Transboundary Water

762 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Water management strategies essay

According to the United Nations, there are 276 international rivers shared by two or more countries and 200 identified transboundary aquifers (UNESCO, 2013). Transboundary river basins cover 50% of Earth’s surface (excluding Antarctica) and channels 60% of global streamflow (Biswas, 1999). Some 40% of the world’s population live within transboundary lake and river basins and two billion people depend on over 300 transboundary aquifer systems (Du and Zhong, 2011).
8.1 TRANSBOUNDARY WATERS AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE
Worldwide, countries have found more cost-effective to exploit water sources within their jurisdiction than to invest on water management strategies. The only remaining sources of water that can now be developed are mostly transboundary in nature (Biswas, 1999; Black and King, 2009).
Countries manage their shared watercourses considering their own national priorities, commonly overlooking water needs up, or downstream (Kreamer, 2012; Zeitoun, 2013). As this tendency grows, pressure over management enhancement and institutional governance at national and international level challenges the state accountability to cope with contemporary transboundary issues and future threats (Suhardiman and Giordano, 2012; Tarlock, 2000). Even though the role of state actors as the key players in international water affairs is not questionable, it is agreed that their role has been insufficient to understand actual challenges of transboundary water management. There is recognition of participation of non-state networks, institutional soft power alliances on decision-making processes and the existence of the scalar relationships and interactions between regional, national, sub-national and local influences (Sanchez and Kaiser, 2011; Zeitoun...

... middle of paper ...

...limate change as one of the challenges for transboundary water management, the actual international legal framework (bilateral and multilateral agreements) will also be adversely affected. Generally, transboundary agreements have not been designed to cope with increased climate variability, as they are often restricted by rigid definitions of water allocation rather than percentages. The certainty of climate variability results in an increased pressure over alternative governance structures, potentially diminishing the legitimacy of weak international agreements (Suhardiman and Giordano, 2012). The declaration of the United Nations in 2013 as the International Year of Cooperation, which foster states and other non-state actors to promote actions to achieve cooperation in water related goals, aims the international need for new transboundary governance assessments.

Show More
Related

  • Maude Barlow's Water Incorporated

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maude Barlow’s “Water Incorporated: The Commodification of the World’s Water” gives a voice to a very real but vastly unknown issue: the privatization of water. I refer to it as vastly unknown because it wasn’t until this article that I was even aware such a power struggle existed. Barlow first introduces startling statistics, meant to grab the attention of its reader. Once she has your attention, she introduces the “new generation of trade and investment agreements.” (306) This includes referencing many different acronyms such as, FTAA, NAFTA, GTAA and WWF. FTAA, NAFTA, and GTAA are the villains of this story. Simply put, the privatization of water would end in socioeconomic turmoil and dehydration worldwide.

    Read More

  • Why Diverting Water From the Great Lakes Region is a Bad Idea

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    Water is the foundational basis of life on Earth. Ecosystems, society and humans are completely dependent on it, and as the world population continues to grow, there will be more mouths to feed, and those people will need water to continue their daily lives. However, shortages and poor management leads to the destruction of natural habitats and human suffering. Desertification of land in China is ever-increasing, turning green, lush land into desert. However, this is due mainly in part, because of human activity, and global warming (Wang, Yang, Dong, & Zhang, 2009). The United States could experience a crisis similarly to China’s, but for now they have averted such a catastrophe, because of heavy regulation of water. Though there are water shortages in many parts of the world, it is unwise to export water from the Great Lakes to those regions. Two major reasons why diverting the Great Lakes is a terrible idea, one: it allows for waters wars to start on the basis of who is allowed to access it and for commodification purposes. Two, diverting water on such large scales could have cataclysmic effects on the local residents as well as the environment.

    Read More

  • Developing Countries and Clean Water

    2664 Words  | 6 Pages

    Introduction on Water It covers 70% of our planet, makes up 75% of our body, it is necessary for survival and it is declining at a rapid rate (http://www.sscwd.org). It is water. Unfortunately, clean water is rare, almost 1 billion people in developing countries do not have access to water everyday. “Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles” (The Water Project). Use of earth’s natural resources should be seen as prosperity, although it is taken for granted, every aspect of daily life revolves around the environment, forcing water conservation to be necessary for future on this planet.

    Read More

  • Texas-Mexico Water Treaty

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    Water… A resource that is vital to a person’s everyday life. Water is what our farmers use to grow their crops, water is what the energy industry uses to extract oil and gas from the earth, water is what we consumers drink and depend on everyday. Without water, we could not live and function. In fact, water is so important that 70 years ago Texas and Mexico signed a treaty, in 1944, to ensure that both Texas and Mexico would always share water in the Rio Grande River. For decades this treaty has benefitted both Texas and Mexico, however, recently tensions have risen between the two powers. The Texas Mexico Water Treaty has become a point of contention, and steps have been taken to resolve the issues.

    Read More

  • Blue Gold: World Water Wars

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the documentary, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, it follows several people and countries world-wide in their fight for fresh water. The film exposes giant corporations as they bully poorer developing countries to privatize their own supply of fresh water. As a result of the privatization, corporations make a hefty profit while the developing countries remain poor. Blue Gold: World Water Wars also highlights the fact that Wall Street investors are going after the desalination process and mass water export schemes. This documentary also shows how people in more developed nations are treating the water with much disregard, and not taking care of our finite supply. We are polluting, damming, and simply wasting our restricted supply of fresh water at an alarming speed. The movie also recognizes that our quick overdevelopment of housing and agriculture puts a large strain on our water supply and it results in desertification throughout the entire earth. The film shows how people in more industrialized nations typically take water for granted, while others in less industrialized nations have to fight for every drop.

    Read More

  • Dbq Essay On Rising Sea Level

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sea level has risen 3.4 mm per a year due to climate change. This can have devastating effects on humans, plants and animals and their habitats. Climate change has become a colossal problem considering it can leave countless humans standard or starving and in need of assistance. It has also caused distrust or rifts between countries over who caused it and whose responsibility it is to pay for the damages it has caused. The economy of places on earth will be suspected to plummet as a result of rising sea levels and temperatures provoking animals to relocate and countries to lose their major exports or suffer from the increase in prices for their imported goods. The U.N. believes that this is a problem that is in need of a solution. The world

    Read More

  • The Water Shortage in Mexico

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    In our generation of new technologies and high civilization it is hard to believe that our World is in Water crisis. This crisis is affecting not only low-developed parts of the world but also it affects high-developed countries, about one third of the humanity suffers from the scarcity of water (Molden 2010). One of the main causes of it is overpopulation. In increasing water demand water sources which we have now are not able to renew themselves. Another factor of water scarcity is not economized water consumption. Nowadays most of countries are beginning to realize that solving the problem of scarcity of water is very crucial. One of them is Mexico where water shortage is the national problem.

    Read More

  • Water Issues in South Asia

    13430 Words  | 27 Pages

    This, however, does not mean that India is solely responsible for certain deadlocks, even though its share of responsibility may be larger than other countries which have their own physical limitations and political apprehensions. As elsewhere in the world, and more particularly in the subcontinent where population explosion continues and environmental degradation worsens, water resources, like energy, are going to be much lower than the increasing demand, even if they are harnessed to the most optimum. Given the depleting resources of water, the issues of human security, and water security as its most crucial part, are going to assume astronomical proportions. The issues of water distribution and management are bringing not only countries of the region, but also states and regions within provinces into conflict since they are not being settled amicably within a grand framework of riparian statutes respecting upstream and downstream rights. What is, however, quite appreciable is that the countries of the subcontinent have made certain remarkable efforts to resolve their differences over water distribution through bilateral agreements.

    Read More

  • Importance Of Clean Water Essay

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    People don’t appreciated the many advantages that comes with having clean potable water to use, taking it for granted. A lot of clean useful water is wasted by humans all the time that people don’t care about saving water because they have easy access to it. Clean and safe drinkable water resources are getting scarce as the population grows. The world is facing many problems, but the most important needed to survive, is water. Water is getting low in many countries, therefore habitants are suffering the misfortune of not having the reliable source of clean water. Today many countries are having water shortages; meaning rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater are not enough to rely on for supplying water demands. For example, California is facing a drastic water shortage, the natural water resources are not enough to fulfill their water demands. Water shortage affects the agricultural sector, so as a consequence the price for production

    Read More

  • Global Environmental Regime

    1901 Words  | 4 Pages

    Conca, K., & Dabelko, G. D. (2010). Institutions of Global Environmental Governance. In K. Conca, & G. D. Dabelko, Green Planet Blues (pp. 117-124). Boulder: Westview Press

    Read More

  • The Global Water Crisis

    2639 Words  | 6 Pages

    Freshwater in the world makes up only a small portion of the water on the planet. While the percentage of water in the world is nearly 70%, only 2.5% is consumable. Even further, only 1% is easily accessible to basic human needs. According to National Geographic, “by 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.” With this current trend, water will become more immersed in environmental, economic, political, and social changes.

    Read More

  • The Water Crisis and Solutions

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Protecting Our Natural Resource- Water

    2372 Words  | 5 Pages

    Water is the most priceless resource on our planet. Billions of gallons flow through our rivers and lakes. Millions of gallons are consumed by humans each day. Our world’s surface is seventy percent water. With so much water around us, how can 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water (Cooper, Water Shortages)? People are already using fifty four percent of all the freshwater available on this planet (Cooper, Water Shortages). We cannot afford to neglect something so essential to our very survival. We must defend our most important natural resource—water.

    Read More

  • Commission on Global Governance

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the Commission on Global Governance (1995), global governance refers to “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is the continuing process through which conflict or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken”. Some main actors involved in the process of global governance include states, international organizations (IOs), regional organizations (ROs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Global governance implements in various issue areas including security, economic deelopment, environmental protection and so on. Different states and organizations have different or even conflicting interests. Yet as globalisation continues and the world becomes more inter-connected than ever before, global governance or cooperation among different actors is increasingly taking a more significant role in the international stage. Some critics view global governance quite negatively as they believe that the current system lacks efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper, however, I shall argue that global governance is carried out more effectively in maintenance of world security and promotion of economic development while less effectively in environmental protection and preservation. Thus, despite limitations of the existing mechanism, global governance is still largely a postive development in world affairs.

    Read More

  • The Problem of Water Scarcity

    1538 Words  | 4 Pages

    The problem of water scarcity has increasingly spread throughout the world as of yet, The UN reports that within the next half- century up to 7 billion people in 60 countries which is more than the whole present population will face water scarcity (Sawin “Water Scarcity could Overwhelm the Next Generation”). As well the demand for freshwater has tripled over the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development. 70% of this demand derives from agriculture which shows the influence of water on food supply globally as well not just drinking water (Sawin “Water Scarcity could overwhelm the Next Generation”). But increasing water use is not just a matter of the greater number of people needing it to drink and eat; it also comes from pollution and misuse of water supplies, by either dumping or runoff of bacteria or chemicals into water. This also “causes other pollutions as well such as soil and air pollution, accelerating wetland damage and human caused global warming” (Smith and Thomassey 25). According to UN report, recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity in coming decades.

    Read More

More about Transboundary Water

Open Document