On World Water Day, the Open Situation Room (OSR) on 'Achieving Water Security: Towards Innovative Solutions' was held at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Mumbai. The event was part of the Humanitarian Diplomacy Lab - an international initiative of the Global Diplomacy Lab [...] Such OSRs were held in seven cities across the globe including Kathmandu, Bogota, Montreal, Geneva, San Francisco, and, Accra.

The growing recognition of water’s strategic relevance reflects global developments. In the last three years, the Islamic State (ISIS) captured the Tabqa, Tishrin, Mosul, and Fallujah dams on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. ISIS subsequently lost control of all of them, but not before using them to flood or starve downstream populations, to pressure them to surrender. [...] The importance of water in the twenty-first century – comparable to that of oil in the twentieth – can hardly be overstated.

As Syrians continue to flee the conflict that rages in their home country, many via war-torn Libya, or Tunisia, which is struggling to keep its youth from joining ISIS, it's all too clear that the effects of the uprisings that swept the southern Mediterranean belt in 2011 are ongoing. Yet already there is talk of more on the horizon.