River basins and groundwater aquifers that cross international boundaries present increased challenges to effective water management because hydrologic needs are often overwhelmed by political considerations. While the potential for paralyzing disputes is especially high in these transnational basins, the record of violence is actually greater within a nation's boundaries. Moreover, history is rich with examples of how water has become a catalyst to dialogue and cooperation, even among especially contentious riparians.
The scarcity of water for human and ecosystem uses leads to intense political pressures, often referred to as "water stress." As a consequence, competition for water resources has contributed to tensions around the globe between competing uses-urban vs. agricultural, environmental protection vs. industry-and users, from neighboring irrigators to neighboring nations. While water quantity has been the major issue of the 20th century, water quality has been neglected to the point of catastrophe. Water demands are increasing, groundwater levels are dropping, surface-water supplies are increasingly contaminated, and delivery and treatment infrastructure is aging.
These tensions have spilled into violence on occasion, mostly at the intranational level, and generally among ethnic, religious, or tribal groups; water-use sectors; or states/ provinces. Examples of internal water conflicts range from interstate violence and death along the Cauvery River in India, to California farmers blowing up a pipeline meant for Los Angeles, to much of the violent history in the Americas between indigenous peoples and European settlers.
While these disputes can and do occur at the sub-national level, the human security issue is subtler and more pervasive than violent conflict. As water quality degrades-or as quantity diminishes-over time, tensions can spill across boundaries. The overall effect on the stability of a region can be unsettling.
There are 261 watersheds and countless aquifers that cross the political boundaries of two or more countries. International basins cover 45.3 percent of the land surface of the Earth, affect about 40 percent of the world's population, and account for approximately 60 percent of global river flow. These basins have certain characteristics that make their management especially difficult, most notably the tendency for regional politics to exacerbate the already difficult task of understanding and managing complex natural systems.
Disparities between riparian nations-whether in economic development, infrastructural capacity, or political orientation further complicate international water resources management. As a consequence, development projects, treaties, and institutions are regularly seen as inefficient at best and, occasionally, as a source of new tension themselves.
A general pattern has emerged for international basins over time. Riparians of an international basin first implement water development projects unilaterally on water within their territory in an attempt to avoid the political intricacies of the shared resource. At some point, one of the riparians, generally the regional power (either upstream riparian or country with the most military, political, or economic strength), will implement a project that impacts at least one of its neighbors. The project might aim to continue meeting existing demand in the face of decreasing relative water availability, such as Egypt's plans for a high dam on the Nile or Indian diversions of the Ganges to protect the port of Calcutta; or to meet new needs reflecting new agricultural policy, such as Turkey's GAP project on the Euphrates. A project that impacts one's neighbors can, in the absence of relations or institutions conducive to conflict resolution, become a flashpoint, heightening tensions and regional instability, and requiring years or, more commonly, decades, to resolve.
It feels both counterintuitive and precarious that the global community can let water conflicts drag on to the extent they often do-the Indus treaty took 10 years of negotiations, the Ganges 30, and the Jordan 40-while water quality and quantity degrade to the point that the health of dependent populations and ecosystems is damaged or destroyed. A re-read of the history of international waters suggests that in the absence of agreement, neither human suffering and death nor the health of aquatic ecosystems is sufficient incentive to cooperate. This problem gets worse as the dispute gains in intensity. Some ecosystems, such as the lower Nile, the lower Jordan, and the tributaries of the Aral Sea, have been allowed to deteriorate because posturing states did not cooperate to protect them. They have effectively been written off to the vagaries of human intractability.
There is some room for optimism, though, in the global community's record of resolving water-related disputes along international waterways. The record of cooperation has consistently prevailed over acute conflict related to international water resources. In fact, the last (and only) war fought specifically over water took place 4,500 years ago, between the city-states of Lagash and Umma along the Tigris River. Over the last 50 years, there have been only 37 acute disputes (those involving violence). During the same period, 157 treaties were negotiated and signed; only 507 events were conflict-related; 1,228 were resolved cooperatively. Moreover, almost two-thirds of all events are only verbal and, of those, more than two-thirds are reported as having no official sanction at all. The most vehement enemies around the world either have negotiated water-sharing agreements, or are in the process of doing so as of this writing. Violence over water seems neither strategically rational, nor hydrographically effective, nor economically viable. Shared interests along a waterway seem to consistently outweigh water's conflict-inducing characteristics.
Furthermore, once cooperative water regimes are established through treaty, they turn out to be impressively resilient over time, even between otherwise hostile riparians, and even while conflict is waged over other issues. For example, the Mekong Committee has functioned since 1957, exchanging data throughout the Vietnam War. Secret "picnic table" talks have been held between Israel and Jordan ever since the unsuccessful Johnston negotiations of 195355, even while these riparian nations were in a legal state of war. And the Indus River Commission not only survived two wars between India and Pakistan, but treaty-related payments also continued unabated throughout the hostilities.
These patterns suggest one valuable lesson: international waters are a resource whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation rather than incite violence, which is the exception. The greatest threat of the global water crisis, then, comes from the fact that people and ecosystems around the globe lack access to sufficient quantities of water at sufficient quality for their well-being.
Despite the complexity of water disputes, the historical record shows that they do get resolved, and that the resulting water institutions can be tremendously resilient. The challenge for the international community is to get ahead of the "crisis curve," to help develop institutional capacity and a culture of cooperation in advance of costly, timeconsuming crises that in turn threaten lives, regional stability, and ecosystem health.
One productive approach to the development of transboundary waters has been to examine the benefits in a basin from a multi-resource perspective. This has required riparians to get past looking at water as a commodity to be divided and to develop instead an approach that equitably allocates not the water, but the benefits derived therefrom.
The most critical lessons learned from the global experience in international water resource issues are that:
- Water crossing international boundaries can cause tensions between nations that share the basin. While the tension is not likely to lead to warfare, early coordination between riparian states can help ameliorate the issue.
- Once international institutions are in place, they are tremendously resilient over time, even between otherwise hostile riparian nations, and even while conflict is waged over other issues.
- A gradual decrease in water quantity or quality, or both, is more likely than violent conflict. Over time, such water decreases can affect the internal stability of a nation or region, and act as an irritant among ethnic groups, water sectors, or states/provinces. The resulting instability may have effects in the international arena.
- The greatest threat of the global water crisis to human security comes from the fact that millions of people lack access to sufficient quantities of water of sufficient quality for their well-being.
For more information see Postel, Sandra. Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.; Gleick, Peter. The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998 and 2000.; Biswas, Asit, ed., International Waters of the Middle East: From Euphrates-Tigris to Nile. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.; Amery, Hussein and Aaron Wolf, eds., Water in the Middle East: A Geography of Peace. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.; Wolf, Aaron, ed. Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Water Systems. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2001.; Wolf, Aaron, Shira Yoffe, and Mark Giordano. "International Waters: Basins at Risk." Water Policy, forthcoming.
Aaron T. Wolf (wolfa@geo.orst.edu) is associate professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, U.S.A. and director of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu).