Aaron T. Wolf

Conflict and cooperation along international waterways

There are 261 international rivers, covering almost one half of the total land surface of the globe and untold numbers of shared aquifers. Water has been a cause of political tensions between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Bangladeshis, Americans and Mexicans, and all ten riparian states of the Nile river. Water is the only scarce resource for which there is no substitute, over which there is poorly developed international law and the need for which is overwhelming, constant and immediate. As a consequence, ‘water’ and ‘war’ are two topics being assessed together with increasing frequency. This paper investigates the reality of historic water conflict and draws lessons for the plausibility of future ‘water wars’. The datasets of conflict are explored for those related to water — only seven minor skirmishes are found in this century; no war has ever been fought over water. In contrast, 145 water-related treaties were signed in the same period. These treaties, collected and catalogued in a computerized database along with relevant notes from negotiators, are assessed for patterns of conflict resolution. War over water seems neither strategically rational, hydrographically eAective, nor economically viable. Shared interests along a waterway seem to consistently outweigh water’s conflict-inducing characteristics. Furthermore, once cooperative water regimes are established through treaty, they turn out to be impressively resilient over time, even between otherwise hostile riparians and even as conflict is waged over other issues. These patterns suggest that the more valuable lesson of international water is as a resources whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation and incite violence only in the exception. # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

International River Basins of the World

It is becoming acknowledged that water is likely to be the most pressing environmental concern of the next century. Difficulties in river basin management are only exacerbated when the resource crosses international boundaries. One critical aid in the assessment of international waters has been the Register of International Rivers a compendium which listed 214 international waterways that cover 47% of the earths continental land surface. The Register, though, was last updated in 1978 by the now defunct United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The purpose of this paper is to update the Register in order to reflect the quantum changes that have taken place over the last 22 years, both in global geopolitics and in map coverage and technology. By accessing digital elevation models at spatial resolutions of 30 arc seconds, corroborating at a unified global map coverage of at least 1:1 000 000, and superimposing the results over complete coverage of current political boundaries, we are able to...

International Water Conflict Resolution: Lessons from Comparative Analysis

Abstract This paper offers lessons learned for the process of resolving international freshwater conflicts from the combined experience of treaty negotiations, process case studies, and a series of forums on international waters. The first section describes the current state of international water institutions and law, and discusses weaknesses in each structure. The second section describes recent attempts at the resolution of international water disputes as exemplified in 140 transboundary water treaties and 14 process case studies collected on the University of Alabama Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, and at the three Forums of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Committee on International Waters. Lessons learned are then described in the third section for the three stages of negotiation. During the prenegotiation stage, lessons are to be found for involvement in advance of conflict, and indicators suggested both for possible water conflict and for the type and intensity of a ...

Climate change and the institutional resilience of international river basins

In the existing 276 international river basins, the increase in water variability projected by most climate change scenarios may present serious challenges to riparian states. This research maps the institutional resilience to water variability in transboundary basins and combines it with both historic and projected variability regimes, with the objective of identifying areas at potential risk of future hydropolitical tension. To do so, it combs existing international treaties for sources of institutional resilience and considers the coefficient of variation of runoff as a measure of past and future water variability. The study finds significant gaps in both the number of people and area covered by institutional stipulations to deal with variability in South America and Asia. At present, high potential risk for hydropolitical tensions associated with water variability is identified in 24 transboundary basins and seems to be concentrated mainly in northern and sub-Saharan Africa. By 2050, areas at greatest potential risk are more spatially dispersed and can be found in 61 international basins, and some of the potentially large impacts of climate change are projected to occur away from those areas currently under scrutiny. Understanding when and where to target capacity-building in transboundary river basins for greater resilience to change is critical. This study represents a step toward facilitating these efforts and informing further qualitative and quantitative research into the relationship between climate change, hydrological variability regimes, and institutional capacity for accommodating variability.

The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database Project

It is increasingly acknowledged that water will be one of the most pressing environmental concerns of the next century. As global populations and economies continue to grow exponentially and as environmental change threatens the quantity and quality of fresh water resources, attention has recently focused on the state, management, and conflict potential of those waters which cross international boundaries. Approximately 261 international watersheds and an untold number of transboundary aquifers cover about one half of the land surface of the globe affecting 40 percent of its population (Wolf et al., 1999). These international waters are resources whose management is especially intricate: they ignore our political boundaries, they fluctuate in both space and time, they have multiple and conflicting demands on their use, and applicable international law is poorly-developed, often contradictory and difficult to enforce. Not surprisingly, water has exacerbated political tensions around the globe, most notably between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, and all ten riparians of the Nile River. The fortunate corollary of water as an inducement to conflict is that water, by its very nature, tends to induce even hostile co-riparians to cooperate even as disputes rage over other issues. Alam (1998) has appropriately termed this trait “water rationality.” In fact, the weight of historic evidence tends to favor water as a catalyst for cooperation: nations have signed 3,600 water-related treaties since AD 805, while, in the same period, there have been only seven minor international water-related skirmishes (each of which included other non-water issues) [Wolf, 1998]. The only “water war” between nations on record occurred over 4,500 years ago, between the citystates of Lagash and Umma in the Tigris-Euphrates basin (Cooper, 1983). Given this disproportionate evidence in favor of “hydro-cooperation,” the processes of conflict resolution and amelioration warrant more study, despite the growing prevalence of literature which focuses on the unlikely prospects of “water wars.” Three works give good empirical evidence against the “water wars” framework: Wolf (1998) uses historical, strategic, shared interest, and institutional resiliency evidence; Ohlsson (1999) develops a Social Resource Water Stress Index to show human response and resiliency to scarcity; and Toset and Petter Gleditch (1999) examine the Correlates of War Dataset to show that water is not a significant correlate. In the face of this empirical evidence, it seems that the “water wars” argument would finally give way to “water reality.”

Hydropower and sustainability: Resilience and vulnerability in China's powersheds

Large dams represent a whole complex of social, economic and ecological processes, perhaps more than any other large infrastructure project. Today, countries with rapidly developing economies are constructing new dams to provide energy and flood control to growing populations in riparian and distant urban communities. If the system is lacking institutional capacity to absorb these physical and institutional changes there is potential for conflict, thereby threatening human security. In this paper, we propose analyzing sustainability (political, socioeconomic, and ecological) in terms of resilience versus vulnerability, framed within the spatial abstraction of a powershed. The powershed framework facilitates multi-scalar and transboundary analysis while remaining focused on the questions of resilience and vulnerability relating to hydropower dams. Focusing on examples from China, this paper describes the complex nature of dams using the sustainability and powershed frameworks. We then analyze the roles of institutions in China to understand the relationships between power, human security and the socio-ecological system. To inform the study of conflicts over dams China is a particularly useful case study because we can examine what happens at the international, national and local scales. The powershed perspective allows us to examine resilience and vulnerability across political boundaries from a dynamic, process-defined analytical scale while remaining focused on a host of questions relating to hydro-development that invoke drivers and impacts on national and sub-national scales. The ability to disaggregate the affects of hydropower dam construction from political boundaries allows for a deeper analysis of resilience and vulnerability. From our analysis we find that reforms in Chinas hydropower sector since 1996 have been motivated by the need to create stability at the national scale rather than resilient solutions to Chinas growing demand for energy and water resource control at the local and international scales. Some measures that improved economic development through the market economy and a combination of dam construction and institutional reform may indeed improve hydro-political resilience at a single scale. However, if China does address large-scale hydropower constructions potential to create multi-scale geopolitical tensions, they may be vulnerable to conflict - though not necessarily violent - in domestic and international political arenas. We conclude with a look toward a resilient basin institution for the Nu/Salween River, the site of a proposed large-scale hydropower development effort in China and Myanmar.

“Water Wars” and Water Reality: Conflict and Cooperation Along International Waterways

There are 261 international rivers, covering almost one half of the total land surface of the globe, and untold numbers of shared aquifers. Water has been a cause of political tensions between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Bangladeshis, Americans and Mexicans, and all 10 riparian states of the Nile River. Water is the only scarce resource for which there is no substitute, over which there is poorly developed international law, and the need for which is overwhelming, constant, and immediate. As a consequence, water and war are two topics being assessed together with increasing frequency. This chapter investigates the reality of historic water conflict and draws lessons for the plausibility of future water wars. The data sets of conflict are explored for those related to water—only seven minor skirmishes are found in this century; no war has ever been fought over water. In contrast, 149 water-related treaties have been signed in the same period. These treaties, collected and catalogued in a computerized database along with relevant notes from negotiators, are assessed for patterns of conflict resolution. War over water seems neither strategically rational, hydrographically effective, nor economically viable. Shared interests along a waterway seem to overwhelm water’s conflict-inducing characteristics. Furthermore, once cooperative water regimes are established through treaty, they turn out to be tremendously resilient over time, even between otherwise hostile riparian states, and even as conflict is waged over other issues. These patterns suggest that the more valuable lesson of international water is as a resource whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation, and incite violence only in the exception.

Modeling the costs and benefits of dam construction from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Although the benefits of dam construction are numerous, particularly in the context of climate change and growing global demand for electricity, recent experience has shown that many dams have serious negative environmental, human, and political consequences. Despite an extensive literature documenting the benefits and costs of dams from a single disciplinary perspective, few studies have simultaneously evaluated the distribution of biophysical, socio-economic, and geopolitical implications of dams. To meet the simultaneous demands for water, energy, and environmental protection well into the future, a broader view of dams is needed. We thus propose a new tool for evaluating the relative costs and benefits of dam construction based on multi-objective planning techniques. The Integrative Dam Assessment Modeling (IDAM) tool is designed to integrate biophysical, socio-economic, and geopolitical perspectives into a single cost/benefit analysis of dam construction. Each of 27 different impacts of dam construction is evaluated both objectively (e.g., flood protection, as measured by RYI years) and subjectively (i.e., the valuation of said flood protection) by a team of decision-makers. By providing a visual representation of the various costs and benefits associated with two or more dams, the IDAM tool allows decision-makers to evaluate alternatives and to articulate priorities associated with a dam project, making the decision process about dams more informed and more transparent. For all of these reasons, we believe that the IDAM tool represents an important evolutionary step in dam evaluation.

International resource conflict and mitigation

Resource availability is frequently linked with historic and potential international conflict. Conventional wisdom holds that international resource conflict occurs in locations where growing resource demand and declining supplies are greatest. While relative scarcity is undoubtedly an element driving international resource dispute, a focus on supply and demand measures alone is insufficient to understand international conflict potential, because of the pervasive willingness of nations to construct regimes, structures, and frameworks – that is, institutions – for dispute mitigation. However, institutions for regulating the use of internationally scarce resources sometimes fail to develop, and when they do, they are not always sufficiently resilient to deal with changing political and resource environments. Thus, international resource conflict is most likely to occur where there exist both resource scarcity and insufficient institutional capacity to deal with it. In particular, conflict is most likely to emerge in those areas where (1) resource sovereignty is ill defined or non-existent, (2) existing institutional regimes are destroyed by political change, and/or (3) rapid changes in resource environments outpace the capacity of institutions to deal with the change. A mitigation strategy for potential international resource conflict is the construction of resilient resource management institutions, along with the improvement of existing institutions. To be most effective, these institutions should be clear in terms of resource allocation and quality control; be constructed with an intrinsic ability to adjust to changing political and environmental conditions; promote positive-sum solutions to resource problems; and incorporate structured conflict resolution mechanisms.

Trends in Transboundary Water Disputes and Dispute Resolution

‘Water’ and ‘war’ are two topics being assessed together with increasing frequency. The approximately 250 international watersheds cover more than one half of the land surface of the globe, and affect 40 per cent of its population. Water is a resource which ignores political boundaries, fluctuates in both space and time, has multiple and conflicting demands on its use, and whose international law is poorly developed, contradictory and unenforceable. As a consequence, recent articles in the academic literature (Cooley, 1984; Starr, 1991; Gleick, 1993; and others) and popular press (Bulloch and Darwish, 1993; World Press Review, 1995) point to water not only as a cause of historic armed conflict, but as the resource which will bring combatants to the battlefield in the twenty-first century.