Stockholm International Water Institute » Kyungmee Kim

Transboundary Water Management: Who Does What, Where? – Analysing the Data in SIWI’s Transboundary Water Management Database

admin — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:57:33 +0000

In 2011, the Swedish Water House conducted a mapping of regional and international actors working in transboundary water management (TWM), which aimed to assist the identification of knowledge gaps and needs for further actions that could lead to more informed decision-making in water management. It also sought to promote objective decision-making, thereby helping to form a framework for resource allocation in TWM. Based on the mapping a database was created. The on-going activities of 94 actors, and more than 700 transboundary river and lake basins, aquifers and large marine ecosystems1 can be found in the database. Similar efforts made previously have focused on legal frameworks or on capacity building through sharing project information (IWLEARN, 2012; WWF et al., 2010; UNWAIS, 2012; TFDD 2007). The TWM mapping and database takes a broader focus and an actor-based approach. The complexity and significance of TWM have been reiterated by researchers, politicians and water professionals. The socio-economic disparity as well as power asymmetries between the riparian countries is one of the obstacles to cooperation of TWM institutions. The development of physical infrastructure is often a sensitive issue, but one of the main driving forces of cooperation in some cases. The primary objectives of TWM cooperation can be divided into three categories: 1) maximum utilisation of the common good (utilitarian approach); 2) conflict prevention; 3) maintaining ecological sustainability. This report analyses the findings from the database. It shows that more actors working with transboundary water issues focus their efforts on Africa than in any other region. Furthermore, most activities are located in transboundary rivers, while other basin types receive less attention. The three basins with the largest number of actors working with TWM are the Nile, Volta and Mekong. According to the analysis of three basins with the most active number of TWM actors (the Nile, the Volta, the Mekong River Basin), the utilitarian approach appears to be the most prominent objectives of the current actors activities. Activities to maintain ecological sustainability are more prevalent in the Mekong River Basin, where information management has been successful and led by the strong institutional capacity of the transboundary basin organisation, Mekong River Commission. Conflict prevention activities are not as prominent in practice as they are in academic literature on transboundary water issues. None of the actors in the database involved in the Nile, Volta and the Mekong, are focused on conflict prevention as their main objective. Actors also provide different tools aimed to support transboundary water management, often in the form of publications. Most of the tools developed are broad and cover several aspects of TWM. The most common are tools providing information on how to construct legal frameworks.

Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme (TWAP)

Nora — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:29:43 +0000

The socio-economic development and well-being of a significant part of the world’s population depends on transboundary waters, many of which are under increasing pressure from human activities and climate change. Currently, there is no systematic and scientifically-robust methodology to assess the changing conditions of five different types of transboundary water systems (transboundary groundwater; transboundary lakes/reservoirs; transboundary river basins; Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs); and open ocean areas) that result from human activities, as well as natural and climate related events. Consequently, policy makers and international organisations are unable to be set priorities for financial resource allocation that is based upon full scientific assessment. Developing such a methodology also would facilitate the identification and assessment of positive changes in the environmental and resource situations in the transboundary water systems that result from interventions by national authorities and international/regional actors.

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

a partnership among organisations;
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
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, University of Kalmar, University of Western Cape

Report: Land acquisitions – How will they impact transboundary waters?

Nora — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:54:08 +0000

A new exploratory report, Land acquisitions: How will they impact transboundary waters? investigates how the current surge in land acquisitions and investments by foreign countries, sovereign wealth funds, private corporations and domestic investors will affect transboundary water management. an area where current knowledge is sparse.

According to the report, the majority of land deals tend to be made in places with low land lease prices, weak legislation, inexpensive labour and relative abundance of land and water and very few include regulations or agreements for water used on the acquired territories. With many of the largest land leasing countries located on the transboundary water basins, shared waters will be affected with unknown implications for regional relations. Two case illustrations in the Nile and Niger basin regions are presented to explore how land acquisitions have affected global, regional, national and local actors in those areas and point out key questions that require more research.

Download the full report here.

Read the Press Release from the report launch.

Key messages from the report:

- Land investment is a water investment. Water is often presumed to be included without explicitly being mentioned in land lease agreements.

- Regional Economic Communities (RECs), River Basin Organisations (RBOs) and regional organisations have little or no role in the land acquisitions on record to date. Large land deals will, however, very likely impact their mandate and ability to function.

- The type of water (green water or blue water and the intensity of its use) used for the land investments determines its effect on transboundary water management.

- Water that is being used for irrigation in land leased by foreign parties does not feature in the transboundary discussions in many, if not all, shared basins.

- Water needs should be put into the land acquisition contracts in order to clarify the water requirements of the investors´ projects and to regulate their water use.

- Sustainable water use should be acknowledged explicitly in the international standards for responsible agro-business investments.

Land acquisitions and water

Nora — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:03:10 +0000

Following the food price crisis in 2007-2008, a surge in large-scale land acquisitions have taken place around the globe. The total volume of land that is currently leased or acquired is still unclear, as many deals lack transparency. What is clear is that land deals will impact many developing countries, with unknown implications on the sustainable use of land and water resources.

SIWI’s research brings the ‘water perspective’ into the international discourse on land deals. The most common purpose of the recent land acquisitions is agricultural production, which means that land without enough water to grow crops has no value to investors. SIWI has been actively participating in the global discussion on the large-scale land acquisitions, particularly its connection to transboundary waters (e.g. the Nile), virtual water trading, water security and water rights.

Project Info

Project team: Anders Jägerskog, Ana Cascão, Kyungmee Kim
Partners: Nordic Africa Institute, Swedish Agricultural University, Uppsala University, Gothenburg University
Timeline: 2011 – ongoing
Links and resources: Jägerskog, A., Cascao, A., Hårsmar, M. and Kim. K., (2012), “Land Acquisitions: How Will They Impact Transboundary Waters?“. Report Nr. 30, SIWI, Stockholm.

Shared Water Partnership

Nora — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:42:00 +0000

The Shared Waters Partnership (SWP) promotes cooperative approaches to shared water, which can advance peace, security, environmental protection and open new opportunities for riparian states to sustainably develop their water resources. It does so by working to strengthen multi-stakeholder platforms, improve efforts to align diplomatic and development work and build capacity to create robust, responsive institutions in cooperative shared water management.

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“