Good transboundary water governance in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals : a legal perspective

The goal of this article is to discuss whether the Sustainable Development Goals address the cooperation necessary to facilitate a system of transboundary water governance. For the purpose of this analysis, a Good Transboundary Water Governance Matrix has been developed. We find that transboundary water governance requires a holistic interpretation and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals understood as a whole. In particular, good governance and, ultimately, sustainable development require stakeholders to focus not only on water (Goal 6) but also on Goal 16, which focuses on international cooperation

Yarmouk, Jordan, and Disi basins: Examining the impact of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan on transboundary water governance

Extensive literature has shown the impact of water scarcity discourses on national policies, however the impact of water scarcity discourses on transboundary water governance has been overlooked. This article contributes to filling this gap by investigating the impact of the water scarcity discourse in the case of Jordan, specifically on three cases of transboundary water governance: the Yarmouk River, the Jordan River and the Disi Aquifer. This article shows that the water scarcity discourse is not enough to explain transboundary water governance, as it needs to be contextualized in the broader context, considering national security, regional geopolitics, inter-sectorial interests, and power asymmetries. This is particularly true when considering that the Arab region has most of its surface waters originating outside of its countries, and transboundary waters represent over two thirds of its overall water resources

Five challenges to the future of transboundary water governance

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Pardee 2013 Graduate Summer Fellow Leeann Sullivan uses the Okavango River in Southern Africa as a case study to discuss the key challenges of the future of transboundary water governance. She argues that while local-level management has been successful thus far, climate change and rapid socio-economic development pose basin-wide challenges that communities cannot address alone. By creating a regional framework to help communities tackle issues of communication, governance, financial stability, resource allocation, and data management, water managers may be able to strengthen political and environmental resilience in the basin. She concludes that lessons drawn from the integration of management systems in the Okavango could inform practices for sustainable water management in a more global context

Exploring factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance in the Mackenzie River Basin

Governance of transboundary water systems is complicated by factors such as institutional fragmentation, social and environmental change, competing values for and uses of water and power dynamics. These challenges exist in both international and federal transboundary contexts, although much of the scholarly attention has been on international transboundary watersheds. Sustainable transboundary water governance is an important goal given the fact that freshwater ecosystems are among the most rapidly degrading in the world. Governance, the ways in which decisions are made and implemented, can have a critical role to enable sustainability in transboundary watersheds. Many analyses of transboundary water systems provide only partial accounts of transboundary water governance because they focus primarily on the roles of governments and interjurisdictional institutions. Furthermore, analyses of federal transboundary water systems have not satisfactorily considered the role of power dynamics as possible constraints on transboundary water governance. Appreciation of the full complexity of transboundary water governance, and factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance, requires considering governance processes at multiple levels and the variety of actors that may be involved therein. A power-analysis can facilitate consideration of which interests are advantaged in various governance processes that have implications for sustainable transboundary water governance. The purpose of this study is to explore factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance in a federal transboundary water system. Explicitly assessing multi-level governance processes, and the ways in which power dynamics impact them, facilitates a consideration of their roles and contribution to transboundary water governance. This study’s purpose is achieved via the following objectives: 1) identify the jurisdictional levels at which federal transboundary water governance takes place in the Mackenzie River Basin, (MRB), Canada; 2) consider the design and performance of an interjurisdictional river basin organization (RBO) in the MRB; 3) determine the ways in which power dynamics impact a) collaboration and b) water use decisions within jurisdictions in the MRB; and 4) assess the role and contribution of a) an RBO, b) collaboration and c) water use decisions within jurisdictions to transboundary water governance within the MRB. Single and multiple case studies and qualitative data collection and analysis methods were used to achieve these objectives. Two hundred and ninety-six documents, 30 interviews and personal observations were collected and analyzed to achieve the study objectives. The MRB, a jurisdictionally and ecologically complex federal transboundary system in which three provinces, three territories, a federal government and Indigenous governments have responsibilities for water, provided an excellent empirical context in which to explore these issues. Upstream hydroelectric developments and oil sands mining have emerged as key transboundary concerns in this basin. The multiple perspectives, values, interests and power dynamics among key actors in the basin challenge governance that contributes to sustainability. Furthermore, as a basin that at 1.8 million km2 that drains approximately 20% of Canada’s land mass, a multi-level governance design is essential to achieving coordination and inclusion required to enable sustainable transboundary water governance. In fact, a number of multi-level governance initiatives, including an interjurisdictional water management institution, collaborations at various levels and major water use decisions, exist within and among jurisdictions in the basin. They are included as case studies in this dissertation. By considering multi-level governance processes and the ways in which power dynamics impact federal transboundary water systems, this study makes two major contributions to the transboundary water governance literature. First, it demonstrates the need to consider large transboundary water systems as systems of multi-level governance. Considering the ways in which governance processes at multiple levels interact may be key to identifying factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance. Second, by undertaking a power analysis of a federal transboundary water context this study directly challenges assumptions in the literature that the presence of a central government or well-developed regulations within federal jurisdictions can temper federal water conflicts. This study’s assessment of the design and performance of an interjurisdictional institution, the ways in which power dynamics impact collaboration and water use decisions and consideration of the roles and contributions of multi-level governance processes in a federal transboundary water governance context provide empirical contributions to the transboundary water governance literature. The assessment of how power impacts collaboration in transboundary contexts adds a theoretical and empirical contribution to the collaborative governance literature

Gender Dynamics in Transboundary Water Governance

This volume assesses the nexus of gender and transboundary water governance, containing empirical case studies, discourse analyses, practitioners’ accounts, and theoretical reflections. Transboundary water governance exists at the intersection of two highly masculinised fields: diplomacy and water resources management. In both fields, positions are mainly held by men, and core ideas, norms, and guiding principles that are presented as neutral, are both shaped by men and based on male experiences. This book sheds light on the often hidden gender dynamics of water conflict and cooperation at the transboundary level and on the implicit assumptions that guide research and policies. The individual chapters of the book, based on case studies from around the world, reveal the gendered nature of water diplomacy, take stock of the number of women involved in organisations that govern shared waters, and analyse programmes that have been set up to promote women in water diplomacy and the obstacles that they face. They explore and contest leading narratives and knowledge that have been shaped mainly by privileged men, and assess how the participation of women concretely impacts the practices, routines, and processes of water negotiations. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of water governance, water diplomacy, gender, international relations and environmental politics. It will also be of interest to professionals and policymakers involved in supporting gender mainstreaming in water cooperation

Transboundary water governance institutional architecture: reflections from Ethiopia and Sudan

Transboundary water resource governance is premised on equitable water and water-related benefit sharing. Using the case of the Blue Nile (Ethiopia and Sudan), we explore the conceptual issues that need consideration in the crafting of cross-border cooperation within the water sector. First, drawing on global experiences with transboundary water management, we evaluate how upstream and downstream concerns are addressed by transboundary water management institutions. Second, we explore the kinds of institutional design and the issues which need to be considered to result in ‘win-win’ scenarios for both upstream and downstream users, as well as the mechanisms of benefit sharing negotiated amongst different stakeholders. Third, we examine ways of addressing equity and livelihoods in transboundary institutional arrangements. Finally, we attempt to assess how transboundary institutions can address broader historical, political and economic issues and their implications for sustainable transboundary water governance. This paper raises key issues that need to be addressed in establishing transboundary governance institutions.Length: pp.246-253Water governanceInstitutionsInternational watersInternational cooperationRiver basin management

Resilience in Transboundary Water Governance: The Okavango River Basin

When the availability of a vital resource varies between times of overabundance and extreme scarcity, management regimes must manifest flexibility and authority to adapt while maintaining legitimacy. Unfortunately, the need for adaptability often conflicts with the desire for certainty in legal and regulatory regimes, and laws that fail to account for variability often result in conflict when the inevitable disturbance occurs. Additional keys to resilience are collaboration among physical scientists, political actors, local leaders, and other stakeholders, and, when the commons is shared among sovereign states, collaboration between and among institutions with authority to act at different scales or with respect to different aspects of an ecological system. At the scale of transboundary river basins, where treaties govern water utilization, particular treaty mechanisms can reduce conflict potential by fostering collaboration and accounting for change. One necessary element is a mechanism for coordination and collaboration at the scale of the basin. This could be satisfied by mechanisms ranging from informal networks to the establishment of an international commission to jointly manage water, but a mechanism for collaboration at the basin scale alone does not ensure sound water management. To better guide resource management, study of applied resilience theory has revealed a number of management practices that are integral for adaptive governance. Here, we describe key resilience principles for treaty design and adaptive governance and then apply the principles to a case study of one transboundary basin where the need and willingness to manage collaboratively and iteratively is high—the Okavango River Basin of southwest Africa. This descriptive and applied approach should be particularly instructive for treaty negotiators, transboundary resource managers, and should aid program developers

Transboundary water governance and water conflicts in the Lake Victoria Basin: an adaptive and integrative management approach

Lake Victoria Basin is a transboundary natural resource shared by five East African Community countries. The Basin experiences unsustainable water resource utilization and management which creates conflicts among the users. This objective of this study was to examine the contribution of transboundary water governance systems in managing the water conflicts in the Basin. Qualitative data were collected through interviews and focused group discussions where respondents were clustered and purposively selected while quantitative data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS. Lake Victoria Basin Governance Performance Composite Index was also used to assess the effectiveness of governance systems in the Basin. The study findings revealed that: transboundary water governance systems with participation, integration, legal frameworks, collaboration, equity and adaptability, all with P < 0.05 negatively and significantly influence the causes of conflicts and water management challenges; integration (20%) and equity (19%) contribute highly to the model; and both adaptive and integrative water governance systems are less effective with a score of 34% and 35% respectively. The study concludes that the current management systems require an adaptive and integrative governance system. The study recommends harmonization of regional laws and policies governing the Basin and involvement of local communities in decision making

40 YEARS ON THE INTERNATIONAL FLATHEAD: AN ASSESSMENT OF TRANSBOUNDARY RIVER GOVERNANCE

Global population growth, climate change, and industrialization, are putting extreme pressures on worldwide freshwater supplies (Cosens 2010). Of the global freshwater supplies, transboundary water sources play a crucial role in sustaining populations. Over 40% of humans on Earth rely on a transboundary river or lake for access to water, and 90% of the world’s population lives in countries that share bodies of water with at least one other country (UN 2008). Taken together, the motivations for improving governance of transboundary water systems have never been stronger. To meet the challenges associated with transboundary water governance, researchers working at multiple scales and across international, state and sub-state levels, have been applying the concepts of adaptive governance to analyze complex water contexts (Cosens 2010, Akamani and Wilson 2011, and Chaffin et al. 2016). To contribute to this body of work and extend transboundary water governance literature, this study applies the lens of adaptive governance (AG) to an historic analysis of the environmental governance of the pristine and wild international Flathead River that cuts across the border between Canada and the United States. Proposed coal mines in the upper basin located in the western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) threatened this diverse river environment from 1974 to 2014. Fortunately, dual mining bans passed by BC and the US in 2011 and 2014, respectively, removed this industrial threat from the entire basin. To better understand how these bans emerged this study identifies and examines four key historic events that were crucial to collaboration across borders and communities and to preventing coal mining. This study uses a conceptual framework for AG, which describes the criteria necessary for AG to emerge and the governance conditions that functional AG enables. This analytical framework helps to shed light on the extent to which AG emerged during the 40 year timespan and the ways in which the key events constituted adaptations. Results showed that an adaptive outcome was reached but that the complexities of transboundary environmental governance prevented adaptations in most instances. Examining the recent history of the international Flathead River advances our understanding of the unique sequence of events that resulted in preserving, at least for the present, a unique transboundary ecosystem. This understanding also contributes to the need for creative strategies to improve transboundary water governance outcomes globally

Cooperative Transboundary Mechanism

Management of transboundary waters in increasingly becoming more challenging, and climate change is likely to exacerbate these pressures. Not least because climate change is a global issue, adaptation will require an international response. This book aims to identify issues, both theoretical and practical, that States face in establishing cooperative transboundary mechanisms to effectively adapt water management to climate change. Furthermore, it will address complex legal hurdles that existing transboundary water institutions face when attempting to adapt existing mechanisms to function in a changing climate. It will also provide an overview of best practices in transboundary adaptive water governance thus far, in hopes that it can serve as a basis for contributing towards developing a better understanding of the linkages between water and climate change, and what can be done to help institutions and societies to adapt