Moving borders from the periphery to the center: River basins, political boundaries, and water management policy (original) (raw)
Cross-border basins today and forever
Regions and Cohesion
This note presents an account of transboundary basins on a global and regional scale throughout history. The authors introduce the special section on transboundary basins, presenting their constant increase and profound complexity. Regions & Cohesion has shown a permanent interest in this subject, from its first publications and, in particular, with the 2014 special issue that addressed different theoretical, methodological, and case studies in different continents. The three readings that make up this section address contemporary water border contexts and Mexico–U.S. policy where multi- and transdisciplinary challenges continue.
Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of Thought [abstract]
2002
Wilier is a “fugitive" resource in the sense that it flows naturally from one place to another, from one reserve to another (eg. groundwater to surface), and from one physical state (solid, liquid and gas) to another. Titus “trans-boundary" can mean many things including: transitions from wet to arid zones, from upstream to downstream, from one country or province to the next etc. The Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (1992) defines “transboundary waters" to mean “any surface or ground waters which mark, cross or are located on the boundaries between two or more states." Emerging issues in water resources emanate from three categories of problems: (1) transboundary water availability; (2) transboundary groundwater allocation, management, and conservation: and (3) transboundary water quality. Transboundary fluctuations and changes in river flow can be attributed to (1) climate variations and change on severa...
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2015
Strict hydrologic definitions of basins coupled with technological advances including the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems have given us more accurate and detailed knowledge than ever before about the scale and extent of transboundary waters. This information has had both research and policy impact. The knowledge of the vast number and extent of basins has been used to bring attention to the overall issue of transboundary water management and understand how and why countries conflict and cooperate over water. Combining this information with ideas embedded in legal instruments such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses has given us new ways to look at the adequacy, and inadequacy, of existing transboundary institutions and to suggest policy change and institution building. But do precise data and clearly codified definitions always improve our understanding and decision making? Might they even lead us to incorrect conclusions and poor priority setting? This paper examined how the combination of universalized basin scale principles for international water management and increased mapping precision has resulted in policy prescriptions that sometimes run counter to what negotiators and managers have consistently and thoughtfully done in practice. The conclusion is not a call to cease using new technology nor to end the search for principles to guide our resource management actions. Rather it is a call for caution and balance as we apply technology and logic to specific locations in a complex world.
Managing the Yellow River: Questions of Borders, Boundaries and Access
2012
In this paper, we characterise the problems of the Yellow River in order to assess the significance of borders, boundaries and access in understanding the management of water. Events and conditions in particular localities have local causes; and in this sense the bounding of regions is significant. Yet borders and boundaries are permeable, permitting causes also to derive from conditions in neighbouring and distant regions.
Assessment of transboundary river basins for potential hydro-political tensions
Global Environmental Change
This paper presents a systematic, global assessment of transboundary watersheds that identifies regions more likely to experience hydro-political tensions over the next decade and beyond based upon environmental, political, and economic indicators. The development of new water infrastructure in transboundary basins can strain relationships among fellow riparians as the impacts of new dams and diversions are felt across borders. Formal arrangements governing transboundary river basins, such as international water treaties and river basin organizations, provide a framework for dialogue and negotiation, thus contributing to assuaging potential disputes. Our study examines these two issues in tandem − the stresses inherent in development and the mitigating impact of institutions − and maps the risk of potential hydro-political tensions that exist where basins may be ill-equipped to deal with transboundary disputes triggered by the construction of new dams and diversions. We also consider several factors that could exacerbate those hydropolitical tensions in the near future, including changes in terrestrial water storage, projected changes in water variability, per capita gross national income, domestic and international armed conflicts, and recent history of disputes over transboundary waters. The study points to the vulnerability of several basins in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central America, the northern part of the South American continent, the southern Balkans as well as in different parts of Africa, where new water infrastructure is being built or planned, but formal transboundary arrangements are absent. Moreover, in some of these regions there is a concomitance of several political, environmental and socioeconomic factors that could exacerbate hydropolitical tensions. This study contributes to the understanding of how the recent proliferation of development accompanied with unfavourable socioeconomic and environmental indicators may influence global hydropolitical resilience.
International Rivers as Boundaries
Water International, 2000
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Water Science & Technology, 2012
South Africa's water resources are unequally distributed over space and time and an already stressed water resource situation will only be exacerbated by climate change if current predictions are correct. The potential for conflict over increasingly strained water resources in South Africa is thus very real. In order to deal with these complex problems, national legislation is demanding that water resource management be decentralized to the local level where active participation can take place in an integrated manner in accordance with the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). However, administrative and political boundaries rarely match those of catchments as, throughout South Africa, rivers have been employed extensively to delineate administrative and political boundaries at a number of spatial scales. The aim of this research is to determine if rivers act as dividing or uniting features in a socio-political landscape and whether topography will influence...
Boundaries as tools for sustainable water management
ERSA conference papers, 2005
Accross river basins water can have different types of values according not only to its production costs but also due to changes in the willingness to pay across the territory. The generalized view that integrated water management must be made through a centralised mechanism does ...
Changing the course of transboundary water management
Natural Resources Forum, 1997
It is no small coincidence that the Latin word rivalis. from which we derive 'rival', originally referred to a person living on the opposite bank of a river. Indeed, the growing number of rivalries over river water is among the signature features of geopolitics today. As farms and cities, states and provinces, and neighbouring countries compete for a limited or shrinking water supply, a new politics of scarcity is beginning to shape world affairs. Worldwide, at least 214 rivers flow through two or more countries, yet no enforceable law governs the allocation and use of international waters. As demand for water approaches the limit of the available supply, nations in shared river basins can fall into a zero-sum game-in which increasing the water supply to one user means taking some away from another. Among today's hot spots of international water dispute are the Ganges basin in South Asia, the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia, and all three of the major river basins in the Middle East-the Nile, the Jordan, and the Tigris-Euphrates. In none of these locations is there yet a treaty recognized by all parties that allocates the basin's waters among them. The challenge of formalizing agreements for sharing water among nations grows more urgent each year. Equally pressing, but less well recognized, is the challenge of developing strategies for sharing water with nature. Rivers, lakes, and wetJands are in declining health because the traditional approach to water development has failed to protect their vital ecological functions-including flood protection, water purification, habitat maintenance, and sustenance of
UN Report on Transboundary Waters
Approximately 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in river and lake basins that comprise two or more countries, and perhaps even more significantly, over 90 per cent lives in countries that share basins. The existing 263 transboundary2 lake and river basins cover nearly one half of the Earth’s land surface and account for an estimated 60 per cent of global freshwater flow. A total of 145 States include territory within such basins, and 30 countries lie entirely within them. In addition, about 2 billion people worldwide depend on groundwater, which includes approximately 300 transboundary aquifer systems.
When Geopolitical and Limnology Collide: New Representation of Lake Borders
Air and Water Components of the Environment Conference
This work should demonstrate the interest of a new concept to show the link between limnology and geopolitics. With the term of “limnic border”, we can demonstrate the difference between the zonal border in two dimensions, typical for geopolitics and the deep border, typical for limnology. The introduction will constitute a resume of the historic and epistemological evolution of the vision about border and natural lake and how geopolitical and limnology develop in different ways. We demonstrate the interest to associate these two views, with regard to a general approach associating “biophysical vision” and “anthropic vision”. With the definition of how we can think multiple separation about transboundary lake, we should demonstrate the accuracy and the interest of a new three-dimensional vision, “the limnic border”. We will demonstrate how we can show the accuracy of this new concept by a description of a cross methodology, included limnologic measures and survey.
Promoting Development in Shared River Basins
2018
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Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, 2015
W ater access, demand, usage, and management become complex because of many boundaries: political, social, and jurisdictional, as well as the physical, ecological and biogeochemical boundaries that operates in a specific context. While scientific formulation and engineering solutions are necessary to address complex water problems, societal and political contexts are also an integral part of long-term solutions. The most challenging water problems are framed within contested terrains in which various stakeholders compete to protect their own interests within frameworks created by political boundaries, markets, institutions, laws and social norms, in addition to scientific research and technological expertise. The origin of many complex water problems lies in the dynamic consequences of competition, interconnections and feedback that are spread across variables that operate in the knowledge and political communities. Consequently, science alone cannot solve complex water problems that involve policy issues, and policy ideas uninformed by science are no more effective. In this paper, we focus on a particular class of water problems: allocation of international water. Over 276 river basins cross national boundaries (TWAP 2013).
International rivers are conventionally understood as watercourses that cross national boundaries, while borders themselves are taken to be static and given – passive features over and across which riparian processes unfold. Employing such straightforward framings of international rivers and borders, academic studies and policy analyses of transboundary water governance perpetuate problematic ideas about the relevant scales and actors involved in international river conflicts and crises. Through a historical examination of the Ganges River and the Indo-Bangladeshi border, I introduce the ‘river-border complex’ as a new framework for reconceptualizing international rivers and borders as synergistic, co-constitutive and interdependent.
Share : managing water across boundaries
2008
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