Guwahati, March 23 -- bySamuel Thomas and Sushmita Kunwar

It is almost a cliche to say that the wars of the future will be fought over water. Most of such predictions are focused on the contested geographies of river basins, their complex histories, and the claims and counterclaims of riparian states.

Almost completely overlooked, however, are the consequences of the rapid disappearance of freshwater sources in hills and mountains.

The drying up of local water sources are described as a slow-onset disaster. These may be less dramatic than the instances of too much water that struck communities across the valleys of the Hindu Kush Himalaya with such ferocity last monsoon, perhaps most notably inSikkim, Uttarakhand, andHimachal Pradesh, ...