Some time ago, while I was speaking to a gathering of college students at a district-level function near Talcher in Odisha, a young girl in the audience raised her hand and asked a question that has stayed with me ever since.
“Why,” she asked with earnest frustration, “do you keep asking us to use our brains?”
It was a remarkably simple question, yet it instantly stripped away the academic jargon that usually surrounds environmental discourse. Her query gave me a rare opportunity to speak about something much deeper than mere intellectual capacity or raw intelligence. I told her that humanity’s greatest challenge today is not a lack of knowledge. We are acutely aware of our planetary boundaries. We know, scientifically and empirically, that forests matter. We know that rivers are our lifelines, that groundwater aquifers are finite, and that ecological systems are deeply, inextricably interconnected.
Yet, despite possessing this vast reservoir of knowledge, we continue to behave as though nature exists exclusively for our convenience. We extract relentlessly. We consume voraciously. We divert rivers, store massive quantities behind concrete walls, and maximise our immediate gains. In our interactions with the natural world, we usually ask only one highly transactional question: What can nature do for us today?
I described this extractive, anthropocentric mindset to the students as “Ego.” I contrasted it with a radically different paradigm – “Eco.” An Eco mindset is a way of thinking that fundamentally recognises that human beings are not separate from, or superior to, nature. Rather, we are merely one small part of a much larger, unimaginably complex living system.
That conversation in Talcher has stayed with me because nowhere is the distinction between Ego and Eco more critical — and more urgent — than in the way we think about, manage, and share water. And no one else than the younger generation need to consider this with utmost urgency!
Recently, while speaking at the Jalvayu Akhra in Ranchi, I was outlining what I call a “connected commons conservation approach.” My core argument was that we desperately need to move beyond looking at water merely through the narrow lens of immediate human utility — calculating only how much can be stored in reservoirs, diverted through canals, pumped for irrigation, or consumed by urban centres.
During the open discussion, a local development professional asked a very legitimate, commonly held question: “Why are we not utilising every single drop of water? Why should so much river water just be allowed to flow aimlessly into the sea?”
It is a question many of us would instinctively ask. I have seen many government officials, professionals, engineers and development sector professionals asking this too, often, in order to justify large dams. It sounds entirely logical to the modern mind. But it also profoundly reveals how deeply the utility mindset has colonised our thinking. We have been conditioned to consider water that reaches the sea as water that has been somehow “lost” or “wasted.”
A river does not suddenly cease to be useful the moment it slips past our dams and reaches the ocean. River systems and oceans are vital, integrated components of grand interconnected ecological processes. Freshwater flows are absolutely essential to sustain downstream ecosystems. They carry vital sediments that maintain coastal deltas and nutrients that feed marine food webs. They support fragile wetlands, dilute estuarine salinity, and serve as the breeding grounds for critical fisheries. They form an irreplaceable part of the larger hydrological and climatic cycles that dictate our monsoon patterns. In the Mahanadi inter-state river water dispute, which I have been following much before it actually happened, the lower riparian state Odisha subscribed to these arguments in its papers put before the Tribunal that is judging the dispute.
The objective of modern water management, therefore, cannot simply be to capture every drop in a concrete basin. Sometimes, the absolute best ecological, long-term use of water is simply to allow it to flow. The question we should be asking is not “How can we dam it all?” but rather: How much water can we sustainably use while ensuring the river system remains healthy and functional?
That distinction is rapidly becoming a matter of survival — not only for environmental sustainability, but for global peace and security.
I have been reading the 2025 Ecological Threat Report (ETR) from the Institute for Economics & Peace that offers a deeply sobering perspective on what happens when we fail to manage our resources. The report examines ecological threats across 3,125 sub-national areas in 172 countries, meticulously analysing the volatile intersection between water risk, food insecurity, demographic pressure, societal resilience, and peace.
One of its most alarming findings is the stark correlation between extreme weather and violence. In regions where wet and dry seasons are becoming more extreme, there are, on average, four times as many conflict-related deaths as in areas where rainfall seasonality has remained stable. Right now, around two billion people — approximately one-quarter of humanity — live in regions experiencing moderate to severe increases in rainfall variability.
The report does not suggest a simplistic narrative where climate change or a delayed monsoon automatically triggers a war. The relationship is far more complex. Ecological stress acts as an insidious risk multiplier. We see it often in the Mahanadi basin nowadays, if we wish to observe these factors and go beyond just a “water sharing formula” between the two states entangled in the conflict.
Consider the chain reaction: When water access becomes uncertain, neighbouring farmers begin to compete fiercely for diminishing irrigation. Communities clash over ancient wells, shrinking grazing areas, and dwindling rivers. As agriculture falters, food insecurity spikes. Livelihoods quietly disappear, pushing desperate people to migrate. In areas where poverty, weak institutional governance, inequality, or historical grievances already simmer, this added environmental stress is often the spark that turns quiet competition into violent confrontation. One can see all these happening in the basin of a dying Mahanadi.
Eventually, an ecological problem morphs into a human security crisis. In the worst circumstances, it becomes a tragedy of death and displacement. The ETR report notes that natural hazards alone triggered a staggering 45 million short-term internal displacements across 163 countries in 2024. These are not merely sterile environmental statistics on a spreadsheet; they represent millions of families abruptly uprooted, generations of livelihoods disrupted, and social fabrics torn apart under enormous stress. The Tribunal, in the Mahanadi case, is not tasked to look into such factors. And our governments don’t generate such data to be able to plan conservation and related action at a River Basin Level.
When the Mahanadi conflict actually happened, a decade after I had predicted it, we at the Mahanadi River Waterkeeper alliance initiated a “Mahanadi Peace Initiative” through which we urged both the governments to start a dialogue process both within their states – with the communities and others – as well as with the other government. However, it did not happen. Our stand remained the same all through despite the case going to a Tribunal. Recently, the Tribunal itself has suggested for a negotiation beyond legal conflicts.
The ETR gives us new ways to think about such conflicts — both inter-state and trans-boundary. Buried within these daunting statistics, that the ETR talks about, is a profound and hopeful message. Despite decades of cinematic warnings and geopolitical anxiety over impending “water wars,” the ETR notes a fascinating historical truth: there have been almost no interstate wars fought exclusively over water in the modern era.
In fact, the opposite is true. In the second half of the twentieth century alone, at least 157 international freshwater treaties were signed. Time and again, countries have actively chosen cooperation over armed confrontation when it comes to shared rivers.
Water undeniably creates competition. But shared dependence on a fragile water source can also serve as a powerful catalyst for cooperation.
The Indus is a particularly striking example for us in South Asia. The ETR highlights the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan as one of the most resilient conflict-resolution mechanisms in modern history. It has survived six decades of wars, border skirmishes, and deep political animosity. If two countries with such a fraught, volatile history can recognize the existential need for institutional mechanisms around a shared river, surely there is a profound lesson here for how we manage rivers within our own borders.
This is precisely why, in my ongoing work on the Mahanadi River basin, I have strongly advocated for a holistic cooperation framework to resolve inter-state water disputes, rather than relying on bitter tribunal litigations. But true cooperation cannot simply be about politicians sitting in a room dividing a fixed mathematical quantity of water (measured in cusecs) between states.
We must radically change how we conceptualise the river itself. A river is not a series of politically separated stretches of water. It is a single, uninterrupted, living ecological system. An upstream political decision about a dam alters downstream sediment flows, devastating agriculture hundreds of miles away. Relentless groundwater extraction in one district dries up surface-water streams in the next. The destruction of urban wetlands reduces natural flood storage, leading to catastrophic downstream flooding.
Our agreements must therefore encompass the entire river basin, transcending arbitrary state boundaries. They must account for environmental flows, groundwater recharge, forest catchments, climate projections, and the ecological needs of the river itself.
The most empowering aspect of this crisis is that water cooperation does not have to wait for an international treaty or a sweeping national policy. It can, and must, begin in a single village.
When a local community comes together to desilt and restore its ancestral pond, they are building climate resilience. When a farmer adopts techniques to improve soil moisture and reduce unnecessary flood-irrigation, they are alleviating pressure on stressed groundwater aquifers. When a town fiercely protects its local wetlands from real estate encroachment, it is preserving invaluable natural infrastructure.
These may appear to be small, isolated actions. But collectively, they address the very root conditions that turn ecological stress into social conflict. Peace is often built quietly, long before anyone labels it “peacebuilding.” It is built daily through trust, fairness, and the responsible, equitable management of shared resources.
Perhaps it is time we fundamentally rethink what “using every drop” actually means. Using every drop does not mean humans must extract every drop. Some water must recharge the earth. Some must sustain the wetlands. Some must carry life downstream. Nature is not just a provider of water; nature is a user of water.
The old Ego-driven question was: “How much water belongs to us?”
The new Eco-driven question must be: “How do we ensure the system remains healthy for everyone — including ecosystems and future generations?”
Let our rivers become corridors of cooperation rather than lines of conflict. Let us stop seeing water in isolated bits and pieces and start seeing it as a connected common. And most importantly, let us teach the next generation to use their brains not merely to invent new ways to extract from nature, but to finally understand the delicate connections that sustain our very existence.
Because ultimately, we cannot secure our share of water by destroying the system that produces it. Conserving it is no longer just an environmental necessity — it is the most practical, urgent investment we can make in preventing tomorrow's wars.
Ranjan Panda is a convenor at Water Initiatives. He writes on water, environment, and climate change issues concerning the vulnerable communities, including youth, women & indigenous peoples.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth