Abstract
The starting point of this paper is that most of the international transboundary water management (TWM) processes taking place globally are driven by ‘the hydraulic mission’ — primarily the construction of mega-infrastructure such as dams and water transfer schemes. The paper argues that such heroic engineering approaches are essentially a masculinised discourse, with its emphasis being on construction, command and control.

As a result of this masculinised discourse, the primary actors in TWM processes have been states — represented by technical, economic and political elites operating in what generally gets termed ‘the national interest’. Left out are the local communities relying on the resource directly: the water users; the poor; women; and other important groups.

Instruments such as the UN Watercourses Convention of 1997 make an effort to present an attempt at a gender-balanced approach — through asserting the importance of the ‘no-harm rule’ and the ‘equitable share approach’. However, they end up supporting the status quo through the omission of any reference to gender issues.

The paper provides an overview of the masculinised discourse on TWM institutions, proposing that this is the case because of the intersection of two masculinised fields — water resource management and the disciplines engaged in the research of transboundary water management, namely, political science and international relations.

The paper investigates two southern African examples that illustrate the potential for including a gendered perspective and pro-poor policies that take into account the needs of the water users or ‘stakeholders’.

The analysis includes the international and regional legal agreements on transboundary water issues, searching for evidence of a gendered approach. It is concluded that the laws and organisations responsible for transboundary water management currently do not reflect a gendered approach, despite the international recognition given to the necessity of including women in water management structures at all levels.

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Project Info

• Project Team: Anton Earle, John Joyce, Josh Weinberg
• Partners: Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (MEP-FECO), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Wuhan University
• Co-finanaced by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection Foreign Economic Cooperation Office and Sida
• Timeline: November 2012 – December 2013

This study maps some of the processes, institutions, organisations, laws, policies and projects active in promoting transparency, accountability and integrity in the water sector of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, and concludes with a series of recommendations broadly centred on developing political support, capacity building and integration of water sector initiatives.

The Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme (TWAP) Programme will address this need by developing:

1. a partnership among organisations;
2. a methodology to assessment and track results for each of the five categories of transboundary water systems (transboundary groundwater; transboundary lakes/reservoirs; transboundary river basins; Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs); and open ocean areas) under the Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme; and
3. conduct a baseline transboundary waters assessment that may be conducted following completion of the MSP.

The periodic assessment will be sustained in the future through the partnership of agencies and organisations, and include data series collected by Global Environment Facility International Waters (GEF-IW) projects that would be useful to those agencies and to UNEP’s GEO process.

Project Info

• Project team: Anders Jägerskog, Anton Earle, John Joyce, Kyungmee Kim
• Partners: UNEP-DEWA in partnership with UNESCO-IOC, UNESCO-IHP, UCC-Water, SIWI, IGRAC, Finland, BMZ/BGR, ETH-Zurich, IUCN, ILEC, GRID-Arendal, LOICZ, GESAMP, Linnaeus University, University of Western Cape

The SWP works to prevent conflict over shared waters by building trust and promoting cooperation. The key objective of the partnership is to establish a multi-stakeholder platform to increase political will and strengthen riparian country commitment to regional processes that advance cooperation in regions where water is, or may become, a source of conflict. Among others it will foster cooperation in ‘riskier’ environments where other organizations are less likely and not willing to operate and enhancing opportunities to learn, codify and exchange lessons in using water as a framework for multi-country cooperation.

Specifically, the SWP performs the following activities:

• Technical studies on the linkages between water resources and conflict and the benefits and costs of cooperation on shared waters.
• Facilitates shared strategic planning and donor-riparian dialogues.
• Holds high level government events, such as parliamentary conferences, to build multi-country awareness of shared water body issues.
• Supports processes to enable and finalize regional frameworks;
• Promotes regional data sharing and harmonization exercises.
• Promotes the development of shared water and environmental databases and analysis activities to enhance transparency, build participation and trust.
• Develops scenario modeling tools to allow regional parties to better understand transboundary waters in a broader context of peace, security and economic development.
• Builds capacity of transboundary water institutions in dispute resolution, public participation and management.

The SWP is a component of UNDP’s Transboundary Waters Programme and is implemented by the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI and the UNDP Bratislava Regional Centre.

Project Info

• Project team:  Anders Jägerskog, Anton Earle, Kyungmee Kim, Joakim Öjendal (SIWI Associate, Gothenburg University)
• Client and partner: UNDP-GEF
• Timeline: September 2011- February 2014
• Links: www.watergovernance.org/sharedwaters
• Resources:
  - Background paper by Anders Jägerskog on Transboundary Waters for the Ministerial Roundtable on Transboundary Waters: “Current Status of Cooperative Efforts on Transboundary Waters“, World Water Forum, Marseille, France, March 13, 2012.
  - Shared Waters Partnership Information Brochure
  - Anton Earle, Ana Elisa Cascao, Anders Jagerskog, Ashok Swain, Joakim Ojendal, (forthcoming) “Transboundary Water Management and the Climate Change Debate“

Contents and Authors of the Respective Chapters

• Foreword

• Contributors

1. Introduction: Setting the Scene for Transboundary Water Management Approaches
- Anton Earle, Stockholm International Water Institute
- Anders Jägerskog, Stockholm International Water Institute
- Joakim Öjendal, University of Gothenburg

Part I: Analytical Approaches to Transboundary Water Management

2. Why Negotiate? Asymmetric endowments and asymmetric power and the invisible nexus of water, trade and power that brings apparent water security
- Tony Allan, SOAS & Kings College, University of London, UK
- Naho Mirumachi, Kings College, University of London, UK

3. Power, Hegemony and Critical Hydropolitics
- Ana Cascão, SIWI
- Mark Zeitoun, University of East Anglia, UK

4. Getting Beyond the Environment-Conflict Trap: Benefit-Sharing in International River Basins
- Marwa Daoudy, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Part II: Transboundary Water Management Polity and Practice

5. International Water Law: concepts, evolution and development
- Owen McIntyre, University of Cork, Ireland

6. Aquifer Resources in a Transboundary Context: A Hidden Resource? – Enabling the Practitioner To ‘See It & Bank It’ for Good Use
- Shammy Puri and Willi Struckmeier, International Association of Hydrogeologists

7. Governance in Transboundary Basins – the Role of Stakeholders, Concepts and Approaches in International River Basins
- Nicole Kranz, Ecologic
- Erik Mostert, Delft University

8. Environmental Flows in Shared Watercourses: Review of Assessment Methods and Relevance in the Transboundary Setting
- Cate Brown, Southern Waters
- Jackie King, University of Cape Town

9. Managing Water Negotiations and Conflicts in Concept and in Practice
- Todd Jarvis and Aaron Wolf, Oregon State University

10. Identifying Business Models for Transboundary River Basin Institutions
- Jakob Granit, SIWI

Part III: Challenges and Opportunities

11. Sustainability of Transnational Water Agreements in the Face of Socio-Economic and Environmental Change
- Malin Falkenmark and Anders Jagerskog, SIWI

12. Enhanced Knowledge and Education Systems for Strengthening the Capacity of Transboundary Water Management
- Lena Salame and Pieter van der Zaag, UNESCO

13. Case studies of TWM Initiatives: 13 initiatives from various parts of the world
- Michael McWilliams

14. Towards a Conceptual Framework for Transboundary Water Management
- Anton Earle and Anders Jägerskog, SIWI
- Joakim Öjendal, University of Gothenburg

• Index

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