HDR 2006 Chapter 6: Managing transboundary waters
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| Human Development Report 2006 - Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis |
| Report Overview | Chapter 1: Ending the Crisis in Water and Sanitation | Chapter 2: Water for human consumption | Chapter 3: The vast deficit in sanitation | Chapter 4: Water scarcity, risk and vulnerability | Chapter 5: Water competition in agriculture| | Chapter 6: Managing transboundary waters | Links to the Millennium Development Goals | Notes and Bibliography | UNDP Fast Facts |
| Background and issues papers:
(Link to full list of Papers for download) |
| Related WaterWiki articles:
Water Rights and Wrongs | Summary of Live Forum: HDR 2006 - From the Report to Action on the Ground |
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- Managing transboundary waters for human development
Water is a source of human interdependence. Within any country water is a shared resource serving multiple constituencies, from the environment to agriculture, industry and households. But water is also the ultimate fugitive resource. It crosses national frontiers, linking users across borders in a system of hydrological interdependence.
As competition for water intensifies within countries, the resulting pressures will spill across national borders. Some commentators fear that transboundary competition will become a source of conflict and future water wars. That fear is exaggerated: cooperation remains a far more pervasive fact of life than conflict. However, the potential for crossboundary tensions and conflict cannot be ignored. While most countries have institutional mechanisms for allocating water and resolving conflict within countries, cross-border institutional mechanisms are far weaker. The interaction of water stress and weak institutions carries with it real risks of conflict.
See also Conflict and Water and International waters
Contents |
Hydrological interdependence
Hydrological interdependence is not an abstract concept. Two in every five people in the world live in international water basins shared by more than one country. International rivers are a thread that binds countries: 9 countries share the Amazon and 11 the Nile, for example. Rivers also bind the livelihoods of people. The Mekong, one of the world’s great river systems, generates power in its upper reaches in China and sustains the rice production and fishery systems that support the livelihoods of more than 60 million people in the lower reaches of its basin.
With hydrological interdependence comes deeper interdependence. As a productive resource, water is unique in that it can never be managed for a single use: it flows between sectors and users. That is true within countries and between them. How an upstream country uses a river inevitably affects the quantity, timing and quality of water available to users downstream. The same interdependence applies to aquifers and lakes.
Why is transboundary water governance a human development issue? Because failure in this area can produce outcomes that generate inequity, environmental unsustainability and wider social and economic losses.
There is no shortage of illustrations. The Aral Sea, described by some as the world’s worst human-caused ecological disaster, is an extreme case in point. Less widely appreciated is the damage caused to shared river systems and lakes by overuse: the shrinkage of Lake Chad in Sub-Saharan Africa is an example.
Inequitable water management can heighten inequalities and water insecurity. For example, people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories face acute Water Scarcity. Limited accessto surface water is one factor. More important is the unequal sharing between Israel and Palestine of the aquifers below the West Bank. Average per capita water use by Israeli settlers on the West Bank is some nine times higher than by Palestinians sharing many of the same water sources.
Benefits of cooperation for human development
Successful cooperation in the management of shared waters can produce benefits for human development at many levels. Apart from reducing the potential for conflict, cooperation can unlock benefits by improving the quality of shared water, generating prosperity and more secure livelihoods and creating the scope for wider cooperation.
Experience highlights both the potential benefits of cooperation and the costs of noncooperation. Countries of the European Union have dramatically improved river water standards through cooperation, creating gains for industry, human health and domestic users. In Southern Africa a joint infrastructure programme is generating revenue for Lesotho and improved water for South Africa. Brazil and Paraguay have unlocked benefits from shared river management through power generation. Countries in Central Asia, by contrast, are paying a high price for noncooperation,with large losses for irrigation and hydropower.
Contrary to the claims of water war pessimists, conflict over water has been the exception, not the rule. Going back over the past 50 years, there have been some 37 cases of reported violence between states over water—and most of the episodes have involved minor skirmishes. Meanwhile, more than 200 water treaties have been negotiated. Some of these treaties—such as the Indus Basin Treaty between India and Pakistan—have remained in operation even during armed conflict.
Despite the general absence of armed conflict, cooperation has often been limited. For the most part it has focussed on technical management of water flow and volumetric allocations. Some river basin initiatives—notably the Nile Basin Initiative—are starting to change this picture. Progress has been hampered, however, by limited mandates, weak institutional capacity and underfinancing. These are all areas where international cooperation and partnerships can make a difference.
Further Readings
Read the Full Chapter 
Hdr 2006 chapter 6.pdf
Cooperation in managing water as a transboundary resource
Source
This article is based on the HDR 2006 Summary Report. HDR2006 English Summary.pdf
