It's a common situation: Two riparian states sharing one transboundary aquifer cannot yield the highest joint payoff from using the shared water resources, because they are pumping water without consulting the other, instead of following a cooperative strategy. With this short transboundary groundwater version of the famous prisoner’s dilemma the authors of "Bridges over Water: understanding transboundary water conflict, negotiation and cooperation" introduce their chapters on how a transboundary water situation can be expressed using game theory concepts. The textbook presents the multidisciplinary facets of freshwater, considering political, economic, legal, environmental and hydrological nuances. Its target audience is graduates in economics, engineering, water law, and international relations as well as practitioners in water resource management, international water law and water policies. The book gives theoretical background on water resources and international water law and various quantitative approaches to analyzing transboundary water problems, such as river basin modelling and game theory. Modelling software that comes with the book allows these approaches to be applied to case studies. The Annex provides detailed case studies of particular transboundary river basins, lakes and aquifers, together with the treaties governing cooperation on them.
"Bridges over Water" is thus a very valuable contribution to filling the gap of comprehensive textbooks on the issue: the theoretical foundation. However, the book could have gained from starting with a clearer introduction to the main problems and issues of dispute in transboundary basins, such as common negative transboundary effects or divergent water management priorities such as hydro-power, flood protection or wetland protection. Moreover, more attention could have been given to the actual problems water managers face on the ground, especially in developing countries, ranging from the lack of data, to difficulties in enforcement of agreements and limited institutional capacities to maintain river basin organizations. (Annika Kramer)

The book can be purchased at http://www.worldscibooks.com/economics/6184.html  

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, December 2007