Lawyers Write Treaties, Engineers Build Dikes, Gods of Weather Ignore Both: Making Transboundary Waters Agreements Relevant, Flexible, and Resilient in a Time of Global Climate Chanage

This Article identifies and critically reviews the importance of adaptability and flexibility in treaties and institutional arrangements by providing resilience in the face of the anticipated impact of climate change on the good governance of international waters. Building greater resilience and adaptability into international waters agreements is essential to address the uncertainties in hydrological and ocean processes associated with climate change. There is also growing consensus that conflict over natural resources can be linked to extreme events and climate change, and this is receiving increased attention in foreign policy development. Surface water resources are especially vulnerable to the anticipated consequences of climate change, due to the strong linkage surface water resources have with precipitation and temperature. Other international waters such as international large marine ecosystems and international groundwater resources are also potentially impacted by climate change events. Climate change and adaptation need to be at the forefront of water policy. Technical solutions, such as dams, are important elements in strategies to deal with climate change; however, they have their limitations. At the core of successful adaptation will be institutions that are designed and maintained with the flexibility and capacity to develop and implement innovative and adaptive strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change. This Article accepts the proposition that current climate predictions are largely correct and that there will be greater variability in precipitation, with a general trend at higher latitudes and elevations of greater precipitation in the wet season and reduced precipitation in the dry season. This Article argues there is an urgent need to design and implement institutional arrangements to deal specifically with these challenges. The Article focuses on the structure of arrangements to deal with or accommodate changes associated with climate change

Promoting Development in Shared River Basins : Case Studies from International Experience

Transboundary freshwater systems create inevitable linkages and interdependencies between countries. The use of shared water resources by one country will, in most cases, impact other countries sharing the same system. At the same time, coordination among countries in the development of transboundary basins can yield greater benefits than would be available to individual countries pursuing individual development. UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 Target 5 recognizes this potential, calling on the world community to implement integrated water resources management at all levels, ‘including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate’. With a growing number of basins in which water use and demand permanently or temporarily exceeds the amount of renewable water available, and uncertainty from climate change, SDG Target 6.5 becomes increasingly relevant to development interventions designed to secure availability of supplies and create resilience. This is a companion document to the study "Promoting Development in Shared River Basins: Tools for Enhancing Transboundary Basin Management," which aims to contribute to relevant knowledge for achieving SDG Target 6.5. It presents six case studies from international experience on coordinated management in transboundary basins: Kura-Araks Basin; Columbia Basin; Chu and Talas Basins; Vuoksi Basin; Douro Basin; and Rhône Basin. The case studies demonstrate real-world application of selecting appropriate tools for individual transboundary situations along a three-stage process of coordinated basin development, which is detailed in the main study

Regional maritime management and security

This monograph includes the discussion papers presented at the Third Meeting of the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group held in Bangkok 30 May-1 June 1997. It is the third in the series of similar monographs by the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group. The theme of the meeting was regional ocean management and security. Its objectives were fourfold: - to review progress with the Guidelines for Regional Maritime Cooperation; - to contribute to the development of new ideas about cooperative management of regional sea and ocean areas; - to identify present and planned activities in some area of regional maritime cooperation (such as shipping, resource management, pollution prevention, marine safety, and law and order at sea) which have benefits for regional security (that is, 'value added'); - and to share national and sub-regional perspectives of cooperative oceans and marine management. The overall aim of the meeting was to explore new ideas of preventive diplomacy and confidence building in the general area of regional maritime cooperation, particularly in the enclosed and semi-enclosed regional seas of Southeast and Northeast Asia, where maritime activity is increasing and cooperation so important. The opportunity was also taken to discuss existing arrangements for regional maritime cooperation and the experiences of other regions in the world with similar considerations of maritime cooperation (that is, the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, and the Caribbean)

Analysis of process mechanisms promoting cooperation in transboundary waters

International water basins are experiencing increasingly rapid changes. Climate change, increased pressure from population growth and development, and shifting societal values are converging making water availability increasingly precarious in many areas. Where management structures do exist, change is often exceeding their capacities to address issues escalating the potential for conflict. Particularly urgent therefore, is the development of effective and adaptive governance regimes in the majority of the 263 international basins where management is inadequate. Effective and adaptive regimes require high levels of cooperation and interdependence. This thesis focuses on actions or process mechanisms available to states to enhance cooperation and regime effectiveness. Through case study analysis, five mechanisms are identified to be important factors in the formation of international transboundary water regimes. They are; (i) balancing and creating incentives, (ii) information exchange, (iii) cooperating in a stepwise process, (iv) neutral party involvement, and (v) adequate stakeholder engagement. An analytical framework is developed, based on case survey methodology, to assess the impact of the process mechanisms on existing regimes. Practitioners and academics applied the framework to the Columbia, Mekong, Danube, Mahakali Rivers and the West Bank Aquifers through a series of interviews. The framework proved versatile in describing all scenarios, showed consistency in responses from practitioners and was sufficiently comprehensive to reflect important singularities of basins. Analysis indicated that high levels of balancing and creating incentives, information exchange, and neutral party involvement were required for regime effectiveness in all situations. All process mechanisms appeared to be needed when development goals of the parties differed, or when initial relations between the parties were poor. Stepwise cooperation and stakeholder engagement were not seen to be requisites for developing cooperative regimes when relationships between basin states were good and they shared common development goals. The framework is able to combine quantitative analysis in parallel to quantitative analysis in a manner that until now has not been achieved in the study of transboundary waters. Major elements of the framework are already being applied in a three-year program to analyse marine, groundwater and river systems, and develop training tools to enhance regime effectiveness.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat

Lawyers Write Treaties, Engineers Build Dikes, Gods of Weather Ignore Both: Making Transboundary Waters Agreements Relevant, Flexible, and Resilient in a Time of Global Climate Chanage

This Article identifies and critically reviews the importance of adaptability and flexibility in treaties and institutional arrangements by providing resilience in the face of the anticipated impact of climate change on the good governance of international waters. Building greater resilience and adaptability into international waters agreements is essential to address the uncertainties in hydrological and ocean processes associated with climate change. There is also growing consensus that conflict over natural resources can be linked to extreme events and climate change, and this is receiving increased attention in foreign policy development. Surface water resources are especially vulnerable to the anticipated consequences of climate change, due to the strong linkage surface water resources have with precipitation and temperature. Other international waters such as international large marine ecosystems and international groundwater resources are also potentially impacted by climate change events. Climate change and adaptation need to be at the forefront of water policy. Technical solutions, such as dams, are important elements in strategies to deal with climate change; however, they have their limitations. At the core of successful adaptation will be institutions that are designed and maintained with the flexibility and capacity to develop and implement innovative and adaptive strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change. This Article accepts the proposition that current climate predictions are largely correct and that there will be greater variability in precipitation, with a general trend at higher latitudes and elevations of greater precipitation in the wet season and reduced precipitation in the dry season. This Article argues there is an urgent need to design and implement institutional arrangements to deal specifically with these challenges. The Article focuses on the structure of arrangements to deal with or accommodate changes associated with climate change

Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea

1994 witnessed interesting developments in cooperation and confidence building dialogue amongst the States of the Asia Pacific region, and in the South China Sea region in particular. On 25 November 1994 in Bogor, Indonesia, the leaders of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Council's (APEC) member States committed to link their economies together through the future creation of the largest free trade zone in the world. Previously, 18 foreign ministers met in July, at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Bangkok, to discuss the post Cold War situation in Southeast Asia. Much of the discussion focused on the role that confidence building activities could play in facilitating transparency in the face of the increasing armaments build up in the region. One of the longest standing confidence building activities in the region are the informal meetings of the project on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea (MPC).1 Since 1990 this project has continued to develop avenues for cooperative activities and to foster dialogue amongst the littoral States of the South China Sea region. New challenges were presented in 1995 for the MPC project. China's announcement that she would endeavour to settle disputes in the South China Sea through accepted norms of international law and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was welcomed by Southeast Asia's leaders. In orde to take advantage of this favourable climate, the MPC convened the First Meeting of the Technical Working Group on legal Matters in the South China Sea in Jakarta, in July. The meeting represents a significant step for the project as previously it was felt a legal debate may degenerate into participants merely restating rhetorical and entrenched positions. The large, and increasing, volume of naval traffic in and around Spratly Islands coupled with the concern that misinterpretation of another's actions could lead to conflict, resulted in the signing of multiple 'code of conduct' agreements between claimants. Vietnam and the Philippines as well as China and the Philippines agreed to cooperate in this regard. During 1995 China continued to be the main source of concern for the countries of the region. Her occupation of Mischief Reef at the end of 1994 and rising tensions between the mainland and Taiwan over President Lee Teng-Hui's visit to the US in June, culminating in missile tests off Taiwan, renewed questions over China's intentions in the region.