given ever rising levels of local water stress see prologue section lii combined with the fact that there are international rivers and transboundary aquifers shared by countries un a it could be expected that waterrelated conflicts have been increasing andor are likely to increase in the future however current evidence does not fully support this hypothesis conflicts are often difficult to attribute to a single reason however water is often one among several contributing factors they can also be categorized based on the use impact or effect that water had within the conflict