Editor's Note

The importance of water to human survival and well-being can hardly be overstated. It is essential to the maintenance of life, and crucial to environmental conservation, agricultural production, and numerous industrial processes. Yet many millions of people around the world lack access to adequate supplies of safe drinking water and healthy sanitation. These deficiencies will only become more acute with the passage of time, as the rise in global population sees the demand for water grow, while climate change, pollution, and development reduce the quantity of fresh water available per capita. In sum, the world faces a looming water crisis, if it is not already in its grip.

The problems of human want and hardship occasioned by this crisis are augmented by geopolitical rivalries between states. Many observers fear that competition between countries to secure what they deem their proper share of a vital resource will increase international tensions and could even lead to outright war. Oil has hitherto been the world’s key geostrategic commodity, for which nations were willing to embark on military hostilities, but water promises to usurp that role. It is to an examination of the challenges arising from the growing scarcity of water, and how to address them, that this issue of Global Dialogue is devoted.

We open our discussion of the world’s water crisis with a country case-study that illustrates the difficulties many nations experience today in securing adequate supplies of safe water for drinking, irrigation, household needs, and other uses. Manfred A. Lange, Director of the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center of The Cyprus Institute, describes the situation in the Republic of Cyprus. He details the specific water problems the island faces and the various measures it has taken to overcome them—such as seawater desalination, dams, and water-pricing. He concludes that the use of concentrating-solar-power technologies to generate both electricity and desalinated seawater holds the answer to Cyprus’s water stresses.

How real is the threat of water wars—that disputes over water might result in military conflict? The validity of such fears is assessed in the articles that follow. Paula Hanasz, a Ph.D. candidate at the Australian National University, argues that inter-state water interactions are in reality too complex to categorise into the false dichotomy of conflict and cooperation. The concepts of water conflict and water (in-)security have manifold manifestations, and cooperation almost always co-exists with conflict in hydropolitics. Moreover, the bulk of water interactions at any level are neutral in character rather than negative or positive. It is thus meaningless to speak of imminent, increasing, or overwhelmingly destructive water conflict of the sort that could be called a water war. Hanasz illustrates these points by describing water interactions in South Asia, between the hydro-hegemon India and its co-riparians.

The tensions between India and Pakistan arising from water are further considered by our next contributor, Douglas Hill, of the University of Otago, New Zealand. He notes that the allocation of waters from the Indus Basin furnishes many potential causes of conflict. But the Indus Waters Treaty, designed to mitigate these tensions and adjudicate supply, has been hailed as a sterling example of peaceful water management. Hill enquires whether water will serve as a mechanism for greater dialogue and cooperation between the two nations, or instead prove to be a trigger for conflict.

Bjørn-Oliver Magsig, a research fellow at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, looks at international water insecurity. He asks how freshwater resources can be divided among the world’s growing population in the most equitable way. Can parity be achieved between powerful states and less fortunate riparians? Magsig argues for a new approach in transboundary freshwater management. He finds that the notion of state sovereignty, enshrined in international law, is the chief obstacle to the peaceful management of disputes between nations over water. If we are to move from hydro-egoism to hydro-solidarity, then water security must be regarded as a matter of “regional common concern”.

Many countries see dams as a panacea for their energy and water needs. Yet they can cause environmental harm and provoke political disputes between upstream and downstream nations. One such controversial dam project is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam currently being built on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. Jennifer C. Veilleux, a graduate student at Oregon State University, weighs the implications of the dam for human security—how it will affect the safety and well-being of individuals and communities.

River basin organisations (RBOs) are a prime means that nations have adopted to manage internationally shared waters. Their workings and effectiveness are examined in the two essays that follow—co-authored pieces by Andrea K. Gerlak of the University of Arizona, and Susanne Schmeier, a technical advisor to the Mekong River Commission. Their first article highlights the role of RBOs in addressing collective action problems in international rivers and lakes. They consider why RBOs form for some basins but not others, and provide examples of the benefits that RBOs bring to transboundary water governance. In their second article, Gerlak and Schmeier discuss issues of institutional design and effectiveness in RBOs. They argue that to ensure long-term cooperation over shared watercourses, it does not suffice merely to establish RBOs. The latter must also be properly designed and equipped with well-functioning river-basin governance mechanisms.

The two articles that follow consider water affairs in southern Africa. The initial regional protocol of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)—a long-standing organisation comprising several nations—concerned shared watercourses. Signed in 1995, the protocol has been of such utility that southern Africa is often cited as a case of “best practice” in transboundary water governance. Larry A. Swatuk of the University of Waterloo, Canada, and Joanna Fatch of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, describe the protocol’s terms and operations, setting it within the broader context of international water law. Drawing on responses by numerous regional water professionals, they consider the influence of the protocol on institutional water management and reflect on its inspirational value to a region afflicted by enduring poverty and underdevelopment.

Anthony Turton of the University of the Free