Lucia De Stefano

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.

Facing the water framework directive challenges: a baseline of stakeholder participation in the European Union.

Public participation is a key element of Integrated Water Resources Management and, in the European Union (EU), is a major challenge in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), which was adopted in December 2000. When new legislation enters into force it is essential to set a baseline against which to measure the progress towards the established goals at significant milestones of its implementation. This paper presents an assessment of the quality of stakeholder participation at the beginning of the WFD implementation in twenty countries belonging to or with close institutional relationships with the EU. The evaluation was completed by environmental non-governmental organizations and it shows that already in 2003 there were positive examples of stakeholder participation in several countries but that, in general, the WFD implementation will require significant efforts to improve on participatory practices throughout Europe.

Managing hydroclimatic risks in federal rivers: A diagnostic assessment

Hydroclimatic risks and adaptive capacity are not distributed evenly in large river basins of federal countries, where authority is divided across national and territorial governments. Transboundary river basins are a major test of federal systems of governance because key management roles exist at all levels. This paper examines the evolution and design of interstate water allocation institutions in semi-arid federal rivers prone to drought extremes, climatic variability and intensified competition for scarce water. We conceptualize, categorize and compare federal rivers as social–ecological systems to analyse the relationship between governance arrangements and hydroclimatic risks. A diagnostic approach is used to map over 300 federal rivers and classify the hydroclimatic risks of three semi-arid federal rivers with a long history of interstate allocation tensions: the Colorado River (USA/Mexico), Ebro River (Spain) and Murray–Darling River (Australia). Case studies review the evolution and design of water allocation institutions. Three institutional design trends have emerged: adoption of proportional interstate allocation rules; emergence of multi-layered river basin governance arrangements for planning, conflict resolution and joint monitoring; and new flexibility to adjust historic allocation patterns. Proportional allocation rules apportion water between states based on a share of available water, not a fixed volume or priority. Interstate allocation reform efforts in the Colorado and Murray–Darling rivers indicate that proportional allocation rules are prevalent for upstream states, while downstream states seek reliable deliveries of fixed volumes to increase water security. River basin governance arrangements establish new venues for multilayered planning, monitoring and conflict resolution to balance self governance by users and states with basin-wide coordination. Flexibility to adjust historic allocation agreements, without risk of defection or costly court action, also provides adaptive capacity to manage climatic variability and shifting values. Future research should develop evidence about pathways to adaptive capacity in different classes of federal rivers, while acknowledging limits to transferability and the need for context-sensitive design.

Learning from experience: a systematic review of assessments of vulnerability to drought

In the last decades, there have been an increasing number of vulnerability studies undertaken in the frameworks of several schools of thought and disciplines. This spur of activity is linked to the growing awareness about the importance of shifting from a crisis-reactive approach to a proactive and preventive risk management approach to deal with natural disasters. The severity of the impacts that drought provokes worldwide has also contributed to raise awareness about the need to improve its management. In this context, drought vulnerability assessments are the first step in the identification of underlying causes that generate drought impacts. This paper presents a systematic review of past assessments of vulnerability to drought, to enhance the understanding of vulnerability and help orientating future research in this field. Results suggest that there are important geographical and thematic gaps to be filled in the assessment of drought vulnerability. Transparency in the design and validation of results should be improved, while the availability of relevant, reliable, and updated data is still a major constraint at all levels.

Valuing water for sustainable development

Measurement and governance must advance together Achieving universal, safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, is projected to require capital expenditures of USD 114 billion per year (1). Investment on that scale, along with accompanying policy reforms, can be motivated by a growing appreciation of the value of water. Yet our ability to value water, and incorporate these values into water governance, is inadequate. Newly recognized cascading negative impacts of water scarcity, pollution, and flooding underscore the need to change the way we value water (2). With the UN/World Bank High Level Panel on Water having launched the Valuing Water Initiative in 2017 to chart principles and pathways for valuing water, we see a global opportunity to rethink the value of water. We outline four steps toward better valuation and management (see the box), examine recent advances in each of these areas, and argue that these four steps must be integrated to overcome the barriers that have stymied past efforts.

Drought and exceptional laws in Spain: the official water discourse

Only recently securitization research is exploring which mechanisms are used to securitize the water discourse and how securitization affects decision-making processes. In this context, legal texts convey messages and shape public actions, but have been rarely considered in the analysis of water securitization. Moreover, security is usually meant as the absence of violent conflict, while discourse securitization can exist also where there are only vaguely defined threats to the society. This may be the case of water scarcity associated with drought. This paper undertakes a policy frame analysis of nine exceptional laws passed in Spain during the 2005–2008 drought, to address the following questions: To what extent and how can the water discourse in legal texts be securitized? and What are the consequences of that securitization? The analysis shows that securitization is achieved using both linguistic and institutional mechanisms. Dry spells are presented as exceptional situations and using alarmist terms, even if drought is inherent to Spain’s Mediterranean climate. The sense of urgency is used to fast-track the approval of measures that could be part of ordinary water planning. The securitization of the water discourse contributes to consolidate an existing water paradigm, which, in the case of Spain, is based on State-subsidized, technical and legal measures addressing water scarcity (real or exaggerated). It is an example of a “creeping” securitization of the water discourse, meant as the dramatization of otherwise natural circumstances to spur projects and investments conceived for other purposes.

Climate Change, Conflict, and Cooperation: Global Analysis of the Resilience of International River Treaties to Increased Water Variability

Although water variability has already been observed across river basins, climate change is predicted to increase variability. Such environmental changes may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions that are not equipped with an appropriate institutional apparatus. Increased variability is also likely to challenge regions with existing institutional capacity. This paper argues that the best attempts to assess the ability of states to deal with variability in the future rest with considering how agreements have fared in the past. The paper investigates to what extent particular mechanisms and institutional designs help mitigate inter-country tensions over shared water. The analysis specifically focuses on identifying which water allocation mechanisms and institutional features provide better opportunities for mitigating conflict given that water allocation issues tend to be most salient among riparians. Water-related events from the Basins at Risk events database are used as the dependent variable to test hypotheses regarding the viability, or resilience, of treaties over time. Climatic, geographic, political, and economic variables are used as controls. The analysis is conducted for the years 1948-2001 with the country dyad as the level of observation. Findings pertaining to the primary explanatory variables suggest that country dyads governed by treaties with water allocation mechanisms exhibiting both flexibility and specificity evince more cooperative behavior. Country dyads governed by treaties with a larger sum of institutional mechanisms likewise evince a higher level of cooperation, although certain institutional mechanisms are more important than others.

Multi-level interactions in a context of political decentralization and evolving water-policy goals: the case of Spain

Spain is a highly decentralized country where water governance is a multi-level institutional endeavor requiring effective intergovernmental coordination—in terms of objectives and actions. The paper revisits the evolution of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental interactions in Spain, with a special focus on four interregional river basins. We build on a historical analysis of the evolution of water governance institutions, a mapping of existing interactions over water, careful document analysis, and interviews with selected public officials that are at the interface between the political and the technical spheres. Intergovernmental interaction occurs through different mechanisms that are slowly evolving to adapt to new challenges posed by changing power dynamics and water policy goals. Since the start of political decentralization in 1978, key institutional reforms within and outside of the water sector have opened windows of opportunity for regions to seek new spheres of influence and power. Disputes over water allocation, environmental flows, inter-basin transfers, and even basin boundaries delineation emerge as an expression of a struggle over power distribution between the regions and the central government. The physical and institutional geography of water and diverging visions and priorities (over water and beyond) are among the factors that contribute to shape conflict and cooperation in intergovernmental relations over water.

A methodology to assess drought management as applied to six European case studies

Abstract The improvement of future responses to drought requires evaluating past management practices. This article presents a methodology to assess drought management through the analysis of six key policy dimensions. It uses a qualitative approach that combines different sources of information, including both factual data and stakeholders’ perceptions. The assessment is based on a six-case study in Europe having different spatial scales and characteristics, to capture the context-specific nature of response to drought. The results of the assessment help analyze drought management from a risk-management perspective as well as to identify key policy gaps and recommendations.

Governing water in federal river basins

Managing freshwater resources across political borders presents a fundamental challenge for regional environmental governance. The misalignment between river basin boundaries and political borders contributes to intense disputes over water resource allocation between neighbouring jurisdictions. In federal political systems, disputes over water may be exploited by politicians to secure electoral gains or pursue constitutional changes. In devolved or decentralised political systems, water often is a source of dispute, and water politics can become a reflection of the wider political dynamics (Moore 2018). Rapid social, economic and environmental change presents ‘stress tests’ in such settings, illustrating how politics, institutions and governance matter. This special issue examines water governance across political borders in federal countries. Democratisation after the SecondWorldWar spread federal political systems to almost all democracies with large populations and extensive territory. Federal political systems distribute authority between national and subnational governments. Water governance in federations involves important roles for both national governments and subnational jurisdictions, often granting considerable autonomy to the latter (Moore 2018). At the same time, political jurisdictions are connected by the water cycle, particularly in shared river basins, which means that riparian states are affected by actions upstream and downstream. Disputes and coordination challenges between states are analogous to those confronted by sovereign countries who share a river basin or aquifer. Unlike international river basins, however, federations share a unifying political identity, an overarching set of rules (e.g. constitution), binding legal mechanisms, enforcement capacity, and, often, conflict resolution mechanisms to address disputes between states. Despite the importance of water governance in theworld’s 25 federations, the topic has received limited attention before the past 10 years. The oldest federations, such as Australia and the USA, have been studied extensively. However, the relationship between water and federalism has only recently attracted broader interest. Briscoe (2014) highlighted the importance of federalism in water politics and governance and the need to account for (1) politics at all levels, (2) the influence of history and path dependency, (3) the role of both informal and formal rules and practices and (4) context-specificity of policy lessons and transfer. A series of additional studies have advanced our understanding of horizontal (state-to-state) and vertical (statefederal) interactions within river basins in federal political systems, illustrating how different jurisdictions behave opportunistically and depend on political and institutioanl safeguards to foster cooperation and resolve disputes (Garrick et al. 2016). Recent research has developed a global and comparative perspective on water governance in federations, identifying ‘federal rivers’ as a distinct type of transboundary river basin. Federal river basins include ‘major river basins’ within or shared by a country with a federal political system (Garrick et al. 2013). Intergovernmental politics and coordination challenges are a defining and common feature of such river basins (Garrick and De Stefano 2016). At the same time, this category of river basin is diverse and varies in terms of their hydrological, economic and institutional attributes. Federal rivers can involve different levels of institutional fragmentation, including interstate river basins shared by multiple states within a single country, large river basins falling completely within a single state (intrastate) or basins that span both state and international borders (Fig. 1). 1 Federations refer to sub-national jurisdictions with different terms: states, provinces, Länder, autonomous regions and cantons illustrate the range and diversity of approaches.