---
title: "Water-related conflicts hit a thirty-year high, and most were attacks on people"
description: "The Pacific Institute counted 420 water-related conflicts in 2024, up from 235 in 2022. Fifty-five percent were casualty events, where water systems or the people using them were hit. The places named as most at risk are Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, Iran, the Gulf and Ukraine."
category: "Science"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/science
author: "Thomas Berger"
published: 2026-08-23T10:39:57.000Z
updated: 2026-08-23T10:39:57.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/water-related-conflicts-hit-a-thirty-year-high-and-most-were-attacks-on-people
tags: ["water", "conflict", "climate", "infrastructure", "humanitarian"]
---
# Water-related conflicts hit a thirty-year high, and most were attacks on people

The Pacific Institute counted 420 water-related conflicts in 2024, up from 235 in 2022. Fifty-five percent were casualty events, where water systems or the people using them were hit. The places named as most at risk are Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, Iran, the Gulf and Ukraine.

The Pacific Institute, an American water think tank, recorded 420 water-related conflicts in 2024 through its Water Conflict Chronology, up from 235 in 2022, a rise of 78 percent, [as reported by Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/where-water-conflicts-pose-the-biggest-threat-in-2026).

The breakdown matters more than the total. Fifty-five percent of the 2024 incidents were casualty events, 28 percent were trigger events and 2 percent involved water used as a weapon.

## What those categories mean

The three-way split is the useful part of this data, because "water conflict" covers things that are not alike.

A trigger event is a dispute that starts over water: a fight between farmers and herders over a well, a protest over supply. A weapon event is water used deliberately as an instrument, by flooding or by cutting off a city. A casualty event is water infrastructure, or the people at it, being damaged in a conflict fought over something else.

That last category is now the majority, and it points somewhere specific. The rise is not mainly about scarcity producing new wars. It is about existing wars destroying the pipes, pumps, treatment plants and reservoirs of the places they are fought in.

## The places named

In Gaza, UNICEF is cited as finding that about 90 percent of water and sanitation infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. Up to 70 percent of people cannot access minimum water needs and 90 percent face water insecurity, with 1.9 million of 2.1 million people displaced. Medecins Sans Frontieres is cited as reporting that water prices have risen by up to 500 percent.

In the West Bank, settler attacks have damaged Palestinian water infrastructure, and raids on the Ein Samiya wells cut supply to about 100,000 people.

In Sudan, about 12 million have been displaced since April 2023 in a humanitarian crisis affecting more than 30 million, with attacks on water infrastructure documented in Darfur.

In Iran, desalination plants and reservoirs have been damaged since February 28. Some reservoirs are up to 92 percent depleted, and levels at Mashhad have dropped below 3 percent. Desalination plants have also been damaged in Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE.

In Ukraine, 4.3 million people have received safe-water assistance and 12.7 million need support, with 10 million now lacking reliable access to safe water.

## Why the Gulf figures are the frightening ones

The Iranian and Gulf numbers describe a different mechanism from the others, and it is worth separating.

A pipe destroyed by a shell can be repaired. A reservoir at 3 percent cannot be repaired, because nothing is broken. Desalination is the answer several Gulf states have built their water security on, and it converts a water problem into an energy and infrastructure problem: the plants must run continuously, they are large and fixed, and a country that meets most of its demand this way has concentrated its water supply into a small number of targets.

That is why damage to desalination plants in four countries appears in the same report as reservoir depletion in a fifth. Both are about the same vulnerability approached from opposite directions.

## What the numbers are and are not

The Chronology counts documented incidents. A rising count can mean more conflict, better documentation, or both, and the report we read does not separate those. It is a record of what happened rather than a forecast of what will.

The article names no individuals and quotes nobody. We verified it from a single publication and could not independently confirm the figures attributed within it to UNICEF, Medecins Sans Frontieres or others.

## Sources

- [Where water conflicts pose the biggest threat in 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/where-water-conflicts-pose-the-biggest-threat-in-2026)