EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
Water governance in transboundary basins
Recently, the Chinese state media announced that Beijing will build a mega dam on theYarlung Zangbo River close to the Line of Actual Control in Tibet which could have a far-reaching impact on water security in India’s North East.
Why Transboundary Water Governance is needed?
- Transboundary Rivers covers large portion of Earth: Approximately 60 percent of the world’s fresh water supply is located in 276 transboundary rivers, such as the Nile, Rhine, Danube, Indus, Columbia, and Mekong basins.
- The Transboundary Rivers cover 45 percent of the earth’s land surface and provide a home for 40 percent of the world’s population.
- Fresh Water Crisis: It may be argued that there is sufficient fresh water in our planet to meet basic human needs throughout the world but this water is unevenly distributed.
- Mismanagement of existing water supplies: The mismanagement of existing water supplies across the world is expected to combine to challenge the ability of many states to meet their domestic water needs.
- Lack of safe and sufficient water: The lack of safe and sufficient water can threaten human security, food security, national security, and regional stability.
- The inability to meet domestic water demand can contribute to domestic tension and political instability.
- The increasing threats to the available supply of water across the world because of climate change can disrupt food security in both exporting and importing states.
- Regional tension and instability: The water shortages and increasing dependence on transboundary resources to meet domestic water needs can also contribute to regional tension and instability as states increase their demand on shared resources.
- Rise of water wars on transboundary resources: Given the complexity of the water crisis across the world and the high dependence on transboundary sources, the international organizations warned of impending “Water Wars”.
Significance of Transboundary Water Governance
- Source of cooperation across the globe: Since 1960, India and Pakistan have cooperated in the management of their shared Indus River.
- Jordan and Israel have cooperated over their shared transboundary rivers since the formal signing of their Peace Treaty in 1994.
- Adaptation to Climate Change: The Ecosystem Approach is a strategy for integrating management of land, water, and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.
- Improved water governance underpins action: The Ecosystem Approach arrangement included participation in cooperative settings with governmental bodies and other stakeholders, and an approach that aimed to develop and execute specific water management goals in the region.
- Lack of transboundary coordination impairs action: The multi-stakeholder approach mobilised a partnership among Ministries, decentralised local administration, and civil society to form a transboundary water management forum.
Challenges associated with Transboundary Water Governance
- Governing under uncertainty: The most significant water governance challenge presented by climate change is the uncertainty that surrounds the timing, scale, intensity and character of potential impacts.
- Multi-level water governance for climate adaptation: The cross-sectoral nature of both climate vulnerabilities and adaptive responses is another key governance challenge posed by climate change.
- Transboundary Pollution: It is the pollution that originates in one country but is able to cause damage in another country's environment, by crossing borders through pathways like water or air.
- Shortfalls of action: Around 60% of transboundary river basins worldwide still lack any cooperative arrangement.
- The existing transboundary water treaties and institutions are often weak in terms of their mandate, design, resources, and enforcement mechanisms.
- Climate change as an accelerator: In the absence of cooperative arrangements, climate change impacts may increase tensions, fragility, and conflicts over dwindling water resources between countries and sectors, and affect growth and economic development.
Measures to be adopted for Transboundary Water Governance
- Laws and Policies for governance under uncertainty: The creation and implementation of effective policies, laws, and management frameworks in the face of uncertainty requires a shift from traditional paradigms to ones that acknowledge and even embrace change and continuous learning as cornerstones of effective water governance.
- Implementation of Adaptive Governance: The adaptive governance will challenge water, agricultural, health, energy, industrial, and other sectors to develop more effective mechanisms for horizontal integration, or inter-institutional and inter-sectoral coordination and cooperation.
- Effective public and stakeholder engagement: The need for more active involvement of a diverse array of stakeholders in basin-level decision-making because the water has been a focus of international water institutions, and increasingly integrated into legal agreements.
- Increasing resilience through the ecosystem approach: The ecosystem approach to IWRM22 aims to achieve sustainability and ecosystem conservation using a cooperative, ecology-based management system.
- Prevention of significant transboundary harm: The principle of equitable and reasonable utilisation requires the balancing of several non-weighted factors.
- Transboundary Water Cooperation and SDGs: The implementation of Transboundary Water Governance will ensure successful achievements of Sustainable Development Goal of implementing integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate.
Road Ahead
- The effective governance of Transboundary Rivers is vital for not only fostering cooperation and preventing conflict over water, but also providing the framework for ensuring states can meet their energy, food, and human security needs.
- The recognition of the importance of transboundary cooperation is a prerequisite for realizing the water related SDG targets and the broader Sustainable Development Goals.
- The elaboration of common projects at the transboundary level, involving more riparian countries, has the potential to reduce risks of investments and be beneficial for fundraising for infrastructure development at local and regional levels.
- The states sharing transboundary waters should adopt common standards for relevant water and water use data and analyses, and share the resultant data and research.
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