The Harrison Program on
the Future Global Agenda
1.
www.bsos.umd.edu/harrison
Is There a Global Rivers Regime?
Trends in the Principled Content of
International River Agreements
A Harrison Program Research Report
Ken Conca
Fengshi Wu
Joanne Neukirchen
September 2003
University of Maryland
GVPT -- 3140 Tydings Hall
College Park MD 20742 USA
301-405-7490 voice
301-314-9690 fax
[email protected]
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
This project examines the principled content of international agreements on shared river basins during the
period 1980-2000. The content of 62 agreements reached during this period is compared to core
principles developed by the International Law Commission and embodied in the 1997 U.N. Watercourses
framework convention. The goal is to determine whether basin agreements are converging on common
principles for shared river governance. Key findings include the following:
International agreements relatively infrequent: We were able to identify 62 formal and informal public
agreements for the period 1980-2000. During this period agreements were created in only 36 of the
world’s 263 internationally shared river basins, or 14 percent. Three-fourths of these agreements were in
a basin with a prior history of cooperation related to that watercourse.
Rate of agreement formation has dropped off: A large pulse of international agreements occurred in
the immediate wake of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).
Formation of new agreements has tailed off substantially since the post-UNCED peak of the mid-1990s.
Multilateral initiatives, but bilateral governance: Most international rivers are shared by two countries,
yet nearly four-fifths of the agreements in the study period occurred in multilateral basins. However, within
these multilateral basins, a bilateral agreement is twice as common as a multilateral one. Shared
governance is fragmentary, in that few agreements in multilateral basins include all basin states. There is
no discernible trend toward greater inclusiveness of basin states in more recent accords.
Only some U.N. Convention principles well established at basin level: Of the core principles in the
1997 U.N. Watercourses Convention, those most frequently invoked at the basin level include
environmental protection, peaceful dispute resolution, consultation, and information exchange. Less
common are the principles of prior notification, equitable water use, and avoiding significant harm to other
parties. Explicit reservations of sovereign rights were also relatively uncommon, though strongly
increasing in the post-UNCED period.
Both environmental protection and sovereignty increasingly invoked: Only two principles showed a
statistically significant increase in frequency over time: environmental protection and the sovereign rights
of the parties. There is also an increase of borderline statistical significance in the principle of avoiding
significant harm. Recent agreements are not significantly more likely than earlier ones to incorporate the
other core principles of the U.N. Watercourses Convention: equitable use, information exchange,
peaceful dispute resolution, consultation, or prior notification of measures likely to cause adverse effects.
Are two distinct regimes emerging? Correlation analysis reveals two bundles of commonly associated
principles. One is centered on the idea of protecting a state’s water rights and includes equitable use,
water allocation mechanisms, recognition of sovereign rights, and provisions exempting domestic waters
from international obligations. A second bundle is centered on dealing with the potentially harmful
consequences of water use and includes prior notification, information exchange, consultation, regular
meetings, peaceful dispute resolution, formation of basin commissions, and environmental protection.
Little evidence of normative deepening: For most of the core principles articulated in the 1997 U.N.
Watercourses Convention we see no evidence of normative “deepening” over time, in the sense of a
trend toward greater specificity, broader scope, or greater intrusiveness in the responsibilities or
obligations created for states. The exception is the principle of consultation, in the sense that it becomes
more likely over time that an agreement will form a permanent basin commission as the specific
consultative mechanism.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda
and the Senior Summer Scholars Program of the University of Maryland for supporting
the research summarized in this report.
We thank Elizabeth Chalecki, Elizabeth DeSombre, Pamela Doughman,
Anamaria Dutceac, Eduardo Frajman, Sebastien Gagnon-Messier, Steve Grimes,
Nicholai Gurdian, Rachel Howser, Rami Kishek, Ron Mitchell, Cassie Staley, Anthony
Turton, Jan F. Valentin, Ivani Vassoler, Peter Voitsekhovsky, Kady Waterhouse, Elle
Wilson and Aaron Wolf for their advice, assistance, and support.
Earlier versions of this report were presented at the 43rd annual meeting of the
International Studies Association, New Orleans, March 2002 and the Workshop on
Navigating Peace: Forging New Water Partnerships, Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Washington, May 2003.
ii
CONTENTS
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS........................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .........................................................................................................ii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURE ................................................................................................iv
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................1
THE WORLD’S SHARED RIVER BASINS....................................................................................2
INTERNATIONAL WATERCOURSE LAW : THE 1997 U.N. WATERCOURSE CONVENTION................4
INTERNATIONAL WATERCOURSE LAW : BASIN-SPECIFIC AGREEMENTS .......................................7
DATA AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS .....................................................................9
GENERAL/DESCRIPTIVE FINDINGS.......................................................................................10
FINDINGS RELATED TO THE CODED CONTENT OF AGRE EMENTS .............................................14
CORRELATION AMONG INDIVIDUAL PRINCIPLES ....................................................................21
INTERPRETING THE FINDINGS..............................................................................................23
LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE................................................................................................24
APPENDIX 1: ASSEMBLING THE DATASET AND CODING THE DATA...........................................26
APPENDIX 2: CODED AGREEMENTS .....................................................................................29
APPENDIX 3: ITEMS EXCLUDED FROM THE DATASET..............................................................32
NOTES..............................................................................................................................35
iii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
THE WORLD’S INTERNATIONAL RIVERS...................................................................................2
PERCENTAGE OF NATIONAL TERRITORY WITHIN INTERNATIONAL BASINS ...................................3
NUMBER OF INTERNATIONAL RIVER AGREEMENTS PER YEAR, 1980-2000..............................11
COUNTRIES SIGNING INTERNATIONAL RIVER AGREEMENTS , 1980-2000.................................12
REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF BASIN AGREEMENTS , 1980-2000..............................................12
BILATERAL AND MULTILATERAL AGREEMENTS ......................................................................13
RATIO OF SIGNATORIES TO BASIN STATES FOR MULTILATERAL AGREEMENTS , 1980-2000.......14
AGGREGATE CODING RESULTS...........................................................................................16
PERCENTAGE OF AGREEMENTS ARTICULATING SELECTED PRINCIPLES, BY REGION.................17
VARIATION IN PRINCIPLED CONTENT ACROSS THE TWO TIME PERIODS FOR
WATERCOURSES CONVENTION PRINCIPLES.........................................................................19
VARIATION IN PRINCIPLED CONTENT ACROSS THE TWO TIME PERIODS FOR
MEASURES OF NORMATIVE DEEPENING................................................................................20
CORRELATIONS AMONG THE WATERCOURSES CONVENTION PRINCIPLES...............................22
RATES OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN INDEPENDENT CODERS .....................................................27
CODED AGREEMENTS ........................................................................................................29
ITEMS EXCLUDED FROM THE DATASET.................................................................................32
iv
INTRODUCTION
Most of the world’s largest rivers are international. An estimated 263 major river
basins cross or form national borders. These basins create difficult diplomatic
challenges for states, as they often link co-riparians in asymmetric
upstream/downstream relationships. Indeed, they are at the heart of the “water war”
scenarios conjured by some observers of international water politics. At the same time,
however, pressures for economic development and environmental protection in the
world’s shared basins may create political opportunities to extend principles of
sustainability, peaceful dispute resolution, democratic participation, and shared
governance.
One factor likely to influence conflict and cooperation in the world’s shared
basins is the extent and character of cooperative institution building. Efforts to promote
cooperation around shared watercourses have proceeded on two distinct levels.
Beginning in the 1960s, the International Law Commission has worked to promulgate
international legal principles for the management of shared watercourses. These efforts
culminated in the 1997 Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of
International Watercourses, which was passed by the United Nations General Assembly
in 1997. At the same time that this ‘top-down’ approach has been developing, many of
the world’s shared river basins have been the site of negotiated agreements among
some or all of the riparian states in a particular basin. As discussed below, for the period
1980-2000 we identify 62 bilateral and multilateral agreements in 36 different basins
that deal with some significant aspect of governance.
These parallel processes of global and basin-specific institution building raise an
important question: Are we seeing convergence on a core set of governing principles-what we might loosely term a global regime for international rivers? To address this
question, this report examines the principled content of formal and informal interstate
agreements regarding shared river basins for the period 1980-2000. We examine these
agreements in the hope of answering two basic questions. First, are governments
around the world converging on standard ways of expressing the appropriate norms and
governing principles that apply to specific shared basins? Second, are aggregate trends
at the basin-specific level consistent or inconsistent with the principles of shared riverbasin governance promulgated by the 1997 U.N. Watercourses Convention?
To answer these and related questions, we assembled a dataset of basinspecific interstate agreements for the period 1980-2000. We included both formal treaty
instruments and less formalized products of interstate bargaining agreements such as
public memoranda of understanding, negotiated but not ratified treaties, and
administrative agreements on significant basin-development projects such as
hydroelectric dams or flood-control initiatives. We then coded and analyzed the content
of these agreements, using the Watercourses Convention as the yardstick against
which to assess their principled content and other features.
Our goal is twofold. First, we seek to determine whether governments around the
world are converging on common principles when they take the opportunity to articulate
jointly and explicitly the appropriate governing norms for a shared river basin. Second,
we examine the extent to which any such convergence is in the direction of the
principles articulated in the Watercourses Convention. We make no particular claims
about the causal forces shaping the content of these agreements, the willingness or
1
ability of states to implement their commitments, or the effectiveness of those
commitments once implemented. Instead, our focus is on documenting the patterned
content of existing interstate agreements established over the past two decades. Our
emphasis is on the joint articulation of principles as a necessary, but by no means
sufficient, condition for regime formation.
THE WORLD ’S SHARED RIVER BASINS
A recent survey of the world’s international river basins revealed three striking
facts, all pointing to the intensive internationalization of the world’s largest rivers.1 First,
the number of international waterways (including lakes as well as rivers) is larger than
previously thought—263, compared to a 1978 United Nations estimate of 214.2 Second,
the basins through which these wa tercourses run cover a vast extent, some 45 percent
of the Earth’s land surface area (Table 1). Third, most countries have a large swath of
national territory in international river basins (Table 2). Some 145 countries have some
portion of their territory in an international basin; only a handful of non-island states
(including Denmark, Singapore, and a few states on the Arabian Peninsula) are absent
from the list. Among these basin-occupying states, almost two-thirds (92 of 145) have at
least half of their national territory lying in an international basin, and more than onethird (50 of 145) have 80 percent or more of their national territory in an international
basin.
TABLE 1: The world’s international rivers
World Region:
Number of
international river
basins:
Percentage of
land area in
international river
basins:
Number of countries
in one or more
international basins:
Africa
Asia
Europe
N. America
S. America
59
57
69
40
38
62%
39%
54%
35%
60%
47
34
42
12
13
WORLD TOTAL
263
45%
145
Note: North America includes Central America and the Caribbean; Asia includes Middle
East. Total number of states does not add because some states straddle continental
boundaries.
Source: Compiled from Aaron T. Wolf, Jeffrey A. Natharius, Jeffrey J. Danielson, Brian S.
Ward, and Jan K. Pender, “International River Basins of the World,” International Journal
of Water Resources Development vol. 15 no. 4 (December 1999). Available online with
2002 updated figures at http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/
2
These geographic facts, combined with mounting stresses on water supply and
water quality almost everywhere, have led to sometimes dire predictions of “water wars”
between upstream and downstream states. In 1995 the World Bank’s Vice President for
Environmentally Sustainable Development, Ismail Serageldin, stated that “The wars of
the next century will be over water.”3 In 1999 Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi reportedly
warned that “the next Middle East war would be over dwindling water supplies.” 4
Summarizing trends for the new millennium, the influential British publication The
Economist warned that water shortages would constitute “the stuff of future
wars...conditions are ripe for a century of water conflicts.” 5 Researchers looking into the
prospects for “environmentally induced” violent conflict have pointed to shared water
resources as the single most likely route by which environmental change might trigger
interstate hostilities.6 This fear of international water conflict is not new: An inscription
dated 1369 on the Anantharaja dam in South India, listing the conditions for good dam
construction, specifies that a dam should not be placed on a site at the boundary of two
kingdoms. 7
TABLE 2: Percentage of national territory within
international basins
Percentage of territory in
international basins:
Number of countries:
90-100
80-90
70-80
60-70
50-60
40-50
30-40
20-30
10-20
less than 10
39
11
14
11
17
10
10
13
9
11
TOTAL
145
Source: Wolf et. al., “International River Basins of the World.”
Yet the shared character of rivers also creates pressures for international
cooperation as a way to allocate water resources and manage interstate disputes. The
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization identified more than two thousand
agreements that deal with some aspect of transboundary water issues (most of them
bilateral agreements focused on navigation). 8 Hamner and Wolf identified 145
international treaties since 1814 that deal with some non-navigational aspect of
international water issues in a particular river or lake basin.9 Many (though certainly not
all) of these agreements are sufficiently robust, dynamic, norm-disseminating, and
behavior-modifying to be considered international regimes. Also, the past forty years
have seen a series of initiatives to create a broad international framework of legal
3
principles for shared river basins—in short, an attempt to build a global regime for
international rivers.
What would constitute evidence of an emergent global regime on international
rivers? Many scholars of international law and international relations would begin by
scrutinizing the quest to craft a global framework convention—viewing its presence as
either evidence of a foundation of shared norms or, at the very least, as a set of
overlapping interests upon which shared norms could potentially be constructed.10 On
the other hand, it may be that building a global rivers regime is not a top-down process
of negotiating a global framework to be applied to individual river basins, but rather a
bottom-up process of normative convergence over time among separate, basin-specific
regimes. Evidence of such bottom-up regime-building would be not only growth in the
number of basin-specific instruments but also convergence in the governi ng principles,
rules, and practices of those instruments. This would suggest that the same norms were
taking root across otherwise very different basin settings.
INTERNATIONAL WATERCOURSE LAW: THE U.N. WATERCOURSES CONVENTION
If we look for a global rivers regime to emerge around a codified legal instrument,
then the closest approximation is clearly the 1997 U.N. Convention on the Law of the
Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. 11 The Convention marked the
culmination of nearly three decades of effort to develop a framework of globally
applicable legal principles for the governance of international rivers. In 1991, after years
of often-contentious debate, the U.N. International Law Commission (ILC) approved a
set of draft articles on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International
Watercourses. 12 These articles formed the basis for negotiations within the U.N.’s Sixth
(Legal) Committee of the General Assembly over a framework treaty on international
watercourses. The result, again marked by contentious bargaining and delicate
compromise among sometimes contradictory aims, was a draft Convention on the Law
of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which was subsequently
adopted by the General Assembly in 1997.
The convention is intended to provide a set of universal principles that should
guide the more detailed development of basin-specific agreements.13 It articulates
general principles not only for the content of basin-specific accords, but also for the
process by which such accords should be negotiated and the standing to be accorded
to states within a shared river or lake basin. Among its central provisions are the
following:
Article 4 stipulates that every watercourse state is entitled to participate in
negotiations that cover an entire watercourse, and to consult on any lesser
agreements affecting that state.
Article 5 calls for states to exercise “equitable and reasonable use” of
international watercourses within their territories.
Article 7 obligates states not to cause “significant harm” to other
watercourse states.
4
Article 8 obligates states to cooperate, on the basis of “sovereign
equality, territorial integrity, mutual benefit and good faith.”
Article 9 calls for regular exchanges of information and data.
Article 11 requires information exchange and consultation with the other
parties on the effects of any “planned measures.”
Article 12 requires prior notification for any “planned measures which may
have a significant adverse effect” on other watercourse states.
Articles 20-23 deal with environmental concerns, establishing general
obligations to protect and preserve ecosystems; prevent, reduce, and
control pollution; prevent the introduction of alien or new species; and
protect and preserve the marine environment.
Article 33 sets out dispute resolution procedures, including an obligation
to resolve disputes peacefully, an endorsement of arbitration and
mediation, and procedures for the creation and workings of fact-finding
commissions.
Balancing upstream and downstream rights and responsibilities proved to be the
most contentious aspect of the bargaining surrounding the convention. As several
analysts have pointed out, and as the negotiating parties clearly understood, there are
potentially profound contradictions between the principle of equitable and reasonable
use (Article 5) and the principle of no significant harm to other watercourse states
(Article 7). The principle of no significant harm is generally seen to favor downstream
states, in that upstream development of water resources may deny water to human and
natural uses downstream, thereby causing potentially significant harm. The principle of
equitable use, in contrast, is generally seen to favor upstream states seeking to develop
water resources, in the sense that it gives them a basis for claiming a fair share of the
water, independent of what uses may exist downstream or how upstream uses may
cause downstream effects. 14
Rather than specify the relationship between these potentially conflicting
principles, the convention advances both. It remains silent on the fundamental question
of how they are to be reconciled. Yet, seen in historical context, even this ambiguity
constitutes something of a victory for the principle of no significant harm, and thus for
downstream states. The equitable-use concept typically favored by upstream states
previously had a much stronger foundation than significant harm as a principle of
international water law. Indeed, McCaffrey, writing in the early 1990s, concluded that
“Attempts by groups of experts to derive general rules from treaties and other forms of
state practice have concluded that equitable utilization is a--and perhaps the-fundamental rule in the field.” 15 The principle of equitable use was underscored in
resolutions issued by two longstanding, influential groups of legal experts in the 1960s.
First was the Institute of International Law, which issued the Salzburg Resolution on the
5
Use of International Non-Maritime Waters in 1961. The Salzburg Resolution stated that
the rights of a state to make use of shared waters are limited “by the right of use by the
other States concerned with the same river or watershed.” It also stated that disputes
“shall be settled on the basis of equity, taking into consideration the respective needs of
the States, as well as any other circumstances relevant to any particular case.” 16
In 1966 the International Law Association (ILA) took an even stronger stand in
support of equitable use when it issued the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of
International Rivers. The Helsinki rules emphasized that states are entitled “to a
reasonable and equitable share in the beneficial uses of the waters of an international
drainage basin.” 17 In contrast, the principle of no significant harm finds much less
support in the Helsinki Rules, which suggest that harm to existing uses is only one
factor to be considered in determining what constitutes equitable use. As McCaffrey
points out, the ILA’s commentary on the Helsinki Rules states explicitly that downstream
states could be expected to modify existing uses (e.g., irrigation practices) that were
being harmed by new upstream uses if those existing uses were particularly inefficient,
based on antiquated technology, or could be met from alternative sources. 18
Twenty-five years later, the 1991 draft articles of the U.N.’s International Law
Commission, which formed the basis for negotiating the 1997 Watercourses
Convention, took a much stronger stand in favor of no significant harm. According to the
ILC’s commentary accompanying the draft articles,
A watercourse State’s right to utilize an international watercourse in an
equitable and reasonable manner has its limit in the duty of that State not
to cause appreciable harm to other watercourse States. In other words-prima facie, at least--utilization of an international watercourse is not
equitable if it causes other watercourse States appreciable harm. 19
As the ILC’s draft articles were renegotiated in the General Assembly, however, several
qualifications and ambiguities were introduced that obscured this prioritization of no
significant harm (which, according to McCaffrey and Sinjela, had been stated more
clearly in the ILC’s commentrary than in the draft articles themselves).20 The final
document stops far short of overthrowing the prior primacy of equitable use as a general
principle of international water law. Nevertheless, it marks a shift in emphasis toward
preventing significant harm. One reason why this shift is important is that it provides an
entry point for environmental considerations, albeit in the limited sphere of
transboundary considerations and downstream effects.
Is the convention the heart, or at least the expression, of a global regime on
international rivers? It passed in the General Assembly on a vote of 103 in favor and
three opposed, with 27 abstentions. Although some proponents had read this vote as a
strong endorsement, it also underscored that the convention lacked support among
several key states. Two of the three negative votes, China and Turkey, are important
upstream states in major river controversies (Turkey on the Tigris and Euphrates, China
on the Mekong), and both have been targeted by environmentalists and human rights
activists for large-scale, suspect water development schemes (Turkey’s Eastern
Anatolia project and China’s Three Gorges project). 21 Moreover, among the 27
6
abstentions were several important states in international river politics, including Egypt,
Ethiopia, France, India, and Pakistan.
The requirement for entry into force was that 35 signatories deposit instruments
of ratification with the U.N. Secretary General by May 20, 2000--a moderate threshold
for a global convention. In comparison, the Law of the Sea convention required 60
national ratifications; the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, 50; the
Convention on Biological Diversity, 30; the Vienna Convention for Protection of the
Ozone Layer, 20; the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of
Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, 20; and the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES Convention), 10. But the
Convention fell far short of this threshold; to date it has collected only sixteen signatures
and four accessions, and only seven states have ratified or accepted.22
INTERNATIONAL WATERCOURSE LAW: BASIN-SPECIFIC AGREEMENTS
Beyond the formal process of developing a global framework convention, it may
be that a global rivers regime is emerging from the bottom up—that is, from aggregate
developments across the world’s shared river basins. Evidence of this sort of institution
building would be the inscription of a set of core principles across a growing number of
basin-specific international accords. Basin-specific treaties constitute a large and
growing body of international water law. The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute
Database lists 150 accords involving 52 river or lake basins for the period 1874-1996.23
The FAOLEX on-line legal database of the Food and Agricultural Organization lists 103
international agreements for the period since 1980 alone (including not only treaties but
also less formal accords such as memoranda of understanding, interagency cooperative
agreements for water-sector activities, or jointly endorsed meeting minutes). 24 Although
the extent, depth and scope of shared governance varies widely across individual
basins, at least some of these accords can be said to meet the definition of an
international regime as “rules of the game” that delimit “the range of legitimate or
admissible behavior in a specified context of activity.” 25
Beyond constituting individual regimes for specific basins, however, it could be
that these treaties and other forms of agreement are building a global rivers regime from
the bottom up. If it is increasingly “normal” to negotiate and ratify such agreements for
shared river basins, and if the content of those agreements is converging on a shared
set of principles for river governance, then that too could be interpreted as movement
toward a global regime, albeit one not organized around a centralized framework
accord. In theoretical terms, the driver for such convergence could be the diffusion of
norms and the external validation of institutional forms posited by some sociologists of
the world system. 26 Alternately, the source could be found in one or more of the various
network-based models of policy change, rooted in expertise or advocacy. 27
This raises the complex question of the relationship, if any, between the U.N.
Watercourses Convention and the growing set of basin-specific accords. The question
is complex because the global-level dialogue about watercourse governing principles
and the more localized processes of creating new basin-level accords have been
unfolding side by side. Although the Watercourses Convention was not approved until
1997, its central principles became apparent much earlier, during the deliberations of
7
the International Law Commission. Thus, convergence toward these principles over the
past decade or so in the content of individual basin-specific treaties, which involve
highly heterogeneous political and ecological situations, could be read as significant
evidence of a global normative pull. On the other hand, the causal relationship could be
the opposite, in the sense that the global framework simply reflects accumulated
practice in the basin-specific treaties. Here the evidence is mixed. According to
McCaffrey and Sinjela, “Most of the important elements of the Convention--equitable
utilization, ‘no harm,’ prior notification--are, in large measure, codifications of existing
norms.” 28 Wolf, however, concludes that the principles of the Convention “have been
explicitly invoked in no more than a handful of water negotiations or treaties.” 29
Hamner’s and Wolf’s content analysis of 145 river-basin treaties for the period 18741996 reinforces this skepticism, at least in terms of the historical body of basin treaty
law. 30 Regarding the principle of universal participation by riparian states, they found
that eighty-six percent of the agreements are bilateral, although many of the basins are
multilateral. According to Wolf, “Multilateral basins are, almost without exception,
governed by bilateral treaties, precluding the integrated basin management long
advocated by water managers.” 31 Regarding monitoring, enforcement and dispute
resolution, a mixed picture emerged. They found that almost two-thirds of the treaties
contained provisions on information sharing, and slightly more than half (54 percent)
contained monitoring provisions. However, 80 percent were found to contain no
enforcement mechanisms, and more than half (54 percent) were found to contain no
mechanism for conflict resolution.
More generally, despite a large body of international-relations scholarship on
internationally shared rivers, we know very little about trends and patterns in the
principled content of international agreements. Most of the existing research on sharedbasin cooperation assumes that it occurs in the institutional vacuum of “anarchic”
international politics. 32 As a result, there is an implicit assumption running through most
of this work that the principled content of cooperation will merely reflect prevailing
patterns of power and interest at the basin level. But interest-based models that seek
merely to predict whether an agreement will be reached tell us nothing about what those
agreements actually say or require, including such central elements as the level of
commitment to equity in resource allocation, the degree of emphasis on environmental
protection, or the willi ngness of states to bend traditional conceptions of national
sovereignty for the sake of functional problem solving. We also know very little about
temporal patterns, either in terms of the rate of agreement formation over time or in
terms of changing patterns of principled content. Because previous quantitative studies
have focused only on formally ratified basin treaties, they have not had a sufficiently
large sample to analyze temporal trends. Instead, they pool cooperative events over a
long time period (typically 100 years or more) in order to test the causal influence of
particular political, economic, or hydrological variables on cooperation. In effect, this
makes the unwarranted assumption of a constant normative context for cooperation,
rather than treating a changing normative context as itself a potentially important factor
in shaping cooperation.
A major goal of the current project is to begin closing this gap in our knowledge
by focusing analytic attention on the content of agreements rather than on agreement
per se. Legal scholarship, which tends to take more seriously the question of the
8
evolution of legal principles and governing norms for shared river basins, has provided
an important foundation for such work.33 Focusing primarily on key World Court
decisions, multilateral framework agreements such as the 1997 U.N. Watercourses
Convention, and a few specific agreement in a particularly high-profile basin such as the
Nile, Mekong, or Ganges, research by legal scholars has drawn a much more dynamic
picture of evolving international water law. What remains unclear is the extent to which
these evolved normative understandings are taking root at the level of specific basins
and in the context of specific political relationships among basin states.
From the discussion thus far we draw four conclusions . First, the 1997 U.N.
Convention endorses and codifies some previously well-established international legal
principles such as equitable use and peaceful dispute resolution. Second, the
Convention seeks to elevate the standing of certain other principles, particularly with
regard to avoiding significant harm, promoting environmental protection, and managing
watersheds in a cooperative, integrated fashion. Third, there is substantial
disagreement as to whether existing basin-level agreements, in the aggregate, enshrine
these principles. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, we know very little about
evolutionary normative trends at the basin level. Is the set of principles that
governments are willing to articulate in basin-level agreements changing over time? Is
there an identifiable structure to the principles articulated in recent agreements? Are the
principles of the Watercourses Convention gaining ground as the world’s set of basinlevel accords grows? Are basin-level developments converging on or diverging from the
Watercourses Convention’s core principles?
DATA AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
To address these questions, we assembled a dataset containing all known
international agreements pertaining to shared river or lake basins for the period 19802000. We began by pooling the list of agreements in two data sources: the
Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) at Oregon State University and
the FAOLEX legal database of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The TFDD
list was compiled by researchers and includes only formal agreements; the FAOLEX list
consists of items reported by governments and includes ‘softer’ agreements such as
memoranda of understanding and minutes of joint meetings, as well as signed but
unratified treaties. We felt it appropriate to include these instruments because our focus
is on the willingness of governments to articulate principles when engaging in any type
of shared watercourse management and governance, not only when engaged in the act
of ratifying treaties. Some of the most important aspects of shared watercourse
management, such as the joint construction and operation of hydroelectric facilities or
the implementation of flood-control measures, are commonly articulated and codified in
these less formalized, non-treaty instruments or in legal instruments that are signed by
the parties but not subsequently ratified.
From this set we subtracted agreements falling into one or more of three
categories: (1) agreements dealing with narrow or isolated aspects such as fishing
rights, navigation, or border demarcation; (2) more general cooperative agreements in
which water played only a tangential role; and (3) agreements unrelated to specific
basins, such as agreements on water-sector technical cooperation between non9
contiguous countries. This left us with a final set of 62 basin-specific agreements. We
then coded several aspects of the content of these agreements, with particular attention
to the core principles of the 1997 U.N. Convention: universal participation among basin
states, equitable use, avoidance of significant harm, sovereign equality, information
exchange, consultation, prior notification, environmental protection, and peaceful
dispute resolution. Each agreement was coded by two different coders working
independently. Appendix 1 provides a more detailed account of how we assembled the
dataset and our specific procedures for coding, verification, and reconciliation.
We present findings on three levels. First is a set of general descriptive findings
related to the number of agreements, basins, and parties, examined both across
regions and over time for the period 1980-2000. Second, we present the results of
coding the content of agreements, using the 1997 Watercourses Convention principles
as the template for measuring content. Third, we examine interactive effects and
relationships across different principles. Here we pay particular attention to those
principles thought to be mutually reinforcing (such as environmental protection and
avoiding significant harm, or equitable use and state sovereignty) and those thought to
be in tension (such as equitable use versus significant harm).
GENERAL /DESCRIPTIVE FINDINGS
Number of agreements and basins
A limited number of basins were the site of one or more agreements during the
study period of 1980-2000. Our set of 62 agreements covered a total of 36 different
basins--in other words, only about 14 percent of the world’s estimated 263 international
basins, or one in seven. Moreover, of these 62 agreements, at most 16 are first-in-basin
agreements. For the remaining 46 agreements, we were able to identify a prior
agreement in the same basin (either earlier in the study period or prior to 1980). In other
words, at least three-fourths of the agreements during this period took place in basins
with a previously established history of cooperation.
Distribution of agreements over time
Figure 1 shows the distribution of agreements over time for the study period. The
temporal pattern is marked by three features: a relatively consistent rate of a few new
agreements per year until the early 1990s, a spike in agreements in the period
immediately following 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED), and a noticeable drop-off in agreements toward the end of the study period.
In all, there were 29 agreements during the twelve years prior to UNCED (1980-1991)
and 33 agreements during the nine-year post-UNCED period (1992-2000), including 18
in the immediate post-UNCED period of 1992-94.
It is possible that the notable drop-off at the tail end of the study period is nothing
more than a lag in the reporting or posting of concluded agreements. If so, the lag
continues; we were able to identify only three agreements concluded after our year
2000 cutoff date, making the rate since the late 1990s less than one per year. It could
also be that UNCED had an accelerating effect on the rate of agreements, speeding up
the negotiating process for accords that would have been reached during this period. A
less sanguine possibility is that the growing articulation and establishment of the
10
principles ensconced in the 1997 Watercourses Convention has had a chilling effect on
the willingness of some states to enter into cooperation, or a t least to codify it publicly.
FIGURE 1: Number of international river agreements
per year, 1980-2000
15
10
5
0
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
Distribution by country and region
Of the 145 countries that have a portion of their national territory in an
international basin, more than half (74) participated in at least one basin-specific
international agreement during the study period (Table 3). 34 The most active countries
were Germany (9 agreements), France (7), Brazil, (6), and South Africa (6). 23
countries and the European Union signed three or more accords during the study
period, another 26 countries signed two accords, and an additional 25 signed a single
accord.
Table 4 presents the regional distribution of agreements during the study period.
Here we note the greater levels of activity (relative to the number of basins in the
region) in Africa and Europe compared to the other regions; the post-UNCED increase
in Asia; and the absence of post-UNCED agreements in North America. We also note
that forty percent of the agreements in Asia are first-in-basin agreements, a notably
higher proportion than in any other region.
11
TABLE 3: Countries signing international river agreements, 1980-2000
Number of
agreements:
9
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Countries signing that number of agreements:
(1) Germany
(1) France
(2) Brazil, South Africa
(2) Bolivia, United States
(6) Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Luxembourg, Niger
(11) Argentina, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, European Union, Mali,
Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania
(26) Austria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, China, Cote
D'Ivoire, Croatia, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico,
Mozambique, Poland, Romania, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda,
Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Zimbabwe
(25) Angola, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Laos,
Lebanon, Lesotho, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal,
Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela,
Viet Nam
Source: Harrison Program database
TABLE 4: Regional distribution of basin agreements, 1980-2000
Region
Number of
international
basins
Number of international
basin agreements during
the study period:
Total
Africa
Asia
Europe
N. America
S. America
60
53
71
39
38
16
12
20
5
9
19801991
8
3
8
5
5
19922000
8
9
12
0
4
No. of first-inbasin
agreements
Ratio of first-inbasin to total
agreements
5
4
3
2
2
.31
.25
.15
.40
.22
Source: Harrison Program database; Wolf et. al., “International River Basins of the World”
(column 2).
Number of parties and trend in participation
Of the 62 agreements in the dataset, 46 are bilateral (two parties) and 16 are
multilateral (three or more parties). It is important to differentiate here between
bilateral/multilateral agreements, referring to the number of parties, and
bilateral/multilateral basins, referring to the number of states physically located within
the basin. The distinction is important because, as indicated in Table 5, nearly twothirds of the bilateral agreements are in multilateral basins . These figures are striking on
two counts. First, multilateral agreements are dramatically over-represented in the
dataset. Two-thirds of the world’s international river basins are bilateral (176 of 263
12
basins, or 67%), yet more than three-quarters of the agreements written during the
study period were in multilateral basins (49 of 62, or 79%). Second, within those
multilateral basins, the most common type of agreement, by a ratio of roughly two to
one, is a bilateral agreement--that is, an agreement that excludes one or more of the
states located in the basin. In other words, the historical pattern of fragmented
cooperation that was identified by Wolf in his study of basin treaties for the period 18741995 continues to be the case during our study period of 1980-2000, and holds up when
one adds less formalized agreements to the dataset as we have done. In other words,
diplomatic initiatives take place disproportionately in multilateral basins—perhaps
because there is greater demand for cooperation in those basins, or perhaps because
barriers to collective action are greater in cases of bilateral upstream/downstream
asymmetry. Yet this greater level of diplomatic activity in multilateral basins typically
resulted in a bilateral rather than multilateral agreement, yielding fragmented basin
cooperation.
TABLE 5: Bilateral and multilateral agreements
Type of basin:
Type of agreement:
Number of agreements,
1980-2000:
bilateral
(2 basin states)
bilateral
(2 parties)
13
bilateral
(2 parties)
33
multilateral
(3 or more parties)
16
multilateral
(3 or more basin states)
Source: Harrison Program database
The fragmented character of cooperation is potentially a major limitation of basinspecific agreements as instruments of integrated watershed management. For this
reason, the 1997 U.N. Convention stressed the principle of universal participation by
riparian states in agreements affecting an entire basin, and universal consultation in
agreements or major activities affecting any portion of the basin. To test whether there
has been a trend toward universal participation during the study period, we calculated a
‘participation ratio’ for each of the 49 multilateral-basin agreements in the dataset. We
define the participation ratio as the ratio of agreeing parties to states located in the
basin. (We excluded bilateral basins from this calculation because the participation ratio
in a bilateral basin is 1 by definition; there will be no international agreement unless both
parties participate). Figure 2 shows a very slight upward trend in the participation ratio
for multilateral basins during the study period. Fitting a line to the data yields a slight
13
positive, albeit statistically insignificant, slope. In other words, shared governance of
multilateral basins remains fragmentary, although there may be a modest tendency
toward more comprehensive participation over the past two decades.
Another noteworthy pattern related to participation is the increase in agreementwriting in multilateral basins during the post-UNCED era. There were 22 agreements in
multilateral basins for the twelve-year pre-UNCED period 1980-1991, and 27 for the
nine-year post-UNCED period 1992-2000. Agreements in multilateral basins account for
all of the post-UNCED growth in international river agreements, as the number of
agreements in bilateral basins declined slightly (six post-UNCED versus seven preUNCED).
FIGURE 2: Ratio of signatories to basin states
for multilateral agreements, 1980-2000
1.20
1.00
0.80
0.60
y = 0.011x - 21.444
R 2 = 0.0546
0.40
0.20
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
FINDINGS RELATED TO THE CODED CONTENT OF AGREEMENTS
In this section we summarize the results of coding the agreements for content
related to the principles of the 1997 Watercourses Convention. In addition to the
principle of universal participation discussed in the prior section, the Watercourses
Convention stressed principles of equitable water use; avoidance of significant harm to
other watercourse states; sovereign equality and territorial integrity; regular exchanges
of information; consultation; prior notification of planned measures with potentially
adverse effects; environmental protection; and peaceful dispute resolution. To test for
the presence of each principle and to gauge the depth or specificity of the principle’s
14
articulation, we coded the agreements in our dataset in the following manner (see
Appendix for details on coding procedures):
Equitable use: Does the agreement contain a generally stated principle of
equity? Does it contain a specific water allocation mechanism? Do states
reserve specific or explicit rights for upstream or downstream water uses?
Avoiding significant harm: Does the agreement make reference to
impacts, harm, or damage as a result of inappropriate uses of water or
practices within the basin? Is there a specific definition or description of
what constitutes significant harm?
Sovereign equality and territorial integrity: Is there a generally stated
principle relating to or reserving the parties’ sovereign rights? Are there
provisions that create specific exemptions for domestic waters?
Information exchange: Is there an explicit obligation to exchange
information? Does the agreement provide for regular meetings of the
parties?
Consultation: Is there a provision for regular consultation among the
parties? Does the agreement create a permanent basin commission or
similar governing body?
Prior notification: Does the agreement create an obligation of prior
notification?
Environmental protection: Is environmental protection among the
agreement’s general objectives? Does the agreement contain explicit
environmental protection clauses? Does the agreement have a primarily
environmental focus?
Peaceful dispute resolution: Does the agreement create an obligation for
peaceful resolution of disputes? Does it specify dispute resolution
procedures?
We then asked three basic questions about patterns in the coded data: First, how
widespread or well established is this principle in the set of agreements as a whole?
Second, is there a pattern of regional variation? Third, is there a pattern of temporal
variation? Here we pay particular attention to the distinction between pre-UNCED
(1980-1991) and post-UNCED agreements (1992-2000).
Aggregate patterns of principled content: Prevalence of the Watercourses Convention
principles in the dataset
Table 6 summarizes the general results of coding the agreements for principled
content. Among the general principles articulated in the Watercourses Convention,
15
those of regular consultation (51 of 62 agreements), environmental protection (44),
peaceful dispute resolution (39), and exchange of information (38) are the most
frequently represented in the dataset. Other principles were less frequently invoked,
including prior notification (24), equitable water use (22), and avoiding significant harm
to other parties (17). Explicit reservations of sovereign/territorial rights were also
relatively uncommon (17), though strongly increasing in the post-UNCED period.
TABLE 6: Aggregate coding results
Principle:
Equitable use
Avoiding significant
harm to other
watercourse states
Sovereign equality and
territorial integrity
Coded item:
Agreements
coding positively
(n = 62)
no.
%
Generally stated principle of equity
22
36
Specific water allocation mechanism
16
26
Specific water use rights reserved
14
23
Obligation to avoid significant harm
17
27
7
11
17
27
5
8
Provision for regular meetings
31
50
Obligation to exchange information
38
61
Some provision for regular consultation
51
82
Permanent basin commission or similar body
45
73
Obligation of prior notification
24
39
Environmental protection as agreement objective
44
71
Agreement has primarily environmental focus
19
31
Specific environmental protection clause(s)
42
68
Obligation for peaceful dispute resolution
39
63
Specific procedure for dispute resolution
34
55
Specific definition or description of significant harm
Explicit reference/reservation of sovereign rights
Agreement includes exemption of domestic waters
Information exchange
Consultation
Prior notification
Environmental
protection
Peaceful dispute
resolution
Source: Harrison Program database
16
More interesting than the mere number of agreements referencing a particular
principle, however, is some measure of the depth, breadth, or specificity of those
principles. We assess this by looking not simply for the invocation of a principle, but also
for more specific articulations. For example, we coded the agreements not simply for
whether they contained a general goal or purpose of environmental protection, but also
whether they contained one or more specific clauses on environmental protection.
Similarly, we looked not simply for a commitment to peaceful dispute resolution but also
for a specified procedure by which disputes are to be resolved. In this way we hope to
gauge the broadening or deepening of principles over time.
Here we see two very different patterns among the most common pri nciples.
Some are invoked in ways that lack depth and specificity for the entire study period. It is
not uncommon, particularly in the post-UNCED era, for agreements to invoke the idea
of avoiding significant harm--but only a handful provide a clear or specific indication of
what constitutes significant harm or its causal sources. Sovereign rights are often
reserved in the abstract, but few agreements link such reservations explicitly to water
rights. In contrast, the principles of environmental protection and peaceful dispute
resolution seem to have acquired a more specific character--most agreements
articulating goals of environmental protection do contain specific environmental clauses,
and most creating an obligation of peaceful dispute resolution also create a permanent
basin commission or other standing body as a specific mechanism.
Regional pattern of principled content
Table 4 (above) indicates the distribution of agreements by region. Dividing the
62 agreements in the dataset across five geographic regions reduced the sample size in
individual regions to the point that statistical analysis is of little use. Nevertheless, there
are some interesting hints of regional variation in the data , summarized in Table 7. A
generally stated principle of equitable use was much more common in Asia than in the
other world regions, and particularly uncommon in Europe. In contrast, the principle of
avoiding significant harm was articulated frequently in both Europe and Asia, but was
much less common in other world regions.
TABLE 7: Percentage of agreements articulating selected principles, by region
Equitable
use
Africa (16)
Asia (12)
Europe (20)
N America (5)
S America (9)
Avoidance
of
significant
harm
Sovereign
rights
Environmental
protection*
Peaceful
dispute
resolution
6%
50
40
20
0
19%
50
35
20
0
63%
50
95
40
77
63%
67
70
60
44
38%
67
15
40
33
* Agreements articulating environmental protection as an objective
Source: Harrison Program database
17
Agreements in Asia were much more likely to invoke sovereign reservations of
rights than agreements in Europe and the Americas, where basin-level cooperation has
a longer institutional history. But concern for sovereignty in Asia is not simply a matter of
the region’s higher rate of first-in-basin agreements; most of the Asian agreements
where such rights are reserved are in basins with a prior history of cooperation. Africa,
which also had a relatively high rate of first-in-basin agreements, had a much lower rate
than Asia of invoking sovereign reservations of states’ rights. Indeed, none of the firstin-basin agreements in Africa coded positively for this principle. These observations
suggest a political explanation for sovereign sensitivities, rather than a historical one
based on experience with cooperation at the basin level.
Other notable regional patterns include the absence of basin commissions in
agreements written in North America since 1980; the lesser frequency with which South
American agreements articulated any of the principles in Table 7 other than
environmental protection; and the heavy emphasis on environmental protection in
European agreements.
Temporal pattern of principled content
Given the proximity of two important events for international river cooperation—
the 1991 draft articles of the International Law Commission and the 1992 U.N.
Conference on Environment and Development—we divided the dataset into two time
periods (1980-1991 and 1992-2000) in order to examine patterns of temporal variation.
As Table 8A indicates, there is a statistically significant increase in the likelihood that a
post-UNCED agreement will articulate environmental objectives. More surprisingly,
post-UNCED agreements were also significantly more likely to contain an explicit
affirmation of the sovereign rights of the parties. 35
One way to interpret this pattern is that the two trends are in fact linked, in the
sense that greater emphasis on transnational environmental responsibilities brings with
it greater emphasis on states’ rights. Of the 13 post-UNCED agreements that coded
positively for affirming sovereign rights and reservations, almost all (11) also coded
positively as having environmental goals listed among the agreement’s objectives.
Another possibility is a regional effect; as noted above, the practice of explicitly
reserving sovereign rights was much more common in Africa, Asia, and Europe than in
the Americas, and the former regions were the sites of most of the post-UNCED
agreements.
18
TABLE 8A: Variation in principled content across the two time periods
for Watercourses Convention principles
19801991
19922000
(n=29):
(n=33):
Pearson chi
square
(significance):
Cramer’s
V
Statistically significant difference between time periods:
-Explicit affirmation of sovereign rights
-Environmental protection as one objective
2
17
15
27
11.531 (.001)
4.031 (.045)
.431
.255
5
12
2.836 (.092)
.214
6
13
2.541 (.111)
.202
22
16
16
9
10
29
23
22
13
14
1.527 (.217)
1.395 (.237)
.860 (.354)
.471 (.492)
.410 (.522)
.157
.150
.118
.087
.081
Borderline significant difference between time periods:
-Obligation to avoid significant harm
Statistically insignificant difference between time periods:
-Environmental protection as agreement’s main
purpose
-Provision for regular consultation
-Obligation for peaceful dispute resolution
-Obligation to exchange information
-Generally stated principle of equity
-Obligation of prior notification
Source: Harrison Program database
Beyond increasing or decreasing prevalence, another important temporal
question is whether we see a pattern of ‘deepening’ of particular principles over time--in
the sense of moving from the more general to the more specific, becoming more
intrusive on states, or broadening in reach. As indicated in Table 8B, we developed one
or more indicators of deepening for seven of the core ILC principles (equitable use,
significant harm, sovereign rights, information exchange, consultation, environmental
protection, and peaceful dispute resolution).36
For most of the principles where we could get some purchase on this question,
we do not see a notable deepening effect during the study period. In some cases, the
“deepest” way that we identified to express the principle is also the most common way
of doing so, for the entire study period. Almost all agreements establishing a general
obligation of peaceful dispute resolution also establish a specific mechanism for
resolving disputes. Most agreements that state a general objective of environmental
protection contain one or more environmentally specific articles (with both the general
and the specific expression of the principle increasing significantly between time
periods, as noted above). The general principle of equitable use correlates significantly
with its more specific expression, a water allocation mechanism. These principles are
not always articulated, but when they are, it is typically in the deepest form that we
measured.
19
TABLE 8B: Variation in principled content across the two time periods
for measures of normative deepening
19801991
(n=29):
19922000
(n=33):
Pearson chi
square
(significance):
Cram
er’s
V
16
26
3.939 (.047)
.252
16
27
3.025 (.082)
.221
1
4
1.566 (.211)*
.159
8
6
0.781 (.377)
.112
13
18
0.583 (.445)
.097
15
19
0.213 (.644)
.059
7
9
0.079 (.778)
.036
3
4
0.049 (.825)*
.028
Statistically significant difference between time periods:
-Environmental protection:
Specific environmental protection clause(s)
Borderline significant difference between time periods:
-Consultation:
Creation of a basin commission or analogous body
Statistically insignificant difference between time periods:
-Sovereign rights:
Agreement includes exemptions for domestic waters
-Equitable use:
Specific water use rights reserved
-Information exchange:
Provision for regular meetings
-Dispute resolution:
Specific dispute resolution procedure
-Equitable use:
Specific water allocation mechanism
-Significant harm:
Specific definition of significant harm
* Expected cell counts less than 5; Fisher’s exact test indicates no significant difference between time
periods
Source: Harrison Program database
In other cases, the absence of a “deepening” trend is due to the opposite effect—
a consistent reluctance to embrace the more precise or specific form we identified.
Although more than one-fourth of the agreements in the sample create an obligation not
to cause significant harm, fewer than half of these provide a specific definition of what
constitutes such harm, and agreements in the second time period are not significantly
more likely to do so than those in the first. Similarly, although there is clearly a growing
tendency in the 1990s to explicitly reserve the state’s sovereign rights in a general
sense, there is only a nominal increase in the more specific practice of explicitly
exempting domestic waters from the agreement. For these principles, states appear to
be consistently reluctant to be more precise or specific.
Table 8B shows that two principles, environmental protection and consultation,
saw a notable increase in their “deeper” expression in the second time period. In the
case of environmental protection, the increase over time in the deeper measure tracks
closely with the increase over time in the general principle (Table 8A). In other words,
the ratio of deep expression to general expression is about the same in both time
20
periods. Consultation, thus, is the only principle for which the deeper expression seems
to be replacing the shallower expression rather than merely increasing along with it.
There is a notable increase in the likelihood of forming a permanent basin commission
as the mechanism for regular consultation, from slightly more than half of the
agreements in the first time period to more than eighty percent in the second time
period (a change of borderline statistical significance for the sample size).
The opposite of deepening is also conceivable, of course. The ways in which
principles are inscribed may grow shallower, in the sense of being less specific,
narrower in scope, or less intrusive on the parties. Interestingly, there is a suggestion of
this in the data on both equitable use and significant harm. The relative frequency of
these two principles is greater in the post-UNCED time period than in the pre-UNCED
period. Yet the deeper expressions of these principles--identifying specific water use
rights and providing a specific definition of significant harm--become less frequent in the
second time period. The relatively small number of agreements involved does not allow
us to view these changes as statistically significant and demands a cautious
interpretation, but the direction in which the data leans is clearly away from deepening
rather than toward it.
CORRELATION AMONG INDIVIDUAL PRINCIPLES
Given the potential synergies among some principles (for example, information
exchange and consultation) and the potential tensions among others (for example,
equitable use and significant harm), the combinations of principles found in agreements
in the dataset also require analysis. Table 9 presents the results of a pairwise test for
correlations.
Several interesting patterns emerge. First, we note the absence of a correlation
between the principles of equitable use and avoidance of significant harm. This
suggests that, rather than the delicate balance found in the 1997 Watercourses
Convention, many basin-level agreements have resisted trying to have it both ways.
Second, we note evidence of two different clusters of principles. On the one
hand, there are some noteworthy correlations among principles related to what might be
termed “openness”--information excha nge, prior notification, and peaceful dispute
resolution--and correlations between these principles and environmental protection.
This is encouraging, given the importance of shared information and dialogue to
environmental protection. None of these principles, however, correlates with the central
principles that reinforce the state’s right to water—namely, equitable use and sovereign
rights. Instead, we found significant correlations between equitable use and two of our
“deepening” indicators that also reinforce the state’s rights to water—a specific water
allocation formula and exemption for domestic waters from agreement provisions. In
other words, one subset of the agreements seems anchored by principles of openness
and sustainability, and another by the principle of the state’s water-use rights.
21
Table 9: Correlations among the Watercourses Convention principles
Principle:
Equitable use
Avoiding significant harm
Sovereign rights
Information exchange
Consultation
Prior notification
Environment (as one objective)
Peaceful dispute resolution
Significantly correlated principles:*
none
Sovereign rights
Information exchange
Prior notification
Peaceful dispute resolution
Avoiding significant harm
Avoiding significant harm
Regular consultation
Prior notification
Environmental protection (as one objective)
Environmental protection (as main objective)
Information exchange
Prior notification
Environmental protection (as one objective)
Avoiding significant harm
Information exchange
Regular consultation
Peaceful dispute resolution
Information exchange
Regular consultation
Environmental protection (as main objective)
Avoiding significant harm
Prior notification
*Significance at .05 level; Fisher’s exact test used in instances with expected cell
counts <5.
Source: Harrison Program database
Third, whereas the longstanding international legal principle of equitable use fits
squarely within the water-rights cluster, the more recently emerging principle of avoiding
significant harm relates to the two clusters in a more ambiguous fashion. On the one
hand, it correlates with some principles that reinforce the state’s rights to water,
including both explicit affirmation of sovereign rights and the explicit assertion of
exemptions for domestic waters. On the other hand, it also correlates with some
principles from the “openness and sustainability” cluster, including information
exchange, prior notification, and peaceful dispute resolution. Perhaps most strikingly, it
is not significantly correlated with any of the environmental variables. We interpret these
ambiguities as evidence that avoiding significant harm has not yet taken on the sort of
clear-cut legal meaning that attaches to a more familiar concept such as equitable use.
Another identified pattern that reinforces the idea of two distinct clusters of
principles involves those agreements that explicitly articulated environmental protection
as a goal of the agreement. Interestingly, there was a negative correlation between
articulating environmental objectives and explicitly reserving rights to water. This
suggests that water rights are a concern primarily in agreements with a more traditional
22
water resources development orientation as opposed to those concerned about “instream” or “blue water” uses. As suggested above, we also find greater emphasis on
information exchange, regular meetings, and consultation in the agreements with
environmental objectives, consistent with the idea that these processes are understood
to have an important role to play in environmental protection.
INTERPRETING THE FINDINGS
Is there a global rivers regime emerging? And if so, have the efforts of the
International Law Commission culminating in the U.N. Watercourses Convention been
leading or following the process? Several conclusions seem warranted in light of the
study findings. First, several aspects of the data and analysis cause us to cast doubts
on the idea of that the aggregation of basin-level developments constitutes a de facto
global regime for international rivers. A relatively small proportion of international basins
have been the subject of any kind of agreement in the past two decades. There is a
strong tendency for cooperation to concentrate in basins with a prior history of waterrelated cooperation as opposed to pushing into new basins. Setting aside a temporary
post-UNCED spike, the rate at which international agreements are being concluded is
not increasing.
Second, given this weak convergence across individual basins around the world,
a second important finding becomes clear: the 1997 Watercourses Convention goes
well beyond merely codify existing principles at the basin level. Some of the
Convention’s core principles--including regular consultation, environmental protection,
peaceful dispute resolution, and information exchange—are reasonably well established
at the basin level throughout the study period, turning up in more than half of the
agreements in our dataset. But other important principles--most notably, universal
participation, equitable use, and avoiding significant harm--appear only sporadically at
the basin level. Here the ILC and the Watercourses Convention have broken important
new ground relative to the basin-level status quo.
To break ground, however, is not in itself to build a foundation. We find little
evidence that the process of crafting the ILC principles and negotiating a global
framework convention during the 1990s exerted a notable pull on the principled content
of basin agreements. The U.N. Convention itself dates only to 1997, of course, but the
core of its principled content crystallized much earlier within the ILC. Were this process
exerting a significant top-down pull on content at the basin level, we would expect to
see both a diffusion and a deepening of the ILC principles in the 1990s relative to the
1980s—diffusion in the sense of becoming more widespread over time within the
dataset, and deepening in the sense of greater specificity, broader scope, or greater
intrusiveness in the responsibilities or obligations created for states.
This may yet occur, but to date the evidence for diffusion is mixed and, on the
whole, not particularly strong . Many of the core ILC principles—equitable use,
information exchange, prior notification, regular meetings, consultation, and peaceful
dispute resolution--appear to be about as well established toward the beginning of the
study period as they do toward the end. In this regard, it would be useful for future
research to extend the dataset back in time in order to test whether there are identifiable
trends since the late 1960s, when the International Law Commission first took up the
23
question. One important exception is environmental protection, which has received
much greater emphasis in more recent basin agreements. This seems more likely,
however, to be the result of the general upsurge in environmental concerns and
environmental activism around the world than to any specific effect of the ILC principles
and the Watercourses Convention negotiations.
Beyond environmental protection, there are some modest signs in the data of
principled evolution consistent with an ILC/UN Convention push—notably, the modest
(if statistically indeterminate) increase in the 1990s in the principles of avoiding
significant harm and creating a permanent basin commission. These trends can be read
as weak evidence of diffusion. Another important exception to the larger pattern of
constancy, and one of the most interesting patterns in the data, is the dramatically
greater likelihood that recent agreements will affirm explicitly the state’s sovereign
rights. Affirming sovereign rights in an agreement correlates with one other core
Watercourses Convention principle—that of avoiding significant harm. We read the
surge in sovereign emphasis, therefore, as possibly constituting a conservative reaction
to the emergence of “trans-sovereign” norms stressing the responsibilities as well as
rights of states in shared basin governance.
Another test of norm diffusion is whether we see a pattern of temporal
deepening. Of the seven core ILC principles for which we were able to develop a test,
only one shows signs of deepening. There is a notable increase (although of only
borderline statistical significance for this sample size) in the likelihood of forming a
permanent basin commission as the mechanism for regular consultation. The other
principles for which we tested deepening—equitable use, significant harm, sovereign
rights, environmental protection, information exchange, and dispute resolution-remained at about the same level of relative specificity or intrusiveness on states over
the two time periods examined. Socialization and practice may be deepening the
content of these principles, but it does not appear to be happening through the specific
mechanism of explicit international agreements.
Perhaps the most important observation is that we may be seeing two different,
clustered sets of norms emerge at the basin level--one centered on affirming the state’s
water rights, the other on affirming a need to respond to the potentially harmful effects
of water usage and water resources development. Further analysis is required to
determine whether this pattern tracks the conventional upstream/downstream
dichotomy between equitable use and avoidance of significant harm, or reflects a more
complex divergence.
LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
During the past few decades, the international community has invested much
energy in crafting a global framework of principles for governing shared river basins and
in getting basin-specific accords into place in key basins. Less attention has been paid
to linking these two processes. At the basin level, there is a need to shift attention and
international pressures away from the blunt goal of getting an agreement in place and
toward careful consideration of the principled content of accords. At the global level,
more effort is needed to bridge the conceptual gap between guaranteeing equity in
water use and guaranteeing effectiveness in responding to the potentially harmful
24
effects of that use. Bridging this principled gap will be one of the central challenges in
the effort to establish norm-governed behavior for the world’s rivers and watersheds, at
both the basin-specific and global levels.
25
APPENDIX 1: ASSEMBLING THE DATASET AND CODING THE DAT A
We assembled the dataset from two on-line databases: the Transboundary
Freshwater
Dispute
Database
(TFDD)
at
Oregon
State
University
(http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/), which includes shared-basin treaties for the
period since 1820, and the FAOLEX database of the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization (http://faolex.fao.org/faolex/index.html), which includes not only treaties
but also less formalized agreements such as memoranda of understanding and minutes
of joint meetings. The TFDD dataset was compiled from a variety of sources; the
FAOLEX database lists all agreements reported to FAO by member countries.
We tested the comprehensiveness of the resulting pooled data by cross-checking
against International Legal Materials, published by the American Society for
International Law, and the United Nations Treaty Collection, which monitors the status
of multilateral agreements. We chose 1980 as the cutoff date because we found a dropoff in the inclusiveness of the FAOLEX database prior to 1980. We were able to identify
only two agreements missing from the FAOLEX database for the period since 1980
(both related to the feeder rivers of the Aral Sea and both included in the study through
the TFDD database).
Pooling the TFDD and FAOLEX datasets yielded a preliminary list of 113
international agreements for the period 1980-2000. From this list we eliminated four
types of agreements:
-General water-cooperation agreements between states not sharing river basins
(for example, Agreement between the Government of Portugal and the
Government of Sao Tomé and Príncipe for Cooperation in the Water Sector
(1990));
-General framework agreements not specific to one or more shared basins (for
example, Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems in the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) Region, a 1995 agreement among several
Southern African nations);
-Narrow or highly specific agreements where one would not normally expect to
find basin-management principles articulated, such as agreements on navigation
rights, fishing rights, or border demarcation;
-Agreements that constituted very narrow or technical clarifications or updates of
prior agreements in the dataset.
We retained agreements related to the construction of hydroelectric dams, other major
water infrastructure projects, and flood control, on the grounds that they are such major
alterations of the river basin as to constitute de facto basin management plans. We also
retained agreements applying to more than one basin provided that the agreement
specified the set of shared basins to which it applied.
Using these criteria, we eliminated 51 agreements, leaving 62 relevant and
basin-specific agreements for the period 1980-2000. Appendices 2 and 3 list
agreements used in the study and agreements eliminated by these criteria.
26
Coding the agreements
We used the official text of each agreement for coding purposes (in most cases
downloaded from the FAOLEX or TFDD web sites). For 21 of the 62 agreements, we
were unable to obtain an official English-language version. These agreements were
translated by a political scientist or legal scholar fluent in or native to the official
language of the agreement.
For each of the core principles in the 1997 U.N. Convention, we developed one
or more indicators to look for in the text of the agreements. In some cases this required
no coder judgment--for example, comparing the number of parties to the number of
basin states as a way to measure an agreement’s inclusiveness, or identifying the
presence or absence of a specific means of dispute resolution such as binding
arbitration or reliance on the International Court of Justice. In other cases, substantially
more judgment was called for, as in determining whether an agreement had a “primarily
environmental” focus or whether it contained specific reservations of sovereign rights.
Each agreement was coded by two different coders working independently, with
discrepancies then reconciled by discussion among the project principals. We used 80
percent as the minimum required rate of intercoder reliability; we present and analyze
only those variables exceeding that rate (with one exception, a variable with an
agreement rate of 79 percent). Table A-1 presents data on rates of coder agreement.
TABLE A-1: Rates of agreement between independent
coders
Coded items:
Generally stated principle of equity
Specific water allocation mechanism
Specific water use rights reserved
Obligation to avoid significant harm
Specific definition/description of significant harm
Explicit reference to/reservation of sovereign rights
Agreement includes exemption of domestic waters
Provision for regular meetings
Obligation to exchange information
Obligation of prior notification
Environmental protection as agreement objective
Specific environmental protection clause(s)
Obligation and procedures for peaceful dispute
resolution
Regular consultation/Permanent basin commission
or similar body
Rate of
agreement
(percent)
87.1
95.2
82.3
87.1
91.9
83.9
85.5
83.9
83.9
85.5
80.6
96.8
79.0
80.6
Six other indicators that we coded—all measures of “deepening”--failed to pass
at the 80 percent threshold. Most of these were related to information exchange, which
27
proved to be a highly subjective coding challenge given the many different aspects of
the agreement that can be read to involve “information” and the fuzzy boundary
between exchanging national data and jointly creating new information via basin
monitoring or other activities. These failed variables were excluded from the study.
28
APPENDIX 2: CODED AGREEMENTS
Year:
Agreement:
1998
Convenio sobre cooperación para la protección y el aprovechamiento sostenible
de las aguas de las cuencas hidrográficas hispano-portuguesas, hecho ad
referendum en Albufeira el 30 de noviembre de 1998.
Convention on the Protection of the Rhine.
1998
1997
1997
1997
1997
1996
Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the
Government of the People's Republic of China on guiding principles of the joint
economic activity on some islands and adjacent defined areas of water of the
borderline rivers.
Agreement between the Republic of Turkey and the Republic of Bulgaria on
determination of the boundary in the mouth area of the Mutludere/Rezovska
River and delimitation of the maritime areas between the two States in the Black
Sea.
Agreement on transboundary waters between Hungary and Ukraine.
Cuariem Ajuste Complementario al Acuerdo de Cooperacion entre el Gobierno
Agreement on protection of the river Oder from pollution
1996
Convention concerning the collection, storage and discharge of waste from ships
navigating along the Rhein and other inland waters.
1996
Treaty between His Majesty's Government of Nepal and the Government of India
concerning the integrated development of the Makahali River including Sarada
Barrage, Tanakpur Barrage and Pancheshw ar Project.
Treaty on Sharing of the Ganges Waters at Farakka.
Acuerdo para el aprovechaniento multiple de los recursos del la alta cuenca del
Rio Bermejo y del Rio Grande de Tarija enter
Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Czech Republic
on Co-operation on Water Resource Management.
Agreement constituting the Trilateral Commission for the Development of the
Riverbed Rio Pilcomayo.
Agreement on the cooperation for the sustainable development of the Mekong
River Basin.
Resolution of the Heads of States of the Central Asia [sic] on work of the EC of
ICAS on implementation
1996
1995
1995
1995
1995
1995
1994
1994
1994
1994
1994
1994
1994
1994
Agreed Minutes of the first meeting of the Greek-Bulgarian Joint programming
and follow -up Committee.
Agreement between the Government of the people's Republic of China and the
Government of Mongolia on the Protection and Utilization of Transboundary
Waters.
Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the
Government of the Republic of Hungary on water management relations.
Agreement between the Governments of Angola, the Republic of Botswana and
the Republic of Namibia on the establishment of a Permanent Okavango River
Basin Water Commission (OKACOM).
Agreement on the Preposition of a Tripartite Environmental Management
Programme for Lake Victoria.
Agreement on the Protection of the Rivers Meuse and Scheldt.
Bilateral Agreement, Act No. 15 concerning the division of the water of Al-Asi
River (Orontes), between the Syrian Arab Republic and the Lebanese Republic
signed on .20/9/1994.
Convention for the Establishment of the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization.
1994
Convention on co-operation for the protection and sustainable use of the
Danube River (Danube River Protection Convention).
1994
Treaty of peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of
29
Parties:
Spain; Portugal
France; Germany;
Luxembourg;
Netherlands; Switzerland
Russian Federation;
China
Turkey; Bulgaria
Hungary; Ukraine
Brazil; Uruguay
Germany; Poland; Czech
Republic
France; Belgium;
Germany; Luxembourg;
Netherlands; Switzerland
India; Nepal
Bangladesh; India
Argentina; Bolivia
Germany; Czech
Republic
Argentina; Bolivia;
Paraguay
Cambodia; Laos;
Thailand; Viet Nam
Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan;
Tajikistan; Uzbekistan;
Turkmenistan
Greece; Bulgaria
Mongolia; China- People's
Republic
Hungary; Croatia
Angola; Botswana;
Namibia
Kenya; Uganda;
Tanzania
Belgium; France;
Netherlands
Syria; Lebanon
Kenya; Uganda;
Tanzania
Austria; Bulgaria; Croatia;
Czech Republic;
Germany; Hungary;
Moldova; Romania;
Slovakia; Slovenia;
Ukraine; European Union
Israel; Jordan
1994
1993
1993
1993
1992
1992
1992
1992
1991
1990
1990
1989
1989
1988
1988
1988
1988
1987
1987
1987
1987
1987
1987
1986
1986
Jordan.
Treaty on Walvis Bay.
Agreement establishing the framework for general co-operation between the
Arab Republic of Egypt and Ethiopia.
Agreement on joint activities in addressing the Aral Sea
Notas Reversales relacionadas con la creación de la Autoridad Binacional
Autónoma de la Cuenca del Sistema Lago Titicaca, Río Desaguadero, Lago
Poopó, Salar de Coipasa (TDPS).
Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of
Poland on Co-operation on Water Resource Management.
Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Namibia and the
Government of the Republic of South Africa on the establishment of a
permanent Water Commission signed at Noordoewer, 14 September 1992.
Treaty on development and utilization of the water resources of the Komati River
Basin between the Kingdom of Swaziland and the Government of the Republic
of South Africa.
Treaty on the Establishment and Functioning of the Joint Water Commission
between the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland and the Government of
the Republic of South Africa.
Acuerdo de Cooperación entre el Gobierno de la República Oriental del Uruguay
y el Gobierno de la República Federativa del Brasil para el aprovechamiento de
los recursos naturales y el desarrollo de la cuenca del río Cuareim.
Agreement between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Republic of Niger
concerning the equitable sharing in the development, conservation and use of
their common water resources.
Convention on the International Commission for the Protection of the Elbe.
Agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of the
United States of America for water supply and flood control in the Souris river
basin.
Law No. 14 of 1990, ratifying the Joint Minutes concerning the provisional
division of the waters of the Euphrates River.
Agreement between the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil and
the Government of the Republic of Venezuela on the establishment of a nonaedificandi zone at the boundary between the two countries.
Minutes of the Greek-Bulgarian Committee for the use of the waters of Nestos
river.
Protocole d'accord entre la Republique du Niger et la Republique du Mali relatif
à la cooperation dans l'utilisation des ressources en eau du Fleuve Niger. Fait à
Bamako, le 12 Juillet 1988.
Red River Flood Control -Agreement Between the United States of America and
Canada.
Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the European
Economic Community, on the one hand, and the Republic of Austria, on the
other, on cooperation on management of water resources in the Danube Basin
including the Statute of the Standing Committee on Management of Water
Resources and the Final Protocol and Declaration.
Agreement between the Republic of Zimbabwe and the Republic of Zambia
concerning the utilization of the Zambezi river.
Agreement on the action plan for the environmentally sound management of the
common Zambezi River System signed at Harare, 28 May 1987.
Boundary Waters-Agreement Between the United States of America and Mexico
of 1987.
Convention instituant le Conseil du Léman et échanges de lettres du 10 juin
1987.
Convention revisée portant creation de l'autorité du Bassin du Niger. Faite à
N'djamena, le 29 Octobre 1987.
Convention entre le Gouvernement de la République française et le
Gouvernement du Grand-Duché du Luxembourg pour la réalisation et
l'exploitation de certaines implantations industrielles sur la Moselle.
Treaty between the Government of Romania and the Government of Hungary on
the regulation of water problems in watercourses forming or crossing the
30
Namibia; South Africa
Egypt; Ethiopia
Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan;
Tajikistan; Uzbekistan;
Turkmenistan
Bolivia; Peru
Germany; Poland
Namibia; South Africa
South Africa; Swaziland
South Africa; Swaziland
Brazil; Uruguay
Niger; Nigeria
Germany; Czech
Republic; European
Union
United States; Canada
Iraq; Syria
Brazil; Venezuela
Greece; Bulgaria
Niger; Mali
United States; Canada
Austria; Germany;
European Union
Zambia; Zimbabwe
Botswana; Mozambique;
Tanzania; Zambia;
Zimbabwe
United States; Mexico
Switzerland; France
Benin; Burkina Faso;
Cameroon; Cote D'Ivoire;
Guinea; Mali; Niger;
Nigeria; Chad
France; Luxembourg
Hungary; Romania
1986
1984
1984
1983
1983
1983
1982
1982
1982
1980
1980
1980
boundary.
Treaty on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project between the Government of the
kingdom of Lesotho and the Government of the Republic of South Africa signed
at Maseru, 24 October 1986.
Agreement concerning the Cachuela Esperanza hydroelectric plant,
supplementary to the Agreement on economic and technical co-operation
between the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the
Government of the Republic of Bolivia.
Treaty between the United States of America and Canada relating to the Skagit
River and Ross Lake, and the Seven Mile Reservoir on the Pend D'Oreille River.
Agreement between the Government of the Republic of South Africa, the
Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland and the Government of the People's
Republic of Mozambique relative to the establishment of a tripartite permanent
technical committee. Signed at Pretoria, 17 February 1983.
Agreement between the United States of America and the United Mexican
States on Co-operation for the Protection and Improvement of the Environment
in the Border Area.
Agreement on the ad-hoc sharing of the Teesta Waters between India and
Bangladesh reached during the 25th meeting of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint
Rivers Commission held in July, 1983 at Dhaka.
Convention between the French Republic and the Kingdom of Belgium
concerning improvement of the common river Lys between Deulemont and
Menin.
Convention modifiant et complétant la convention additionelle du 16 juillet 1975
à la convention du 4 juillet 1969 entre la République française et la République
fédérale d'Allemagne au sujet de l'aménagement du Rhin entre Strasbourg-Kehl
et Lauterbourg-Neuburgweier, signée à Bonn le 6 décembre 1982.
Indo-Bangladesh Memorandum of Understanding on the sharing of Ganga
waters at Farakka.
Convention entre le Royaume de Belgique et le Grand-Duché de Luxembourg
au sujet des eaux de la Sûre.
Protocole relatif au Fonds de Developpement du Bassin du Niger. Signe à
Faranah, le 21 Novembre 1980.
Tratado para el aprovechamiento de los recursos hídricos compartidos de los
tramos limítrofes del río Uruguay y de su afluente el río Pepiri-Guazu.
31
Lesotho; South Africa
Bolivia; Brazil
United States; Canada
South Africa; Swaziland;
Mozambique
Mexico; United States
India; Bangladesh
France; Belgium
France; Germany
India; Bangladesh
Belgium; Luxembourg
Benin; Cameroon; Chad;
Guinea; Cote D'Ivoire;
Mali; Niger; Nigeria;
Burkina Faso
Argentina; Brazil
APPENDIX 3: ITEMS EXCLUDED FROM THE DATASET
Year:
2000
2000
1999
1999
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1995
1994
1994
1994
1994
1993
1992
1992
1992
1992
1991
1991
1990
Agreement:
Agreement between Cape Verde and the Arabic Bank for financing the project on
water supply
Revised protocol on shared watercourse systems in the Southern African
Development Community
Agreement between Cape Verde and IDA for a loan project on water and energy
sectors
Energy and Water sector reform and development project between Cape Verde
and World Bank
Energy and Water sector reform and development project loan agreement between
Cape Verde and OPEC Fund
Tratado de Comercio y Navegación entre los Gobiernos de la República del
Ecuador y la República del Perú.
Agreement (No. 95/1998) between the Federal Government of Austria and the
Government of Macedonia on Economical, Agricultural, Industrial, technical and
Technological Co-operation.
Agreement on Economic, Industrial, Technical and Technological Cooperation
Bilateral Agreement between the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the
Lithuanian Republic and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental
Protection of the Republic of Belarus.
Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Minute No. 291 of the International Boundary and Water Commission United
States and Mexico concerning improvement to the conveying capacity of the
international boundary segment of the Colorado River.
Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Czech Republic on
the Implementation of the Common Environmental Project Waste Water Treatment
Plants in the North of Bohemia.
Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) Region signed at Johannesburg 28 August 1995.
Technical Protocol on Water Resources between the Ministry of Public Works and
Water Resources and the Ministry of Public Works and Regional Planning in
Romania signed in Cairo on 17/5/1994.
Agreement concerning the establishment of a Border Environment Cooperation
Commission and a North American Development Bank.
Bilateral Agreement between the Lithuanian Department of Environment and the
Ministry of Environmental Protection, Nature Conservation and Forestry of Poland.
Convention entre la Suisse et l'Italie concernant la navigation sur le lac Majeur et
le lac de Lugano.
Minute No. 289 of the International Boundary and Water Commission United
States and Mexico entitled observation on the quality of the waters along the
United States and Mexico Border.
Treaty between the Czech Republic Government and the Slovak Republic
Government on mutual relations and principles of cooperation in agriculture, food
industry, forestry, and water economy under the conditions of the customs union.
Acuerdo Complementario al Acuerdo Básico de Cooperación Científica y Técnica
entre el Gobierno de la República Oriental del Uruguay y el Gobierno de la
República Federativa del Brasil sobre cooperación en el área de recursos hídricos.
Protocol to the Convention of 8 October 1990 between the Governments of the
Federal Republic of Germany and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic and the
European Economic Community on the International Commission for the
Protection of the Elbe.
Agreement between the Government of Portugal and the Government of Sao
Tomé and Príncipe for the cooperation in the water sector.
32
Parties:
Cape Verde
Angola, Botswana,
Democratic Republic Of
Congo, Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, Namibia,
South Africa, Swaziland,
Tanzania, Zambia,
Zimbabwe
Cape Verde
Cape Verde
Cape Verde
Ecuador; Peru
Austria; Macedonia
Austria, Egypt
Lithuania; Belarus
Israel; Palestine
Autonomy
United States; Mexico
Germany; Czech
Republic
Angola; Botswana;
Lesotho; Malawi;
Mozambique; Namibia;
South Africa; Swaziland;
Tanzania; Zambia;
Zimbabwe
Egypt; Romania
Mexico; United States
Lithuania; Poland
Switzerland, Italy
United States; Mexico
Czech Republic;
Slovakia
Brazil; Uruguay
Germany; Czech
Republic; European
Union
Portugal; Sao Tome And
Principe
1990
1990
1989
1988
1987
1987
1987
1987
1986
1986
1986
1986
1985
1985
1984
1983
1983
1983
1983
1981
1981
1980
1980
1980
1980
Boundary Waters-San Diego, California/Tijuana, Baja California Minute No. 283 of
the International Boundary and Water Commission signed by the United States of
America and Mexico."
Final protocol on cooperation on management of water resources in the Danube
Basin.
Acuerdo para la creación del Comité Coordinador Regional de Instituciones de
Agua Potable y Saneamiento de Centroamérica, Panamá y República Do minicana
(CAPRE).
Exchange of notes constituting an agreement for the construction of a hydroelectric
plant in Cachuela Esperanza, supplementary to the Agreement on economic and
technical cooperation.
Accord relatif à l'annonce des crues dans le bassin versant de la Moselle.
Agreement between Guatemala and Mexico on the protection and improvement of
the environment in the border area.
Agreement between the Republic of Botswana, the People's Republic of
Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania, the Republic of Zambia, and the
Republic of Zimbabwe on the action plan for the environmentally sound
management of the Common Zambezi River System.
Règlement Financier revisé de l'Autorité du Bassin du Niger. Fait à N'djamena le
27 Octobre 1987.
Agreement between El Salvador and Honduras setting up a Special Commission
for the demarcation of the frontier line between El Salvador and Honduras
pursuant to the General Peace Treaty of 30 October 1980.
Convention between the Federation of Switzerland and the Republic of Italy
regarding fishing in italo-swiss waters.
Echanges de notes constituant un accord entre le Gouvernement de la République
française et le Gouvernement du Grand-Duché du Luxembourg portant sur la
réalisation de travaux de régularisation de la rivière Gander à Mondorff (France) et
à Mondorff-les-bains (Luxembourg).
Summary record of discussions of the first meeting of the Joint Committee of
Experts held in Dhaka between16-18 January, 1986.
Agreement of Co-operation between the United States of America and the United
Mexican States Regarding Pollution of the Environment along the Inland
International Boundary by Discharge of Hazardous Substances.
Treaty between the Government of the United States of America and the
Government of Canada concerning Pacific Salmon.
Agreement between the Governments of the Republic of Portugal, the People's
Republic of Mozambique and the Republic of South Africa relative to the Cahora
Bassa Project done at Cape Town, 2 May 1984.
Decree No. 88.441 promulgating the Agreement for Water Resources Exploitation
within the Uruguai River and its effluent Pepiri-Guaçu River, between the
Government of the Federal Republic of Brazil and the Government of the Republic
of Argentina.
Exchange of notes constituting an agreement on delimitation of the frontier along
the thalweg on the Uruguay River in the area of the Basic Garabi Development
Project.
Joint press release issued on the conclusion of the three-day meeting of the IndoBangladesh Joint Rivers Commission arriving at an agreement on sharing the
Teesta waters.
Protocol amending the 1978 Agreement Between The United States of America
and Canada on Great Lakes Water Quality, as amended on October 16, 1983.
Accession de l'Ouganda à l'accord portant création de l'Organisation pour
l'aménagement et le développement du Bassin de la Rivière Kagera. Bujumbura,
Le 19 Mai 1981.
Protocol on Canal Panama.
Agreement between the Government of Portugal and the Government of
Netherlands concerning the cooperation in the agricultural and water sectors.
Agreement between the Government of the Republic of France and the Federal
Council of Switzerland, on behalf of the Republic and the Canton of Geneva on the
dephosphatization of the waters of Leman Lake.
Agreement between the United States of America and Canada on Icebreaking
Operations in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway System.
Agreement regarding fishing in Lake Geneva (with Annex and Implementing
Regulations).
33
United States; Mexico
Austria; Germany;
European Union
Nicaragua; Honduras;
Dominican Republic;
Guatemala; El Salvador;
Costa Rica; Panama
Bolivia; Brazil
France; Germany;
Luxembourg
Guatemala; Mexico
Botswana; Mozambique;
Tanzania; Zambia;
Zimbabwe
Algeria; Benin;
Cameroon; Chad;
Guinea; Cote D'Ivoire;
Mali; Niger; Nigeria;
Burkina Faso
El Salvador; Honduras
Italy; Switzerland
France; Luxembourg
India; Bangladesh
Mexico; United States
United States; Canada
Portugal; Mozambique;
Swaziland
Brazil; Argentina
Argentina; Brazil
India; Bangladesh
United States; Canada
Burundi; Rwanda;
Tanzania; Uganda
Panama, U.S.A.
Portugal; Netherlands
France; Switzerland
Canada; United States
America
France; Switzerland
1980
1980
1980
1980
Exchange of letters constituting an agreement concerning German-FrenchLuxembourg co-operation in the frontier areas.
Exchange of Notes regarding the delimitation of the border between Brazil and
French Guyana.
General Peace Treaty between El Salvador and Honduras (with Minutes of 17 April
1980 relating to the establishment of the El Salvador-Honduras Joint Frontier
Commission, point 5 of the Minutes No. XXX of the Special Commission
representing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras drawn up on 23 and 24 June
1935, and Special Minutes drawn up on 26 March 1936 on the occasion of the
official acceptance of the three-country boundary marker).
Protocole relatif au Fonds de Developpement du Bassin du Niger. Signe à
Faranah, le 21 Novembre 1980.
34
Belgium; France;
Germany
Brazil; French Guiana
El Salvador; Honduras
Benin; Cameroon; Chad;
Guinea; Cote D'Ivoire;
Mali; Niger; Nigeria;
Burkina Faso
NOTES
1
Aaron T. Wolf, Jeffrey A. Natharius, Jeffrey J. Danielson, Brian S. Ward, and Jan K. Pender,
“International River Basins of the World,” International Journal of Water Resources Development
vol. 15 no. 4 (December 1999). Available online with updated 2002 figures at
http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/
2
Wolf et. al., International River Basins. The increase in international waterways compared to the
1978 estimate is due partly to improved remote sensing techniques (identifying new bordercrossing waterways) and partly to changing political boundaries with the break-up of several
states in the post-Cold War era (turning previously domestic waterways into border-crossing
ones). The 1999 survey by Wolf and colleagues put the new figure at 261; a 2002 update
adjusted it to 263.
3
Quoted in Aaron T. Wolf, “Water and Human Security,” Aviso no. 3 (June 1999), p. 2. Global
Environmental Change and Human Security Project, University of Victoria, British Columbia, June
1999. Original source: New York Times, 10 August 1995.
4
Quoted in E d Metcalfe, “Nor Any Drop to Drink,” The Ecologist vol. 30 no. 5 (July/August 2000):
46-50, p. 47.
5
“Water Fights,” The World in 2000 (London: The Economist Group, 2000), p. 78.
6
See for example Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, "On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as
Causes of Acute Conflict," International Security vol. 16 no. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 76-116; Thomas F.
Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," International
Security vol. 19 no. 1 (1994): 5-40.
7
Nicholas J. Schnitter, A History of Dams: The Useful Pyramids (Rotterdam, Netherlands: A.A.
Balkema, 1994).
8
Thomas Bernauer, “Managing International Rivers,” in Oran R. Young, ed., Global Governance:
Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997).
Wolf puts the figure at 3600 accords for the period A.D. 805 to 1984. See Wolf, “Water and
Human Security,” p. 5.
9
J. Hamner and A. Wolf, “Patterns in International Water Resource Treaties: The Transboundary
Freshwater Dispute Database,” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy.
1997 Yearbook.
10
See for example Volker Rittberger, ed., Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993); Abram Chayes and Antonio Handler Chayes, The New Sovereignty
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Edith Brown Weiss and Harold K. Jacobson, eds.,
Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998); Oran R. Young, Creating Regimes: Arctic Accords and
International Governance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Peter M. Haas, Robert O.
Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, eds., Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International
Environmental Protection (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993).
11
United Nations, Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International
Watercourses. UN General Assembly document A/51/869, April 11, 1997 (New York: United
Nations Publications, 1997). See also Stephen C. McCaffrey, The Law of International
Watercourses: Non-Navigational Uses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
12
The International Law Commission consists of 34 international legal experts elected by the
General Assembly. Commission members serve as individuals rather than representatives of
their respective countries, with the Commission’s areas of focus defined by the member states of
General Assembly. See I. Sinclair, The International Law Commission (Grotius, 1987), cited in
Stephen C. McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” in Peter H. Gleick, ed., Water in
Crisis: A Guide to the World’s Fresh Water Resources (New York: Oxford University Press,
35
1993), p. 104, note 122.
13
A regime is also conceivable on a sub-global/regional scale, of course, in the form of
framework principles meant to shape the governance of a specific set of internationally shared
basins. The 1995 Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) Region is a regional-scale example of such a would-be regime.
14
Gleick, The World’s Water 1998-99, p. 210; Wolf, “Water and Human Security”; McCaffrey and
Sinjela, “Current Developments.”
15
McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” p. 98; emphasis in original.
16
Annuaire de l’Institute de Droit International, 1961, vol. 49-II, Salzburg Session, September,
Basel, pp. 381-384, as quoted in McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” p. 98.
17
Annuaire de l’Institute de Droit International, 1961, vol. 49-II, Salzburg Session, September,
Basel, pp. 381-384, as quoted in McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” p. 98.
18
McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” p. 98.
19
McCaffrey, “Water, Politics, and International Law,” p. 99.
20
McCaffrey and Sinjela, “Current Developments,” p. 101. See also McCaffrey, The Law of
International Watercourses.
21
The third opponent, Burundi, is a riparian state in the upper Nile basin but not a central figure in
Nile politics.
22
Status as of 15 August 2002. Source: International Water Law Project, downloaded February 1,
2003 via www.internationallaw.org/IntlDocs/Watercourse_status.htm Ratifying states are Jordan,
Namibia, Norway, South Africa, and the Syrian Arab Republic. States that have accepted the
agreement (Finland and Netherlands) are signatories and are bound to it in the same manner as
ratifying states, but that have not ratified the agreement. States that have acceded to the
agreement (Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, and Sweden) are bound to it in the same manner as ratifying
states, but are non-signatories.
23
Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, Oregon State University, available online at
http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/
24
FAOLEX database,
http://faolex.fao.org/faolex/
U.N.
Food
and
Agriculture
Organization
Legal
Office,
25
Volker Rittberger, "Editor's Introduction," in Rittberger, Regime Theory and International
Relations, p. xii.
26
John W. Meyer, David John Frank, Ann Hironaka, Evan Schofer, and Nancy Brandon Tuma,
“The Structuring of a World Environmental Regime, 1870-1990,” International Organization vol.
51 no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 623-651, p. 623; George W. Thomas, John W. Meyer, Francisco O.
Ramirez, and John Boli, eds., Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the
Individual (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987); Martha Finnemore, “Norms, culture, and
world politics: insights from sociology’s institutionalism,” International Organization vol. 50 no. 2
(Spring 1996): 325-347.
27
See for example Margaret Keck and Katherine Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy
Networks and International Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998); Peter M. Haas,
Saving the Mediterranean: The Politics of International Environmental Cooperation (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990); Peter M. Haas, "Banning chlorofluorocarbons: epistemic
community efforts to protect stratospheric ozone," International Organization v. 46 no. 1 (Winter
1992):187-224; Karen Litfin, Ozone Discourses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
28
McCaffrey and Sinjela, “Current Developments,” p. 106.
29
Wolf, “Water and Human Security,” p. 4.
36
30
Hamner and Wolf, “Patterns in International Water Resource Treaties.”
31
Wolf, “Water and Human Security,” p. 5.
32
For a summary of research on this topic see Heather L. Beach, Heather L., Jesse Hamner,
Joseph Hewitt, Edy Kaufman, Anja Kurki, Joe Oppenheimer, and Aaron Wolf, Transboundary
Freshwater Dispute Resolution: Theory, Practice and Annotated References (Tokyo and New
York: United Nations University Press, 2000).
33
See in particular McCaffrey, The Law of International Watercourses. See also Dante Caponera,
"The Role of Customary International Water Law," in M. Ali, G.E. Radosevich, A.A. Khan, Water
Resources Policy for Asia (Rotterdam: A.A. Bulkhema, 1987); Dante Caponera, “Legal Aspects of
Transboundary River Basins in the Middle East: the Al Asi (Orontes), the Jordan and the Nile,”
Natural Resources Journal vol. 33 (1993); Deborah Housen-Couriel, “Some Examples of
Cooperation in the Management and Use of International Water Resources,” The Harry S.
Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
March 1994; McCaffrey and Sinjela, “Current Developments”; John Waterbury, “Between
Unilateralism and Comprehensive Accords: Modest steps toward cooperation in International
River Basins,” International Journal of Water Resources Development 13 no. 3 (1997): 279-289;
J.L. Wescoat, Jr., “Main Currents in Multilateral Water Agreements: A Historical-Geographic
Perspective, 1648-1948," Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy vol. 7
(1996): 39-74.
34
This figure includes members of the European Union when signing as individual states but
excludes the European Union signing as a unifi ed entity, which it did for four agreements during
the study period.
35
An example is the 1994 Lake Victoria agreement between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania,
article xvi: “Nothing in this convention shall be interpreted as affecting the existing territorial limits
of the contracting parties, or of their sovereignty in respect of the portions of Lake Victoria falling
within their respective boundaries.”
36
The deepening indicator developed for the principle of prior notification failed the test of
intercoder consistency and was removed from the analysis. Additional indicators for sovereign
rights and information exchange also failed and were removed.
37