Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World

Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World
Author: Naho Mirumachi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2015-03-05
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1135082839

This book examines the political economy that governs the management of international transboundary river basins in the developing world. These shared rivers are the setting for irrigation, hydropower and flood management projects as well as water transfer schemes. Often, these projects attempt to engineer the river basin with deep political, socio-economic and environmental implications. The politics of transboundary river basin management sheds light on the challenges concerning sustainable development, water allocation and utilization between sovereign states. Advancing conceptual thinking beyond simplistic analyses of river basins in conflict or cooperation, the author proposes a new analytical framework. The Transboundary Waters Interaction NexuS (TWINS) examines the coexistence of conflict and cooperation in riparian interaction. This framework highlights the importance of power relations between basin states that determine negotiation processes and institutions of water resources management. The analysis illustrates the way river basin management is framed by powerful elite decision-makers, combined with geopolitical factors and geographical imaginations. In addition, the book explains how national development strategies and water resources demands have a significant role in shaping the intensities of conflict and cooperation at the international level. The book draws on detailed case studies from the Ganges River basin in South Asia, the Orange–Senqu River basin in Southern Africa and the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia, providing key insights on equity and power asymmetry applicable to other basins in the developing world.

Democratizing Water Governance in the Mekong Region

Democratizing Water Governance in the Mekong Region
Author: Louis Lebel
Publisher: Silkworm Books
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN:

This book, the first in a three-volume series, brings together the work of researchers, scholars, activists, and leaders in the Mekong region to provide a baseline, state-of-knowledge review of the contemporary politics and discourses of water use, sharing, and management, and their implications for local livelihoods.

Transboundary Water Management

Transboundary Water Management
Author: Anton Earle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136531106

The management of water resources across boundaries, whether sub-national or international, is one of the most difficult challenges facing water managers today. The upstream exploitation or diversion of groundwater or rivers can have devastating consequences for those living downstream, and transboundary rivers can provide a source of conflict between nations or states, particularly where water resources are scarce. Similarly, water based-pollution can spread across borders and create disputes and a need for sound governance.1. Introduction: Setting the Scene for Transboundary Water Management Approaches2. Why Negotiate? Asymmetric endowments and asymmetric power and the invisible nexus of water, trade and power that brings apparent water security3. Power, Hegemony and Critical Hydropolitics4. Getting Beyond the Environment-Conflict Trap: Benefit-Sharing in International River Basins5. International Water Law: concepts, evolution and development6. Aquifer Resources in a Transboundary Context: A Hidden Resource? - Enabling the Practitioner To 'See It and Bank It' for Good Use7. Governance in Transboundary Basins - the Role of Stakeholders, Concepts and Approaches in International River Basins8. Environmental Flows in Shared Watercourses: Review of Assessment Methods and Relevance in the Transboundary Setting9. Managing Water Negotiations and Conflicts in Concept and in PracticeContributorsIndexPart I: Analytical Approaches to Transboundary Water ManagementPart II: Transboundary Water Management Polity and PracticePart III: Challenges and OpportunitiesThis book is the first to bring together in a concise and accessible way all of the main topics to be considered when managing transboundary waters. It will raise the awareness of practitioners of the various issues needed to be taken into account when making water management decisions and provide a practically-based overview for advanced students. The authors show clearly how vital it is to cooperate effectively over the management of shared waters to unlock their contribution to regional sustainable development. The book is largely based on a long-running and tested international training programme, run by the Stockholm International Water Institute and Ramboll Natura, and supported by the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), where the respective authors have presented modules on the programmes. It addresses issues not only of conflict, but also of managing power asymmetries, benefit-sharing, stakeholder participation, international water law, environmental water requirements and regional development. It will be particularly useful for those with a background in hydrology or engineering who wish to broaden their management skills.

Trans-jurisdictional Water Law and Governance

Trans-jurisdictional Water Law and Governance
Author: Janice Gray
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2016-06-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317401158

Governance of global water resources presents one of the most confounding challenges in contemporary natural resource governance. With considerable government, citizen and financial donor attention devoted to a range of international, transnational and domestic laws and policies aimed at protecting, managing and sustainably using fresh and coastal marine water resources, this book proposes that sustainable water outcomes require a ‘trans-jurisdictional’ approach to water governance. Focusing on the concept of trans-jurisdictional water governance the book diagnoses barriers and identifies pathways to coherent and coordinated institutional arrangements between and across different bodies of laws at local, national, regional and international levels. It includes case studies from the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and Southeast Asia. Leading specialists offer insights into the pretence and the promise of trans-jurisdictional water governance and provide readers, including students, practitioners, policy-makers and academics, with a basis for better analysing, articulating and synthesising standards of good trans-jurisdictional water governance both in theory and in practice.

The Mekong: A Socio-legal Approach to River Basin Development

The Mekong: A Socio-legal Approach to River Basin Development
Author: Ben Boer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317657780

An international river basin is an ecological system, an economic thoroughfare, a geographical area, a font of life and livelihoods, a geopolitical network and, often, a cultural icon. It is also a socio-legal phenomenon. This book is the first detailed study of an international river basin from a socio-legal perspective. The Mekong River Basin, which sustains approximately 70 million people across Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, provides a prime example of the socio-legal complexities of governing a transboundary river and its tributaries. The book applies its socio-legal analysis to bring a fresh approach to understanding conflicts surrounding water governance in the Mekong River Basin. The authors describe the wide range of uses being made of legal doctrine and legal argument in ongoing disputes surrounding hydropower development in the Basin, putting to rest lingering caricatures of a single, ‘ASEAN’ way of navigating conflict. They call into question some of the common assumptions concerning the relationship between law and development. The book also sheds light on important questions concerning the global hybridization or crossover of public and private power and its ramifications for water governance. With current debates and looming conflicts over water governance globally, and over shared rivers in particular, these issues could not be more pressing.

The Multi-Governance of Water

The Multi-Governance of Water
Author: Matthias Finger
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0791482510

As the governance of transboundary rivers becomes a subject of growing importance due to the increasing pressure on freshwater resources, this timely collection examines water scarcity and efforts to better manage rivers and river basins. Most specialists agree that states face many institutional inadequacies when dealing with shared resources and that new governance mechanisms are needed to improve water management. Using case studies of the Aral Sea basin and the Danube, Euphrates, and Mekong river basins, the contributors develop a new approach to water governance: the concept of multi-governance, an effort to collectively solve public problems by involving a series of relevant actors from the local to the global level, such as institutions, states, civil society, and business.

Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed

Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed
Author: Joakim Öjendal
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2011-11-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400704763

Water - and its governance - is becoming a global concern partly because it is turning into a goods in short supply, with devastating effects on literally billions of people, but also because it is the "carrier" of global warming; whether through irregular weather patterns or through flooding, water is how global warming will be 'felt'. The lion's share of the globally available fresh water resources is to be found in transboundary systems. In spite of its significance, the generated knowledge on how to deal with transboundary waters is weak and leaves policy makers with seemingly unavoidable, trade-off dilemmas and prioritizations, often with detrimental effects. In order to disentangle this predicament this volume works with one case: the Lower Mekong Basin and covers state-of-the-art academic and practitioners' knowledge and hence appeals to a wide audience. The topic this volume addresses is situated in the nexus of an IR- (International Relations) approach focussing on transboundary politics and its inclination to remain within the sphere of state sovereignty and national interest on the one hand, and Development studies, with its imperatives on participation, planning, and intervention, on the other. The dilemma, we argue, of better understanding transboundary water management lies in how to understand how these two rationalities can be simultaneously nurtured. Audience: This book will be relevant to scholars, as it provides cutting-edge research, and students, since it covers the primary debates in the field, interested in resource management, regional politics, and development issues in the area. It also addresses the global debate on transboundary water management and presents an in-depth case of one of the globally most sophisticated attempts at pursuing sustainable river basin management. Finally, practitioners and policymakers would benefit greatly because all contributions have explicit policy relevance, launching suggestion on improvements in water management.

China and Transboundary Water Politics in Asia

China and Transboundary Water Politics in Asia
Author: Hongzhou Zhang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2017-12-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 135166980X

Water-related conflicts have a long history and will continue to be a global and regional problem. Asia, with 1.5 billion of its people living in shared river basins, and with very few transboundary rivers governed by treaties, is especially prone to such conflicts. The key to mitigating transboundary water conflicts and advancing cooperation in Asia is largely in the hands of China, the upstream country for most of Asia’s major transboundary rivers. To avert the looming water crisis, apart from spending billions of dollars on domestic water transfer projects such as the South–North Water Diversion Megaproject, as well as on water conservancy and pollution abatement, China has sought to utilize the water resources of the major rivers that run across borders with neighbouring countries. On these transboundary rivers, China has built or plans to build large dams for hydroelectricity and major water diversion facilities, which has triggered anxiety and complaints from downstream countries and criticism from the international society. This book aims to systematically examine the complex reality of water contestations between China and its neighbouring countries. It provides a discussion on transboundary hydropolitics beyond the state-centric geopolitical perspective to dig into various political, institutional, legal, historical, geographical, and demographic factors that affect China’s policies and practices towards transboundary water issues. This book also provides a collection of comparative case studies on China’s water resources management on the Mekong River with other five riparian states in the Lower Mekong region: the Salween River with Myanmar, the Brahmaputra River with India, the Amur River with Russia and Mongolia, the Illy and Irtysh Rivers with Kazakhstann, and the Yalu and Tumen Rivers with North Korea. Furthermore, this book sheds light on China’s future role in global water governance.