Even today there are disputes over water behind many armed conflicts, e.g. the Arab-Israeli conflict. For several decades experts from various fields have been pointing out a risk of causing many problems in connection with control over water supply. .
Water has been always a strategic resource that influences the existence of human societies. Every country, if it wants to survive, must provide its population with enough water. Water is a condition for development of population, agricultural production and industrial output, and last but not least, hygienic and epidemiological stability. Thus freshwater resources are a limiting factor of civilization development and the future trend will undoubtedly cause that they will become one of the greatest national wealth of the countries that will use them. .
M. T. Klare compares water to crude oil. In his opinion they are both indispensable for the full scale of human activities, their resources are depletable, and can be replaced only with considerable and costly effort. Additionally, with growing population their consumption increases, and simultaneously the concern that their supply in the near future will be exhausted grows. Another common feature is that both crude oil and freshwater resources lying underground cross borders and develop a conflict potential. There is a well-known conflict between Saudi Arabia and Jordan over the al-Disi aquifer. .
In the future, creation of conflicts may be linked with using the deposits of underground waters that are located in disregard of borders of countries. Using underground water supply in arid areas needs relatively high investment; therefore, unlike crude oil, there have not been any bigger conflicts over the resources. A wide-ranging programme for their use that Libya started to implement may, however, create a precedent since the deposits are non-renewable and the neighboring countries such as Egypt, Chad, Nigeria and Sudan may be harmed.