Fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the potential for conflict arising from competition over essential resources, particularly water.
Kofi Annan's quote reflects the alarming reality that as nations compete for limited water resources, tensions could escalate into violent conflicts. Water is a fundamental necessity for life, and its scarcity can create desperate situations, leading to disputes that threaten peace and stability. This observation serves as a warning about the importance of managing water resources collaboratively to prevent future conflicts.
In practice
During a conference on sustainable development, this quote could be used to emphasize the need for cooperative water management practices.
If you have a problem and you can't find a solution, you meet again tomorrow and you keep talking until you find a solution. You can disagree with behavior or a particular position, but you do not resort to calling an opponent worthless.
Let us remember the large numbers of citizens who, day in and day out, through acts of volunteerism large and small, bring hope to so many of the world's disadvantaged. Let us ensure that this wonderful resource, available in abundance to every nation, is recognized and supported as it works towards a more prosperous and peaceful world.
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups. We can love what we are, without hating what β and who β we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings.
Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention.
It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity.
It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections.
Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.
The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.
I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year.
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