Beyond the river: the benefits of cooperation on international rivers
Introduction
Rivers1 are extraordinary phenomena, with physical, cultural and psychological expression in human societies; they bring life and death, civilization and devastation, opportunity and risk. Managing rivers effectively has always been a goal of human societies and nation states. Under Roman law, documented in the 3rd Century Roman Digest, aqua profluens (flowing water) was a common good, neither public nor private, emphasizing equity and society-wide ownership. Managing rivers for the common good remains today a societal goal in countries around the world. To achieve this goal a range of instruments is being adopted: river basin organizations are bringing stakeholders together to internalize the politics of allocation, market mechanisms are widely used to rationalize the economics of allocation, and legislation is enacted and enforced to ensure the regulation of allocation. One fundamental lesson of universal experience is that a river is best managed as a basin unit, as any action in one part of the basin has impacts in another.
The management of rivers is complicated by the fact that they cross political boundaries indiscriminately. Rivers intersect or even form borders between the many different users that must share their water. River basins wholly within a nation invariably give rise to debate and discord, to a greater or lesser extent, among users with conflicting demands and management preferences. Strong national institutions can deal effectively with such differences, although in federal nations with strong state legislatures (as in the US, India or Australia) management planning of, and user disputes over, inter-state rivers often present major challenges. However, in all these cases, there remains a national legislative structure with ultimate authority. There is rarely an institution of equivalent authority, however, where rivers flow between, and disputes arise among, sovereign nations. There are about 260 rivers that cross or form international borders; their basins cover almost half of the world's land surface and include about 40% of the world's population (Wolf, 1998). As water everywhere becomes increasingly scarce relative to demand, conflicting expectations of international rivers will grow, with only limited and little-tested supra-national legal and institutional instruments available for nations to look to in order to allocate and conserve the water of the rivers that they share.
There has been much written recently in the economic, political and scientific literature about international rivers, with a sharp focus on ‘water wars’. Some write of water wars, both in the past, and, more importantly, in the future. Others argue that no war in history has ever been fought over water, and that international rivers tend to induce cooperation. There is a case for both positions, although, in this paper, we align ourselves with neither, and instead take a somewhat different approach.
All international rivers, without exception, create some degree of tension among the societies that they bind.2 There are consequences of these tensions, and of the cooperative or non-cooperative responses they elicit, that can reach far ‘beyond the river’. These tensions, and their responses, are bundled with many other factors—historic, cultural, environmental and economic—that affect relations between neighboring nations. Within these bundled dynamics, international rivers can in some cases become a powerful catalyst for conflict, or a powerful catalyst for cooperation. Fully unbundling water's role from the complex dynamics of relationships between states is not possible. Control of international rivers is inextricably entwined with economic opportunity, national security, society and culture. Water—narrowly defined—is unlikely to be or have been the sole source of any war, just as, we believe, war is unlikely to be or have been fought for any single interest or purpose. The management of shared water can be a force for peace, or a force for war, but politics—as a proxy for the full bundle of relationships, and associated tensions, that arise between states—will determine whether cooperation or conflict is chosen.
In this paper, we draw upon World Bank experience in different parts of the world and we outline a framework, which is proving relevant and useful in considering cooperation on international rivers. In setting the scene for this framework, we need to consider the nature of a river and its roles in the environment and in the economic endeavors and political relationships of human society.
Section snippets
The ubiquitous river
Rivers are a central feature of the ecology of the planet. Crustal processes build mountains and create deep basins. Rain falls, is captured in rivers, erodes mountains, and deposit sediments in lowlands, infilling basins. Rivers play a dominant role in sculpting landscapes and sustaining ecosystems. All life needs water and the presence of water gives life, within the river itself, within associated wetlands, lakes and riverine vegetation, and within the landscape sustained by the river. While
The ecological river: benefits accorded ‘to the river’
Cooperation across borders in the sustainable management of a river ecosystem, according benefits to the river, can be a valuable and unthreatening place for international cooperation to start. Environmental management is a cornerstone of river basin management and development and can bring benefits to all river uses and users. While there is a growing debate over the ‘preferred’ ecological state of a river—from ‘pristine’ to ‘engineered’, modern river basin management typically incorporates a
The economic river: benefits to be reaped ‘from the river’
Cooperative management of the water flowing in an international river can reap benefits from the river. Managing a river basin from a system-wide perspective can increase the quality, the available quantity, and the economic productivity of river flows. River basin development seeks to promote this integrated, system-wide perspective, where the full range of water use opportunities and the various inter-relationships of individual water uses can be considered. River flows and water uses can be
The political river: costs arising ‘because of the river’
Far-reaching gains from cooperation in international rivers may accrue as savings of the costs of non-cooperation arising because of the river. The control of rivers and river flows has long been—and to some extent always is in all international rivers—a source of tension and dispute; and an issue of sovereignty, strategic necessity, and national pride. Such tensions (often inextricably linked to, and perhaps even indistinguishable from, other tensions) may reach the point where they color the
The catalytic river: benefits enabled ‘beyond the river’
Cooperation in the management and development of international rivers may contribute to, or even result in, political processes and institutional capacities that themselves open the door to other collective actions, enabling cross-border cooperation beyond the river. Increasing the benefits from the river and decreasing the costs arising because of the river enable broader economic growth and regional integration that can generate benefits even in apparently unrelated sectors. Improved river
The cooperative river: the dynamics of multi-type benefits
The cooperative river can therefore be seen to generate benefits of multiple types, although the potential sum of these benefits in different basins will vary greatly. The first type are the benefits accorded to the river by cooperative basin-wide environmental management, the second are those benefits to be reaped from the river by cooperative development of the basin, the third are the savings that can be made by diminishing the costs of non-cooperation arising because of the river, and the
Conclusions
We have proposed in this paper an analytic framework describing four types of benefits (environmental, direct economic, political and indirect economic) from cooperation on international rivers. While there is enormous variation among the numerous international rivers of the world, we submit that costs of non-cooperation, and benefits of cooperation of all four types will manifest in all international river systems, to a greater or lesser extent. However, although these types of cooperation can
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the input and inspiration of our many colleagues in the World Bank, particularly in the Africa Water Resources Management Initiative, and in Africa. We would particularly like to thank John Briscoe, Dale Whittington, Jerry Delli Priscoli and Inger Andersen for constructive and critical review of the ideas expressed in this paper.
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