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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Climate Change Will Test Water-Sharing Agreements

    July 15, 2014 By Thomas Curran
    red-deer-river

    Many existing water-sharing treaties should be re-assessed in the context of climate change, write Shlomi Dinar, David Katz, Lucia De Stefano, and Brian Blakespoor in a World Bank working paper.

    While “water wars” have historically been incredibly rare, the changes to water systems wrought by climate change may change things. “Environmental changes may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions that are not equipped with an appropriate institutional apparatus,” the authors say.

    “Once variability increases beyond a certain threshold, cooperative behavior is negatively affected”

    The working paper analyzes water bodies that cross state borders and the treaties that govern them. Contrary to popular belief, Dinar et al. find that cooperation between states increases as water variability rises, but only to a point. Widespread changes in rainfall amount and predictability may cause increased water stress and/or flooding that affect core national interests and force states to take defensive postures over who controls their water sources. “Once variability increases beyond a certain threshold, cooperative behavior is negatively affected,” write the authors.

    Well-defined, yet flexible treaties and strong institutional mechanisms are needed to decrease the likelihood of conflict as societies adjust.

    Strong But Flexible Treaties Make a Difference

    The authors cite the Jordan, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus rivers as examples of volatile trans-national waterways. Changes in flow for these rivers will severely test already unstable borders and relationships, they warn. “Whether in the form of heightened political tensions or the more extreme violent exchange, the projected increase in water variability may further complicate existing shared water management strategies.”

    Building on existing research, the authors suggest that the presence of strong, clear, and flexible mechanisms for water allocation will impact the capacity of treaties to deal with major changes. Allocative mechanisms, which govern water distribution, particularly benefit from direct, flexible stipulations. “Allocative mechanisms that are either too vague or too rigid do not bode well for sustained cooperation,” they write.

    Specific, direct mechanisms “ensure credibility and action,” they say. “Treaties that codify side-payments and issue linkage, direct enforcement measures, and adaptability to water variability provisos may be of particular importance for achieving higher levels of cooperation.”

    Due to their scale and unpredictability, climate-induced changes to transboundary water bodies have the potential to test governments in ways that previous changes have not. Yet, treaties can diminish that threat, Dinar et al. conclude, so long as they include proven techniques for conflict mitigation.

    Thomas Curran is a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point and an intern with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.

    Sources: World Bank.

    Photo Credit: Red Deer River, Alberta, courtesy of flickr user Adrian Studer. 

    Topics: adaptation, Asia, climate change, conflict, cooperation, environment, environmental peacemaking, environmental security, featured, flooding, foreign policy, India, international environmental governance, Middle East, mitigation, natural resources, Pakistan, security, South Asia, water, World Bank
    • Cullen Hendrix

      Very nice post, and thanks for alerting us to the article. In a piece just accepted for publication in Political Geography, Colleen Devlin of the Desert Development Center at the American University, Cairo and I come to a somewhat different conclusion: Given freshwater is crucial to sustaining life and forecasted to decline in relative abundance
      under most climate change scenarios, there is concern changing precipitation patterns will be a cause of future interstate conflict. In theorizing the impact of climate change for interstate conflict, we distinguish between trends (long-term means) that may affect the baseline probability of conflict, and triggers (short-term deviations) that may affect the probability of conflict in the short run. We jointly model the effects of mean precipitation scarcity and variability (trends) and year-to-year changes in precipitation (triggers) on militarized interstate disputes between states. We find higher long-run variability in precipitation and lower mean levels of precipitation in dyads are associated with the outbreak of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Contra neo-Malthusian expectations, however, we find joint precipitation scarcity – defined as both countries experiencing below mean rainfall in the same year – has a conflict-dampening effect. These findings push the literature in a direction that more closely aligns our modeling of human impacts with our understanding of the physical impacts of climate change.

      I can email you the paper if you think you would find it interesting.

      • https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/ Schuyler Null

        Please do Cullen, thanks!

      • Kimbowa Richard

        Cullen, thanks for the view. I would also request you to share with me your paper: kimbowa.richard@gmail.com Thanks!

    • Cullen Hendrix

      Here’s the quick and dirty version of the argument referenced below in policy brief form, courtesy of the Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) policy brief series: http://bit.ly/1mIuEdW.

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