Cross-border cooperation over water resources is far more pervasive than conflict and more essential than ever. The fear that transboundary competition for water will become a source of conflict and future water wars is exaggerated, says the new Human Development Report "Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis". The Chapter "Managing transboundary waters" underlines that "water wars" are entirely preventable if the right political choices are made now. "Managing shared water can be a force for peace or for conflict, but it is politics that will decide which course is chosen," said Kevin Watkins, lead author of the Report. Ninety percent of the world’s population lives in countries that share their water supplies with other countries. The report states that while this interdependence can give rise to political tension across borders, most shared water resources are managed peacefully through cross-border engineering and diplomacy. But where cooperation fails, countries will bear the costs of environmental disaster, decline in human development standards, and increased political tensions. The case of the Aral Sea is given as an example that perfectly illustrates how not to cooperate – the lake is now a quarter of its original size, thanks to an inefficient strategy devoted singularly to cotton production. Cotton yields decreased and people in the lower reaches receive contaminated water, with a majority suffering from chronic health conditions.

However, the report mainly refers to examples of successful cooperation, such as the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, which has survived long periods of political and even military conflict, or the Senegal River Development Organization (set up by Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal), which has three decades of experience in hydropower, irrigation and flood control. The report identifies two broad objectives: replacing unilateral action with multilateral cooperation and putting human development concerns at the centre of the debate. This requires backing away from rigid sovereignty claims, strengthening political leadership, and finding a better balance of power. The role of the international community (including the World Bank and the UNDP) would be to build trust and support inter-state negotiations that tend to be protracted and difficult to sustain. (by Christiane Roettger)

The report is available for download at http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, December 2006