Neda Zawahri

Hegemony and asymmetry: multiple-chessboard games on transboundary rivers

Keywords Transboundary rivers Hegemony Asymmetry Two-level games Hydropolitics1 IntroductionWater connects, and transboundary rivers connect a host of actors in different states inmultiple ways. Riparian states can depend on each other for sea access, generating jointbenefits and minimising the losses from natural hazards. Yet, riparians can also use theriver to annoy, threaten, and damage each other by discharging wastewater into the basin orconstructing sufficient dams to store and regulate the river’s flow (Zawahri 2008). In anincreasingly interdependent world, we would expect a growing number of transboundaryriver treaties as states attempt to minimise the social, economic, and political lossesincurred from developing the basin and preventing unwelcome unilateral action. Suchattempts at cooperation may also lead to more integrated river basin management.Yet even when international water agreements are signed, it does not mean contractingstates are actually cooperating, and the lack of agreement does not mean riparian states arefighting. In other words, the presence of a treaty does not automatically translate intobehavioural altering cooperation. In the Iberian Peninsula and on the Mekong basin, forexample, relations remain conflictive despite some form of institutionalised cooperation.Thus, conflict and cooperation are ambiguous terms that tend to be used to describe howstates interact over their shared water resources. The objective of this special issue is totease out the dynamics of basin conflict and cooperation where power relations areasymmetric.

Third Party Mediation of International River Disputes: Lessons from the Indus River

Third parties have been active in assisting adversarial states to navigate their international river disputes. By using the carrot and stick to facilitate compromise, mediators have also participated in the negotiations leading to the signing of treaties over international rivers. Yet, due to the nature of the issue confronting riparian states, the long-term impact of these efforts is likely to be unstable cooperation rather than cooperation. This is still an important contribution, because the absence of mediation efforts may contribute to an environment of conflict. However, since riparian states confront a relationship that involves the need to continuously manage disputes that arise as states develop their international rivers, a mediator may be more effective in facilitating cooperation if it assists developing states with a history of animosity to establish effectively designed river basin commissions and it oversees the implementation of treaties. Participating in the initial years of a treatys implementation by coordinating the donor community to underwrite projects can minimize the potential disputes riparians confront. An effectively designed river basin commission can assist in facilitating cooperation long after the mediator has departed from the region. To demonstrate this argument, the article draws on the Indus River case, which has lived through four different phases. The Euphrates and Tigris Rivers are used to illustrate the arguments ability to explain other cases.

The effectiveness of treaty design in addressing water disputes

We examine the design features of treaties governing international rivers and empirically test their effectiveness in managing water disputes. We expect peaceful conflict management to be more successful and militarized conflict to be less likely in dyadic river claims when riparians share membership in treaties with mechanisms for river basin organizations, information exchange, monitoring, enforcement, and conflict resolution. To test our expectation we analyze a set of diplomatic disagreements over cross-border rivers coded by the Issue Correlates of War project. We combine this database with treaty content data from the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. Empirical analyses suggest that information exchange and enforcement provisions in river treaties are most effective for preventing militarization of river claims and increase the chances that negotiations over river claims successfully resolve the issues at stake. Enforcement provisions also promote third-party dispute settlement attempts and increase the likelihood of compliance with agreements reached. States that share membership in river basin organizations are more likely to experience militarized disputes and less likely to be amenable to third-party dispute settlement. However, the latter states are more likely to reach agreements in peaceful negotiations over their river claims. These findings demonstrate that institutional design influences riparian states’ ability to address water disputes.

Domestic environmental activists and the governance of the Ganges and Mekong Rivers in India and China

It is generally considered difficult to resolve negative unidirectional externalities within hydro-hegemonic basins in which the upstream powerful riparian has the incentive to unilaterally develop the river without regard to downstream consequences. Weaker downstream riparian states can resort to issue linkages and side payments to coerce a change in the upstream hydro-hegemon’s behavior, but the success of these tools depends on the specific political and economic situation in the basin and on the preferences of the hydro-hegemonic state for cooperation. Neglected in the literature is another possibility. Through a consideration of the sanctioned discourse of watershed management at the domestic levels, this article shows that domestic environmental non-governmental organizations and policy entrepreneurs—through the application of a range of tools—can work to change the domestic water management discourse from a state-hydraulic paradigm to a more sustainable water management paradigm. When these efforts are successful, we can find that these non-state actors can perform a crucial function in cleaning up domestic stretches of international rivers, which produces positive externalities downstream. In the process, they are able of achieving what often years of international negotiations failed to accomplish. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, India’s policies on water quality in the national stretches of Ganges Basin and China’s policies on biodiversity in the national stretches of the Mekong Basin are used to make this argument.

Navigating International River Disputes to Avert Conflict

Building on the findings from the International Negotiations 2000 issue on negotiations in international watercourses and the major advances in the field during the past nine years, this issue seeks to advance our knowledge about the management of international river disputes. Collectively, the articles in this issue move beyond the simple dichotomy of conflict and cooperation to suggest the possibility that both are often simultaneously present within a basin and should be studied as such. Using a diversity of methodological approaches from comparative case studies to single case studies to quantitative analysis, the articles also illustrate the growth of institutionalization within river basins and their contribution to conflict management. Moreover, the articles advance our knowledge of the role of the relative distribution of power within the basin on the resolution of water disputes and management of resources. Some scholars find power asymmetry important for treaty formation, while others suggest that issue linkages and side payments can provide weaker riparians with the means to gain from cooperation.

Capturing the nature of cooperation, unstable cooperation and conflict over international rivers: the story of the Indus, Yarmouk, Euphrates and Tigris rivers

This article analyses the existing definitions of conflict and cooperation over international rivers and introduces new definitions to remedy some of the shortcomings. Conflict tends to be defined as militarised confrontation, firing guns, political flare-ups or deterioration in relations. This range of violence is too wide. To remedy this weakness, it is necessary to incorporate the category of unstable cooperation introduced by Wolf (1997, 1998). Existing definitions of cooperation also have drawbacks. There is a tendency to associate the signing of treaties with cooperation. Unfortunately, treaties can remain unimplemented or states might not comply with them. The underlying weakness with existing definitions is an insufficient examination of the problem structure that states confront. States sharing international rivers confront a management problem, which involves continuous disputes that require constant negotiations. As this article argues, how states manage their water disputes is an indicator of whether they exist in a condition of conflict, unstable cooperation or cooperation.

Designing river commissions to implement treaties and manage water disputes: the story of the Joint Water Committee and Permanent Indus Commission

States have signed hundreds of treaties and protocols over their shared rivers. Many of these agreements established commissions to implement the accords and maintain cooperation. Consistent with this expectation, the Israeli–Jordanian Peace Treaty established the Joint Water Committee (JWC). Through a comparison of the JWC with the Permanent Indus Commission, established to manage the Indus River between India and Pakistan, the paper argues that the JWC has been only somewhat effective. To account for the source of effectiveness it is necessary to consider the capabilities vested in commissions. Commissioners can fulfil their tasks when they communicate directly, hold regular meetings, monitor the rivers development and possess conflict resolution mechanism.

Securitizing Water, Climate, and Migration in Israel, Jordan, and Syria

AbstractProtracted droughts and scarce water resources, combined with internal and cross-border migration, have contributed to the securitization of discourses around migration and water in much of the Middle East. However, there is no clear understanding of the conditions under which water, climate change, and migration are conceived of as security concerns or of their policy implications. This article explores the different means through which Israel, Jordan, and Syria have framed issues of water, climate change, and migration as national security concerns. Based upon an analysis of governmental and publicly available documents, coupled with field interviews with Israeli and Jordanian policymakers, experts, and nongovernmental organizations, we identify two different framings of the water–climate–migration nexus, depending on whether migration is largely external or internal. In Israel and Jordan, concern with influxes of external migrants elevated migration as a security issue in part through impacts on already-scarce water resources. In Syria, where severe drought in the early 2000s prompted large-scale internal migration, officials downplayed connections between scarce water resources, drought, and internal migration, part of a broader pattern of rural neglect. Unlike much of the conventional literature that has posited a linear relationship between climate change, decreasing water availability, and migration, we provide a more robust picture of the water–climate–migration nexus that shows how securitized framings take different forms and produce several unintended consequences.

Governing international freshwater resources: an analysis of treaty design

International rivers create complex relationships between their riparian states, which can contribute to economic, political, and social losses. Treaties provide a means for states to coordinate their actions in managing international river disputes to minimize these losses. However, there is little knowledge about treaty content and the factors influencing treaty design. We test whether a relationship exists between the challenges of negotiating, complying, and distributing the gains in bilateral, multilateral, and basin-wide negotiation contexts and the depth of cooperation along with the degree of institutionalization. While the great challenges confronting multilateral or basin-wide negotiations can produce treaties that focus on joint gains and shallow cooperation to secure the signature of riparians, we find that they can also provide opportunities for deeper, more behavior-altering, cooperation. To manage the difficulties of maintaining multilateral cooperation, we find a higher degree of institutionalization. We also find that bilateral negotiations provide states with opportunities for deeper cooperation, but a lower degree of institutionalization.

Using freshwater resources to rehabilitate refugees and build transboundary cooperation

After the conflict between India and Pakistan upon their independence in 1947, India sought to use the Indus River to rehabilitate millions of refugees, reconstruct the economy, and facilitate post-conflict peacebuilding in Punjab. But this drew on the only freshwater available to Pakistan. The World Banks mediation averted further conflict through the Indus Waters Treaty and the construction of hydrological infrastructure in order to subsidize post-conflict peacebuilding. The treaty established a commission and conflict-resolution mechanisms to manage disputes of the development of the Indus. Pakistan is using these mechanisms to address the current Kishanganga Project dispute with India.