River Basin Organisations: Tackling Questions of Design and Effectiveness

Andrea K. Gerlak is the Director of Academic Development for the International Studies Association, and Environmental Policy Faculty Associate with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Susanne Schmeier, of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), works as a Technical Advisor to the Mekong River Commission (MRC). This is the second of two articles jointly authored by them for this issue of Global Dialogue.

In order to overcome water-related conflicts and to institutionalise cooperation long-term, riparian states to more than one hundred internationally shared watercourses have agreed to establish river basin organisations (RBOs). As our previous article for this issue (“Cooperation for the Sustainable Governance of International Watercourses: The Role of River Basin Organisations”) has shown, RBOs cover international rivers and lakes in all regions of the world—with a particularly large number having been established in Africa and Europe.

RBOs vary in form and function. Some are designed to improve the safety of navigation in a specific river, prominent examples being found in Europe with the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR) or the Danube Commission. Others, such as the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), overseeing water uses between India and Pakistan, institutionalise water-sharing agreements and monitor member states’ compliance with such commitments. And yet others provide riparian states with a body that establishes and manages joint infrastructure projects that contribute to the economic development of basin states; the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Sénégal (OMVS) is a prominent example. The design of RBOs, in turn, influences how effective they are in governing shared water resources and in addressing existing and newly emerging challenges in the governance of water resources.

This essay aims to open the black box of RBOs to: (1) examine how RBOs are designed; (2) investigate whether and to what extent RBOs have actually been effective in governing water resources; and (3) explore RBO capacity to ensure successful adaptation to environmental, socio-economic, and political change. We argue that to ensure long-term cooperation over shared watercourses, it does not suffice to establish RBOs. Instead, it is important to design them properly and equip them with well-functioning river-basin governance mechanisms; only thus can RBOs secure the long-term effective governance of the basin, even in times of environmental, socio-economic or political change.

The Design of RBOs

The differences in the raison-d’êtres of RBOs are reflected in the way they are set up. Consequently, RBOs around the world look very different from one another. These differences are captured by an RBO’s institutional design, describing both the organisational set-up—that is, the “architecture” of an RBO (including its membership, its functions or its bodies)—as well as the mechanisms it has to hand to address water-resource challenges in its basin (such as its decision-making or dispute-resolution mechanisms).¹ The following paragraphs provide some insights into these differences in RBOs’ institutional design.

Membership

One of the most obvious design features of an RBO is its membership structure. In some cases, RBOs cover entire river basins, bringing together all riparian states to the watercourse. For example, this is the case with the Lake Victoria Basin, where both the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) and the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation (LVFO) consist of all riparians to the lake, including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Similarly, the Limpopo Watercourse Commission (LIMCOM) brings together all riparians to Africa’s Limpopo River. Sometimes, RBOs even for highly multinational basins manage to bring together all riparian states—as, for example, do the Niger Basin Authority (NBA) and the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), each of which includes all eleven riparian states to the respective basin. In other cases, however, only a sub-set of riparian states has joined the RBO, leaving it non-inclusive. A prominent example is the Mekong River Commission (MRC) that consists only of the Mekong’s four downstream riparians, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, and omits upstream China and Myanmar. Overall, as indicated in Figure 1, non-inclusive RBOs are slightly more common than inclusive ones.

FIGURE 1

Organisational Architecture

Another interesting institutional design element is an RBO’s organisational architecture. Some RBOs are very narrowly structured and possess only one or two organisational bodies. For example, the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission possesses only a decision-making body and no other entity such as a secretariat or any other implementing agency. In contrast, other RBOs consist of a large number of organisational bodies—up to eight for the LVFO and nine for the OMVS. The majority of RBOs follow the most common three- or four-fold structure, consisting of a high-level political decision-making body (most often referred to as a “council” or a “commission”), one or two intermediate technical-level implementation bodies (often called a “committee”), and a secretariat (see Figure 2).

FIGURE 2

Finance

The financing of RBOs is another important institutional design feature that reflects the purpose of an RBO but in turn also influences its work and success. In order to govern their river basins and fulfil their assigned tasks, RBOs require financial resources. How RBOs are funded does, however, vary considerably. Generally, two types of funding can be distinguished: that provided by the institution’s member states; and that provided through external sources, most often through bilateral and multilateral donor agencies. Member-based funding is the most common funding source (see Figure 3). However, especially in the developing world, many RBOs depend heavily on external financial resources. In many cases, donor funding therefore complements member funding, with member contributions being symbolic rather than substantial. In the MRC, for instance, more than 90 per cent of the institution’s financial resources come from the international donor community; despite the increasing economic strength of member states, their financial contributions remain insignificant, amounting to less than US$ 2 million of the organisation’s overall budget of more than US$ 25 million.

FIGURE 3