On March 3, 2011, the Arab Water Academy will have completed training the first group of water diplomats in the Arab region... The 6-month training programme focused mainly on 'water diplomacy' and transboundary water issues.

Yet with all these problems, the most severe threat to Yemen’s future is its water crisis. Yemen is running out of water fast. Experts say that Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, is likely to run out of water by 2020. This kind of water scarcity breeds conflict and instability...

Upstream countries, looking to right what they say are historic wrongs, have joined in an attempt to break Egypt and Sudan’s near-monopoly on the water, threatening a crisis that Egyptian experts said could, at its most extreme, lead to war.

Policymakers need better information about the regional impact of climate change on water supplies, and on ways of adapting to it. For centuries, food production — and thus social development — has depended heavily on access to the water needed to grow crops or rear livestock.

It is in the delta, on some of the most fertile land in the world, that rice farmers have been ordered to plant fewer acres to conserve water as Ethiopia and other nations threaten to siphon away millions of gallons before the river reaches Egypt.

As the contradictions of Asia’s water challenges have been laid bare this summer—with millions affected by flooding while others are hit by droughts—one thing has been made clearer: the coming water crisis could exacerbate already simmering domestic and regional tensions.