Though awareness of the nature of water conflict and cooperation has improved over time, the likelihood of water conflicts could increase as populations continue to grow and climate change continues to manifest. This article details the nature of water conflict and water cooperation. We discuss how water conflicts can be resolved, how water can be seen as a vehicle for change between states, and future directions that can be taken in transboundary water conflict research.
Introduction
All societies are dependent upon readily available freshwater for domestic needs, cultural practices, food production, livelihoods, power generation, industry and/or navigation. However, water resources are subject to change over space and time due to precipitation and temperature cycles, which are becoming increasingly unpredictable due to the effects of climate change. Responding to this variability, users have altered water resources through various engineering efforts, changing the availability, quantity, or quality of water resources for other users. Such alterations can potentially create conflict. Therefore, the management of shared water resources requires innovative and flexible approaches to ensure cooperation between various communities of users.
The complex challenges brought forth by transboundary waters are prevalent across the world. Since first assessing transboundary basins for the International Water Resources Associationâs Committee for International Collaboration in 1999 (Wolf, Natharius, Danielson, Ward, & Pender, 1999), Oregon State Universityâs Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) has most recently identified 286 surface water basins that cross international boundaries. In addition, the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (2015) has identified 592 transboundary aquifers. The surface water basins alone cover nearly half of the earthâs land area and are also home to 40% of the worldâs population (TFDD, 2016). Countless more watersheds cross subnational jurisdictions. Rising water demand in these basins, coupled with increasing variability, leads to higher potential for transboundary conflict. Whether conflict increases or decreases, however, depends on several factors that will be discussed in this article.
As transboundary river basins are experiencing rapid changes through both physical and economic pathways around the world, the field of water conflict and cooperation deserves a re-examination based on these new realities. This article begins with an overview of how water conflicts manifest, including which factors may lead to water conflicts and why water conflicts happen (and do not happen) in certain locations. Following this, it discusses how human and water security may be impacted by global change and how threats to human and water security may lead to water conflict. We next discuss how water conflicts may be resolved, first by arguing that parties must overcome the potential risks of cooperation before cooperation may occur. We also argue that power dynamics in transboundary basins need to be reconsidered regarding water cooperation and conflict. We stress that building institutional capacity is the strongest method to prevent and resolve water conflicts, despite its imperfections. After, we discuss the evolution of attempts to install water principles and build institutional capacity in the international arena. We then elaborate on the role of third parties in resolving, managing, and exacerbating water conflicts. The article concludes with suggestions on how new challenges for practitioners managing transboundary waters can be met.
Water conflict
Given the complexity created by different economies, ecosystems, climates, politics and cultures within watersheds, transboundary water management can be considered a type of conflict management and/or conflict prevention. Therefore, successful transboundary water resources management must consider the dimensions of potential conflict. For the context of this article, âtransboundary water conflictâ is defined as verbal, economic, or militarily hostile actions between stakeholders over internationally shared water resources. Within this group of actions, âviolent transboundary water conflictâ is reserved to describe militarily hostile actions.
Research has shown that a precedent of coordination between stakeholders, through the establishment of institutional capacity in the form of agreements, treaties or informal working relationships, can help reduce the likelihood of conflict (Wolf, Stahl, & Macomber, 2003; Yoffe, Wolf, & Giordano, 2003; Yoffe et al., 2004). Once institutional capacity is established between parties it has been proven to be resilient over time, even as conflict was being waged over other issues (Wolf, 1999).
The complexities within watersheds make managing water a complicated task, but there are opportunities for both conflict and cooperation within these complexities. Competing demands within any given jurisdiction increase the difficulty of finding consensus among a river basinâs users, unless there are diplomatic, economic or other institutional precedents. And the chances of mismanagement due to misunderstanding, mistrust or lack of information increase as a watershed crosses more administrative and conceptual boundaries. The boundaries in question can be actual or conceptual spaces, economic sectors, sovereign nation-states, contested areas, ethnic or language regions, other legal jurisdictions, climate zones, mountain ranges, infrastructure, or socially constructed concepts of the environment, space or history.
When competing interests clash and one stakeholder perceives wrongdoing by another stakeholder in a shared basin, transboundary water conflicts are likely to occur through economically and verbally hostile actions. Verbal actions can raise tensions when, for example, upstream and downstream interests clash. One instance of verbal hostilities occurred in the La Plata basin in 1993, when Argentinaâs foreign minister stated that Argentina would not close a canal that diverted flows from the Pilcomayo River (shared between Argentina and Paraguay) towards its territory, which could impact irrigation within Paraguay (TFDD, 2016).
Economically hostile actions that can lead to transboundary water conflicts include upstream actions that are perceived as creating negative impacts downstream. An example of this is when upstream Namibia proposed building a pipe that would pass through the Caprivi Strip to supply drinking water to its capital city, which caused a dispute with downstream Botswana due to its concerns about protecting the Okavango Delta and its ecotourism industry (Wolf, Kramer, Carius, & Dabelko, 2005). Economically hostile actions regarding transboundary water management have also manifested in tensions in the Amu Darya basin between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan due to downstream concerns over how upstream development would affect summer irrigation and winter hydropower production needs (Wegerich, 2008). Reports in Tajikistan suggested that the destruction of a rail bridge near the UzbekistanâAfghanistan border, crippling shipments of goods, was due to Uzbekistanâs opposition to the Tajikistani Rogun Dam project (Kucera, 2011). As of 2015, the countries are still at odds over Tajikistanâs proposed Rogun Dam and how it would impact the state-run production of cotton in Uzbekistan, the third-largest exporter of the resource in the world (Putz, 2015).
Though there are several examples of verbally and/or economically hostile actions regarding shared waters, the risk of conflict over water resources, particularly violent conflict, has been debated throughout the years (e.g. Gleditsch, Furlong, Hegre, Lacina, & Owen, 2006; Gleick, 1993; Homer-Dixon, 1994; Lowi, 1995; Toset, Gleditsch, & Hegre, 2000; Wolf, 2000, 2007). Wolf (2000) addressed this argument, stating that while many scholars have identified water as a historical cause and by extrapolation a future cause of warfare, the term âwater warâ has been inconsistently defined. Using a definition of âwater disputeâ where water was identified as the explicit cause of military action, De Stefano, Edwards, De Silva, and Wolf (2010) found 38 âacuteâ disputes (those involving water-related violence) between 1948 and 2008; of those, 31 were between Israel and one or more of its neighbours, with none of the violent events occurring after 1970. Yet most of the cases identified by De Stefano et al. were either (1) political tensions or instability rather than true acts of war, or (2) involved using water as a tool, target, or victim of armed conflict. It is important to note that even though water-related violence still exists (Cooley & Gleick, 2011), and the perceived and actual risk of future conflict over water exists, interactions over water resources to date are largely cooperative. Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano (2003)âs âBasins at Riskâ study, which catalogued over 1800 events involving water conflict and cooperation between nations from 1948 to 2000, found that cooperative events outnumbered conflictive events by over two to one. There is also an extensive history of formalized water cooperation; over 650 treaties related to water have been signed since 1820 (TFDD, 2016). War is usually not a realistic âbest alternative to a negotiated agreementâ; this is increasingly accepted as true in international settings. Violent conflict, in the form of shots fired or troops mobilized, has been present in the international setting, but water resources have never been the sole cause of an all-out war. One analyst familiar with both strategic issues and water resources wrote, âWhy go to war over water? For the price of 1 weekâs fighting, you could build five desalination plants. No loss of life, no international pressure, and a reliable supply you donât have to defend in hostile territoryâ (Wolf, 1995).
We should note that work by the London Water Research Group, based largely on Zeitoun and Mirumachi (2008) and Zeitoun and Warner (2006), makes the important contribution that transboundary water relations are more complex than individual interactions, and are often both conflictive and cooperative at the same time. Moreover, they point out that not all conflict is bad, as conflict is often the method for disputes to be addressed, and not all cooperation is good, as power imbalances are often solidified in agreements.
Water security and human security
Water conflicts could become more likely between users as their water security becomes threatened. âWater securityâ is a concept that captures the threats to sustainable and safe water uses from natural and manmade pressures on water resources, through either waterâs presence, as in floods or inundation, or its absence, as in drought or contamination (Grey & Sadoff, 2007). The concept has been defined as a populationâs capacity to ensure sustainable access to sufficient quantities of water at an acceptable quality for human, economic and environmental well-being (United Nations-Water, 2013). Water security assessments of transboundary waters are rare, but given the various potential threats to sustainable water, they will become more common. Water security focuses on concerns regarding changes due to climate change, water development and armed conflict.
âHuman securityâ is loosely defined as freedom from fear and freedom from want (Eldering, 2010). However, the accepted concept of human security can have different applications, depending on the discipline, and as such has been used interchangeably with water security â as water is the basis for human civilization in a broad sense, and human life in a specific sense. The relationships of an individual or community to a water resource as pertains to livelihoods, health, identity, culture or transportation can all have direct relationships with that individual or communityâs vulnerability, risk or stability. Assessing human security as it relates to water is especially important in situations of water scarcity, active conflict and natural disasters, including effects of climate change or economic development.
In situations involving water resources development that either modifies or eliminates water use by other basin stakeholders, the human security question becomes quite important. Dam development is one example of this sort of change. When a nation or a private corporation receives permission from a nation to develop a shared water resource, the quality, quantity and access to that resource may change for existing users. Even in cases of relocation, success rates for the river communityâs security are called into question. Occasionally, people with deep roots near a river are asked to become farmers or city-dwellers, or compensation packages may not be sustainable. Measuring human security calls for both quantitative information, such as economics and mortality, and qualitative information, such as identity and culture. Changes to shared water resources on multiple scales can threaten the stability of human security and result in reverberating problems throughout a region (Veilleux, 2014).
