Rivers, lakes, and aquifers ignore borders and politics, binding countries, people, and ecosystems together. This shared reality has long required cooperation, even among states divided by tensions or conflict. Through technical dialogue, data sharing, and joint institutions, countries have often quietly managed floods, negotiated infrastructure, and protected water quality.

Our research and engagement in transboundary water cooperation have shown that cooperation is a lever for peace and a path for a more sustainable and equitable future. Rooted in necessity rather than ideology, a dense governance network of more than 800 treaties, 120 basin organizations, and 110 less formal institutional structures has emerged and generated multiple benefits, ranging from flood protection to food security, for people, ecosystems, and countries.

Today, that cooperation is under severe threat. As states, international organizations, and civil society gather in Dakar for the High-Level Preparatory Meeting for the 2026 UN Water Conference to discuss key themes – among them “water for cooperation” – international cooperation over water might seem very much alive at the global discursive stage. A closer look, however, suggests that water cooperation is in critical condition and in urgent need of resuscitation.

As climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and other pressures make water scarcer, variable, and contested, the foundations of water cooperation are eroding. The result is a triple water crisis in which intensifying biophysical and social-ecological risks collide with ill-equipped cooperation mechanisms and a geopolitical context that discourages collective solutions, with consequences for human well-being, ecosystems, regional stability and peace.

The process towards the 2026 UN Water Conference presents an opportunity to mobilize that effort, if everyone is willing to step forward and act.

Water availability is under threat

Biophysical and social-ecological threats to water resources are on the rise. Climate change is making water availability increasingly unpredictable while demand is rising, not least from new economic activities such as data centers supporting the expansion of AI and quantum computing. These pressures affect not only local water supplies but also national economic and geostrategic priorities. For instance, many of the world’s large cities facing high water stress are located in transboundary basins, including Delhi, Tehran, and Kampala, and thus depend on neighboring states.

As water scarcity deepens, the inability to meet growing demand heightens risks of economic disruption, social grievance, and political instability within and across borders. Together, these dynamics undermine sustainable development, with water-specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets now projected to be missed well beyond 2030, if achieved at all.

Declining institutions and the weakening of water law 

The second point of our triple crisis is the decline of the very institutional cooperation needed to respond to these threats. While there is increasing interest from some states to accede to the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the 1992 Water Convention—broad global instruments that establish the foundational legal principles for managing shared transboundary water—the actual compliance with and implementation of specific water law principles are limited and increasingly challenged in specific basins. Countries are blatantly ignoring specific principles, including the principle of no significant harm and the obligation to exchange data and information, or they are reinterpreting specific principles to serve unilateral interests over collective ones. The Mekong River Basin is a case in point, with some countries reinterpreting the 1995 Mekong Agreement so as to exclude (dis-)tributaries from key principles and obligations to pursue their own national interests.

The tensions that emerge from these types of disagreements have, in the past, been addressed through institutions operating at the basin level. In the Indus River Basin, for instance, the Indus Waters Treaty has historically balanced India’s and Pakistan’s water use and infrastructure development interests based on jointly agreed upon legal principles and governance mechanisms. Yet, the Indus Basin Commission has not met in several years, and the treaty is currently being held in abeyance by India.

Similar trends can be seen globally. Our research shows that over the last few years, there has been a slowdown in the adoption of international water treaties and the establishment of basin organizations. Since 2010, only 51 treaties and five basin organizations have been established, far below the levels seen in the 1990s and 2000s, when water cooperation was at an all-time high. This slowdown persists despite the fact that more than one-third of basins remain without any, or minimal, legal and institutional arrangements.

Where institutions are present, they are often insufficiently maintained and under-supported. Basin organizations such as the Niger Basin Authority, the Commission Internationale du Congo-Oubangui-Sangha or the Autorité du Bassin du Lac Kivu et du Ruzizi have suffered from member states not living up to financial commitments they made when establishing these organizations, leaving them with no financial and accordingly no institutional, technical, or human capacity to fulfil their role and deliver the benefits from transboundary water cooperation.

These patterns are not isolated to institutions in lower- and middle-income countries. European basin organizations, which for a long time were well-endowed with resources to fulfill their mandates, are increasingly facing budgetary constraints as member states prioritize other topics in their national budget allocations. While institutional capacity ebbs and flows over time, the frequency and timing of this crisis of institutionalized water cooperation are increasingly problematic.

Rising unilateralism and the hollowing out of water cooperation

Today, short-term national interests are increasingly trumping long-term collective ones, trust between states is eroding, and international institutions are being questioned, weakened, or sidelined. Multilateralism – and its very foundation, the idea that shared problems require shared solutions – is in decline. The weakening of commitments from within cooperative arrangements to adapt or survive is a common response, and one that could further hollow out the rules-based international order.

These developments coincide with a growing set of challenges that require action beyond the reach of individual nation-states, including global pandemics, technological disruptions, cross-border food price shocks, and economic decline within an intricately interconnected global system. Together, this forms a polycrisis, a set of interconnected crises that compound and amplify each other. Water is at the heart of this polycrisis – and water cooperation might well be one of its first casualties.

Unilateral interests and behavior are spilling over into the water sector, with countries pursuing short-term national strategies that undermine long-term water cooperation, even at the expense of effective existing institutions. The US’s decision to suspend negotiations on the Columbia River Treaty with Canada showcases this.  And in the Niger River Basin, countries have dropped earlier commitments to jointly develop their shared resources through their basin organizations and have instead advanced unilateral infrastructure projects without regard to international and basin-specific principles, obligations, and processes, undermining their joint institution.

Rising tensions on non-water issues are also drawing shared waters into conflicts between states. India’s use of the Indus Waters Treaty in its conflict with Pakistan over issues pertaining to territories and terrorism is but one prominent example.

The decline in water cooperation is a concern for all 

Current debates, including those at the Dakar meetings, recognize at least parts of these three crises individually, but rarely as an interconnected system. This failure to grapple with their interconnected nature obscures the scale and urgency of the challenge, as well as the compounding effects of this triple water crisis.

The decline of water cooperation is not solely a technical water management issue nor a diplomatic concern. It is a direct risk to human security, economic stability, ecosystem health, and peace. The danger is not that water is likely to cause conflict – the danger is that we are dismantling the very systems that have prevented conflicts for decades, and that we are foregoing the benefits of cooperation that unilateral governance of water resources cannot attain. Without these benefits, inequalities in access, availability, and quality will increase, creating a vicious cycle that further undermines support for cooperation and makes recovery increasingly difficult.

Increasing unilateral action has significant and highly inequitable impacts. Communities may lose access to reliable water supplies, leading to grievances and instabilities that fuel tensions and strengthen illicit groups. Limited water supplies leads to increased food insecurity, with social repercussions that reach far beyond the water sector, as bread riots in many countries have shown in the past. Moreover, these challenges can cross governance levels, with seemingly local water crises frequently affecting relations between states, thereby increasing security risks. A striking, but not isolated, example is how the domestic water crisis in Iran not only contributed to local unrest but also impacted Iran’s water-related relations with its upstream riparian neighbor, Afghanistan.

The absence of cooperation over shared waters thus carries high costs and missed opportunities. Achieving the SDGs and advancing sustainable development in a peaceful world will require many tools—but water cooperation stands out as a proven, practical pathway for managing a resource essential to all life.

The future of water cooperation 

The future of water cooperation will not, and should not, look like the past, and a fundamental reform of existing governance mechanisms and institutions is urgently needed. Yet as challenges multiply, including unprecedented and emerging ones such as water demands from data centers, new pollutants, and antimicrobial resistance carried by rivers, the need for cooperation is growing at precisely the moment it is most fragile.  

The good news is, we can build a future of effective water cooperation – if we act now. Cooperation is a strategic choice, not a technical or diplomatic luxury. In an uncertain world, initiating or maintaining negotiation processes and strengthening institutions can reduce shocks, create predictability, and build trust. At the Dakar High-Level Preparatory Meeting in the run-up to the 2026 UN Water Conference, water cooperation is thus at a crossroads.

Reviving and strengthening water cooperation will require political will and the courage to prioritize dialogue over dominance and long-term stability over short-term gain. Such choices are unlikely unless decision-makers—particularly those outside the water sector—understand both the benefits of cooperation and the costs of its absence. Yet environmental risks, many of them driven by water, are receiving diminishing attention at the global level. This year’s Global Risks Report, for instance, ranks environmental risks well below hard security threats and economic crises, crowding out more complex, longer-term challenges. If decision-makers discount the benefits of water cooperation and instead treat water as a zero-sum resource in an increasingly unilateral and competitive world order, the risks extend far beyond water itself.