Introduction
The Water Conflict Chronology was developed and has been maintained by the Pacific Institute for over three decades. Additions, modifications, and updates to the Chronology are posted periodically, with major revisions approximately annually since 2018. In 2025, more than 840 new entries were added to the database including events through the middle of 2025. The methods described below refer to the process used for these updates. Additions to the database are enabled by reviewing and integrating information from media reports, conflict studies, and publicly available databases that track violence and conflict around the world. The databases that were used are listed in the Sources section below.
Forms of Conflict
Events are categorized based on three forms of conflict. Some events involve more than one form of conflict.
- Casualty: When water resources, systems, or people are intentionally or incidentally harmed.
- Trigger: When tensions or disputes over water resources cause or contribute to a conflict, such as when there is a dispute over the control of water or water systems, or when the lack of access to basic water services triggers violence.
- Weapon: When water resources or water systems are deliberately used as tools or weapons in conflict.
Criteria for Including an Event
- Events are included when water resources, water or sanitation systems, infrastructure, equipment, or people associated with water resources have been a trigger, casualty, or weapon in violent conflict.
- Only events involving freshwater are included, except where saline or brackish water sources or systems are used as a water supply.
- Events, including protests, are included if they involve violence (injuries or deaths) or threats of violence (such as verbal threats, military maneuvers, and shows of force).
- Events where the harm caused by water management is unintended or incidental are excluded. For example, displacement caused by dam construction or harm from accidental dam failure does not qualify.
- Events related solely to naturally occurring extreme events (e.g., flooding) does not qualify.
- The use of water cannons for crowd control purposes does not qualify.
- Events are combined (“lumped”) into a single entry when details are similar enough to suggest that they are either the same event, are closely connected, or form part of a related action. For example, a coordinated attack on a country’s water infrastructure across multiple regions on the same night, or a single group attacking a village over the course of several days.
Other Details Included for Each Event
Country
The country assigned to each event most commonly indicates the location of the event. When the event is a threat (rather than a physical occurrence), then the country listed is the location of where the water resource or water system that is threatened exists. If the event occurs in one country but actors from multiple countries are involved, all countries involved are assigned to the event. Two or more countries may be listed if the event occurs in two or more places, or, if the event is in a disputed region.
Region
All entries in the Water Conflict Chronology have been categorized according to the United Nations (UN) Geographic Regions (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, accessed in 2025), which include Continental Regions (Level I), Sub-Regions (Level II) and Intermediary Regions (Level III). We categorize entries by Level II Sub-Regions. Level I and Level II are presented in the table below.
| Level I | Level II |
|---|---|
| Africa | Northern Africa |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | |
| Americas | Latin America & the Caribbean |
| North America | |
| Asia | Central Asia |
| Eastern Asia | |
| Southeast Asia | |
| Southern Asia | |
| Western Asia | |
| Europe | Eastern Europe |
| Northern Europe | |
| Southern Europe | |
| Western Europe | |
| Oceania | Australia & New Zealand |
| Melanesia | |
| Micronesia | |
| Polynesia |
Mapping and Location Assignment
To map entries, the latitude and longitude of each event were derived from the location provided in the source. When a single entry included one or more related (“lumped”) events occurring in multiple locations, a broader representative location was used. For example, if an entry included events in two cities in Yemen, the country’s centroid was used to assign coordinates. When the precise event location could not be determined, a generalized location was selected instead. Google Earth Pro, Google Maps, and OpenStreetMap were used to identify and verify locations, with coordinates recorded in decimal degrees.
While every effort was made to ensure accuracy and provide comprehensive information, the placement of the event locations on the map cannot be guaranteed. In some cases, exact locations were unavailable, unreported, or subject to translation or interpretation errors. Additionally, many locally used place names are not captured in geographic information systems such as Google Earth Pro or within the predominantly western, English-language sources used to compile the Chronology.
Sources
A source is provided for each entry. For the 2018 Water Conflict Chronology update, internet searches using terms such as “conflict database” and “war database” were conducted to identify online repositories of violent conflict events involving fresh water. These searches yielded several new sources used to expand the Chronology. Below is a list of each new source including web URLs and date of the most recent download or page review.
The list is not exhaustive and will continue to evolve as new sources are discovered. Additional data and information are gathered from media reports, international and non-governmental groups, personal accounts, and fieldwork.
The Princeton University Library’s Politics Resources Guide — which includes a sub-section on conflict and security datasets — was also reviewed. All sources categorized under “Conflict, Political Violence, and Peace Data” were evaluated for water-related violent events; only those listed below were found to be searchable for such content.
Contributions of new entries, or corrections to existing ones, are welcomed and encouraged.
For submissions, corrections, or questions please contact us at info@pacinst.org or fill out the form below.
Data Sources
1. Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset (ACLED)
https://www.acleddata.com/
Date of most recent download: 5/19/2025
Citation: Raleigh, Clionadh, Andrew Linke, Havard Hegre and Joakim Karlsen. 2010. “Introducing ACLED-Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.” Journal of Peace Research. 47(5) 651-660. Data Exported May 19, 2025. https://www.acleddata.com/data/.
2. Global Terrorism Database (GTD)
https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
Date of most recent download: 3/3/2022
Citation: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2019). Global Terrorism Database. Retrieved from https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd.
3. Global Witness Land and Environmental Defenders Annual Reports
https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/
Date of the most recent review: 8/1/2025
Citation: Global Witness. N.d. “Land and Environmental Defenders.” Annual Reports website. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/
4. Issue Correlates of War
http://www.paulhensel.org/icow.html
Date of most recent download: 2/2/2018
Citation: Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Thomas E. Sowers II, and Clayton L. Thyne (2008), “Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, 1 (February): 117-143.
5. Murdered for Their Rivers: A Roster of Fallen Dam Fighters by International Rivers
https://www.internationalrivers.org/murdered-for-their-rivers-a-roster-of-fallen-dam-fighters/
Date of the most recent review: 10/24/2025
Citation: International Rivers. N.d. “Murdered for Their Rivers: A Roster of Fallen Dam Fighters.” Online list. https://www.internationalrivers.org/murdered-for-their-rivers-a-roster-of-fallen-dam-fighters/
6. RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents
https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html
Date of the most recent download: 2/6/2018
Citation: RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents. https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html. Accessed on February 6, 2018.
7. Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD)
https://www.strausscenter.org/scad.html
Date of most recent download: 2/2/2018
Citation: Cullen S. Hendrix and Idean Salehyan. 2018. “Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD).” https://www.strausscenter.org/scad.html/. Accessed February 2, 2018.
8. UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Datasets
http://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/
Date of most recent download: 1/11/2022
Dataset Names: UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) Global version 21.1
Citation 1: Pettersson, Therese, Shawn Davis, Amber Deniz, Garoun Engström, Nanar Hawach, Stina Högbladh, Margareta Sollenberg & Magnus Öberg. 2021. “Organized violence 1989-2020, with a special emphasis on Syria.” Journal of Peace Research. 58(4).
Citation 2: Sundberg, Ralph, and Erik Melander. 2013. “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research. 50(4) 523-532.
Citation 3: Croicu, Mihai and Ralph Sundberg. 2017. “UCDP GED Codebook version 17.2.” Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.
9. Yemen Data Project
https://yemendataproject.org/data/
Date of most recent download: 3/3/2022
Citation: Yemen Data Project. No Date. Airwar dataset. https://yemendataproject.org/data/. Accessed March 3, 2022.
Additional Sources
Other sources that have not yet been investigated for potential water-related conflict entries include:
- Centro Nacional De Memoria Histórica
- Conflict and Peace Data Bank
- Data Development for International Research (DDIR) – Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
- Foreign Broadcast Information Services (A US CIA database)
- Global Event Data Systems
- International Crisis Behavior Project
- Lexis-Nexis
- World News Connection
Contribute or Contact
Help us keep the Chronology up to date. For submissions, corrections, or questions please contact us at info@pacinst.org or fill out the form below.