation potential and will be the largest dam in the world, “will be an ecological disaster,” he said.

The importance of water has created severe political conflicts between nations, Klaas said.

Across the world, most river basins, which are major sources of fresh water, are shared by different countries. The battles over ownership of these water supplies are the source of severe political conflict.

Klaas used the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as examples. Both rivers begin in Turkey and provide water to nearly 90 percent of the populations of Syria and Iraq, he said. Their water supply could be threatened by Turkey’s new dam projects.

“Turkey is spending $32 billion to create 22 dams which will irrigate millions of square miles of land. However, Syria will lose 40 percent of its river and Iraq will lose 85 percent of its river,” he said.

While Iraq is a victim of water wars, it is also a perpetrator of the crime, Klaas said. In southern Iraq a group called the Marsh Arabs lived in the marshlands for nearly 2,000 years. However, a new canal proposed by Saddam Hussein called for those marshlands to be drained, resulting in the destruction of the Marsh Arabs’ homeland.

“The marshes have been completely eliminated and with it the culture of the Marsh Arabs,” he said.

Conflicts involving water sources are a key part of politics, but they aren’t new, said Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science. In 1503 when the Italian city-states of Pisa and Florence were at war, Pisa used its position at the source of the Arno River as leverage against its enemy by diverging the river from Pisa.

Klaas said the solutions to environmental and political water problems didn’t involve resources, because water experts believe the earth has enough water to support three or four billion additional people.

The solution involves taking action, which leaders have failed to do, he said.

“The earth is facing a serious water crisis caused by how humans have mismanaged water. We know most of what the [water] problems are and a good deal about where they are,” Klaas said. “Yet lack of inertia at leadership levels means we fail to take the needs seriously and put the concepts to work.”