Use of hegemony in settlement of international disputes over sources of drinking water

Sources of drinking water are a renewable but limited natural resource that is unevenly distributed on the Earth. The rapid development of human society, this especially including the period from the beginning of the last century up to the present days, has resulted in the increased consumption of water in agriculture, industry and in urban areas. Environmental pollution caused by by-products and climate change, which have been prominent in the last decades, have made water become a resource in globally short supply. The aspiration to dominate the lacking sources of drinking water, especially in arid and sub-arid regions, resulted in the increased number of international disputes. In some cases, they were settled by imposing special conditions that were dictated by economically developed and powerful states that were parties to the dispute. The paper points to the situation with sources of drinking water in the world, the development of international water law in settling international disputes presenting the most striking examples of the use of hegemony in settling the disputes.