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Water scarcity seldom starts wars, but wars increasingly degrade vital water systems on which health and recovery depend, creating a cycle that reinforces ongoing fragility and violence, warn experts in The BMJ's climate issue.

Rohit Ramchandani and colleagues at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health argue that attacks on water systems are attacks on health systems and should be counted, contested and prepared for as such.

Water compounds conflict but is seldom the only cause, they explain. Syria's 2007–09 drought, for example, is often cited as triggering the 2011 uprising, yet data show that agriculture rebounded strongly in 2010, and prewar migration was largely internal, temporary and adaptive.

Similarly, Lake Chad in west-central Africa shrank by up to 90% between the 1960s and 2000, yet violence escalated after 2010 even as water levels were stabilizing.

The danger lies less in scarcity itself than in how its costs are distributed, they write, which deepens grievances, particularly when the least powerful bear the burden of adjustment as freshwater systems fail.

They note that in 2024, the Pacific Institute recorded 420 water-related violent events, 78% more than in 2022, with 61% involving direct attacks on water infrastructure.

S. strike on an Iranian desalination plant cutting water to 30 villages on Qeshm Island, an Iranian drone attack damaging a plant in Bahrain, and alleged targeting of two reservoirs in Sirik supplying water to 20,000 homes.

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