Conflict and Cooperation: The
Challenge of International Waters
by: Aaron Wolf
River
basins and groundwater aquifers which cross international boundaries
present increased challenges to effective water management, where hydrologic
needs are often overwhelmed by political considerations. While the potential
for paralyzing disputes are especially high in these basins, history
is rich with examples of water acting as a catalyst to dialog and cooperation,
even among especially contentious riparians.
Background to
International Waters
There are 261 watersheds,
and countless aquifers, which cross the political boundaries of two
or more countries. International basins cover 45.3% of the land surface
of the earth, affect about 40% of the world's population, and account
for approximately 60% of global river flow.
These basins have
certain characteristics that make their management especially difficult,
most notable of which is the tendency for regional politics to regularly
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—add further complications to
international water resources management. As a consequence, development
projects, treaties, and institutions are regularly seen as, at best,
inefficient; often ineffective; and, occasionally, as a new source of
tensions themselves.
Despite the tensions
inherent in the international setting, riparians have historically shown
tremendous creativity in approaching regional development, often through
preventive diplomacy, and the creation of "baskets of benefits"
which allow for positive-sum, integrative allocations of joint gains.
Traditional Chronology:
Development, Crisis, Conflict Resolution
A general pattern
has emerged for international basins over time. Riparians of an international
basin implement water development projects unilaterally first on water
within their territory, in attempts to avoid the political intricacies
of the shared resource. At some point, one of the riparians, generally
the regional power, will implement a project which impacts at least
one of its neighbors.
This project which
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—the Indus treaty took ten years of negotiations, the
Ganges thirty, and the Jordan forty—while all the while water quality
and quantity degrades to where the health of dependent populations and
ecosystems are damaged or destroyed. This problem gets worse as the
dispute gains in intensity; one rarely hears talk about the ecosystems
of the lower Nile, the lower Jordan, or the tributaries of the Aral
Sea - they have effectively been written off to the vagaries of human
intractability.
Getting Ahead
of the Curve: Preventive Diplomacy and Institutional Capacity Building
Despite their complexity,
the historical record shows that water disputes do get resolved, and
that the resulting water institutions can be tremendously resilient,
even among bitter enemies, and even as conflicts rage over other issues.
Some of the most vociferous enemies around the world have negotiated
water agreements or are in the process of doing so, and many treaties
and management bodies have survived subsequent hostilities intact. 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, time-consuming crises, which 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 mult-resource perspective. This has regularly required
the riparians to get past looking at the water as a commodity to be
divided, and rather to develop an approach which equitably allocates
not the water, but the benefits derived therefrom.
Competition and Cooperation,
Then and Now: The Challenge of Interstate Waters
by: Roland C. Steiner
Competition for water
to serve the municipal and industrial needs of the Washington, D.C.
metropolitan area was evident in theory from demand forecasts and resource
availability studies conducted as early as 1963. The lowest flows on
record in the Potomac River, occurring shortly afterward in 1966, brought
theoretical shortages close to reality. There followed nearly two decades
of analysis and planning for resource expansion among the three major
water suppliers to the region.
Competition
The Washington,
D.C. metropolitan area is supplied by three independent major utilities
serving a total population of 3.6 million people. Public water supply
began with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers providing service directly
from the Potomac River to the nation's capital in the mid-1800s. Separate
suppliers developed reservoirs to supply the adjacent suburban areas
in the states of Maryland and Virginia. For most of the 1960s and 1970s,
these three suppliers competitively and independently conducted feasibility
studies to increase their resources. In the early 1980s, a joint agreement
among the states, the District of Columbia, and the water suppliers
averted wasteful inefficient development of new resources.
Now, twenty years
later, demands are again forecast to exceed supplies in a planning horizon
of fifteen to twenty-five years, and competition is even more complex
than before. It is currently recognized that up-stream consumptive uses
of water in the Potomac River basin significantly reduce available flows
for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area; the provision of minimum
in-stream flows for the preservation of aquatic habitat are increasingly
important; and in-lake and downstream recreation and flood control are
competing with water supply as resource functions.
Cooperation
In 1982, an historic
agreement established joint funding and use of new resources to meet
future regional water demands. Because the Washington, D.C. metropolitan
area covers parts of two states and an independent city, the jurisdictions
as well as the water suppliers were all party to the agreement. Significantly,
the suppliers gave some management functions and the development of
operating rules for their jointly and individually owned resources to
an independent agency (the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River
Basin). This arrangement combined the least cost capital expense and
environmental disturbance with independent impartial management support.
It has been demonstrably successful for two decades and has led to a
regional framework for addressing the forecast of water supply shortage
expected in fifteen to twenty-five years from now.
There is currently
underway a regional water resource augmentation study which incorporates
operational optimization of existing supplies, potential for reducing
demands, quantification of competing demands, and the feasibility of
alternative resource expansion projects to meet resultant demands. This
study is expected to avert competitive conflict for water by the early
inclusion and consideration of all identifiable related issues and their
associated stakeholders.
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