When Americans think about water, we often think about daily uses: drinking, cooking, cleaning, and swimming. But around the globe, many people understand water differently. It is a shrinking resource, a cause for conflict and violence, or a reason to lose their livelihoods and leave their homes. 

As of 2016, four billion people annually face extreme water scarcity for at least one month of the year. By 2050, water demand is expected to quadruple, placing an additional one billion people in areas of high-water stress.

The scale of this problem is immense, threatening national security and economic stability. For security practitioners and the public alike, water stress and scarcity is no longer a distant environmental concern; it is a defining challenge of contemporary global stability. 

It’s impossible to overlook the critical role of climate events that intensify existing water and food instability and natural resource management.

I am an expert on water and conflict, having studied some of the most complex situations where water becomes a weapon. I have found that worsening water scarcity fuels conflict around the world. 

In countries from Iran — where the capital, Tehran, is almost running dry — to Morocco and India, unreliable access to water has fueled protests and contributed to the risk of state collapse. 

In Somalia, since the civil war began in the 1990s, climate-driven droughts layered on top of poor water infrastructure have devastated Somalis’ agricultural livelihoods, driving humanitarian crises. Similarly, scholars have noted the winter drought, wheat price fluctuations, and crop failures in China, Russia, and Syria in the years leading up to the Arab uprisings. Although many of these challenges are considered largely political, it’s impossible to overlook the critical role of climate events that intensify existing water and food instability and natural resource management. Together, these stresses contribute to insecurity and unrest.

The Cases of Drugs and Drought

Water-related challenges are particularly salient in Latin America, where declining rainfall may drive drug production and migration. 

In Colombia, for example, prolonged droughts and shifting precipitation patterns have undermined traditional crops, reduced yields, and driven many farmers into deeper economic precarity. Faced with shrinking harvests and rising input costs, farmers in Colombia often turn to coca, a water-intensive crop, as a survival strategy. 

Coca offers guaranteed buyers, higher profit margins, and, in some cases, informal credit from cartels that control local markets. While these crops help local farmers, they also fuel the drug trade, causing rural families to migrate because they feel unsafe. 

Yet people don’t migrate only because they feel unsafe. They also leave when food becomes insecure or they lose their primary sources of income.  Case in point: Many agricultural workers in Latin America are underemployed due to declining rainfall. As wells dry, crops fail, and livestock perish, they look for other ways to feed their families. 

The pattern is consistent: When rainfall declines and agricultural yields fall, migration pressures intensify.

Some find work from cartels, gangs, and other groups that offer wages, protection, and a sense of belonging. For instance, areas of Sinaloa, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila in Mexico are currently under “exceptional drought” conditions. Even so, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Mazatlecos have extorted farmers by requiring a “floor tax” to access water. If farmers refuse to pay then the cartels sabotage their livelihoods. 

Since the takeover of water distribution, crime in Sinaloa has skyrocketed, with more than 900 murders and 1,119 disappearances. Control over water not only generates revenue but also enhances the cartels’ local authority, enabling them to insert themselves where municipal governance is weak.

Ultimately, even small declines in rainfall set off a cascading pattern of human movement: first to nearby towns, then to major cities, and ultimately across borders when local opportunities are exhausted. This dynamic is especially visible in Central America’s Dry Corridor, a region stretching from southern Mexico through Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 

Years of recurrent drought have devastated maize and bean crops, leading to widespread food insecurity and economic distress. Research has shown that during drier years from 2012 to 2018, U.S.-bound migration from the Dry Corridor increased by 70.7% compared to wetter periods. 

The pattern is consistent: When rainfall declines and agricultural yields fall, migration pressures intensify.

How to Pair Water Security with Human and National Security

Around the world, dwindling water supplies — driven by pollution, aquifer depletion, and the accelerating effects of climate change — are heightening tensions within and between states, fueling displacement, and straining fragile governments. These pressures intersect directly with U.S. strategic interests, from humanitarian response and global supply chain security to countering violent extremism and maintaining stability in key partner countries.

The U.S. government can take some solid steps to improve water conditions using other tools and approaches. It can also blunt emerging risks posed by water stress. 

This year is the tenth anniversary of the bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act. The act is designed to address the needs of the 771 million people who still live without safe drinking water. The act also requires the U.S. administration to create a Global Water Strategy every five years; the next deadline is Oct 1, 2027. 

Currently, how rewriting this strategy will proceed is unclear. Funding for much of the action, especially in the development space, has been slashed or put on hold by the administration. 

Yet, in the meantime, the U.S. government can take some solid steps to improve water conditions using other tools and approaches. It can also blunt emerging risks posed by water stress. 

Using a scientific approach, the U.S. administration should employ existing systems that predict and provide early-warning data that can mitigate the impacts of extreme weather on crop yields in Central America and other sensitive regions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has helped to establish gauging networks for weather. 

Other agencies possess tools like the State Department’s Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), NOAA’s Drought Information Systems, NASA’s Landsat Program, GRACE satellites, and other U.S. space-based assets. Taken together, these tools can predict water-related risks and enable early intervention to prevent migration, instability, and conflict.

In the political arena, the legislative branch also has an important role to play by reauthorizing the bipartisan U.S. Global Fragility Act (GFA) passed by Congress in December 2019.  The GFA enables a comprehensive government initiative designed to prevent violent conflict and stabilize conflict-affected areas through a whole-of-government approach. 

The cost of inaction — measured in economic losses, humanitarian crises, and increased security burdens — will be far greater.

President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in 2020 during his first term in office. It focuses on diplomacy, development, and defense to address the root causes of instability in specific pilot countries and regions including Haiti, Libya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, and coastal West Africa. 

The bipartisan legislation — introduced in the House and Senate in 2025 but now stalled on the Hill — allows implementers to add new regions or countries to the list of existing pilot focal areas. Therefore, once the legislation is reauthorized, the implementing agencies should expand the GFA’s scope to include the Dry Corridor where countries are experiencing water stress. 

If the administration is interested in mitigating migration, considering how push factors of water insecurity and violence may be a good place to start. With deep technical expertise, keen scientific and data-gathering capabilities, and the use of a bipartisan legislative vehicle, the U.S. government can mobilize tools across agencies to support smarter water management, risk reduction, and resilience-building at home and abroad.  

Programs under the act should emphasize constructing resilient water infrastructure, improving agricultural practices to make them more water efficient, and enabling more effective water resource management.

The cost of inaction — measured in economic losses, humanitarian crises, and increased security burdens — will be far greater.