Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Freshwater flowing above and below ground crosses international boundaries and becomes a resource shared between States. Cooperation between riparians neighbours facilitates the management of such resources and treaties provide the legal foundation for it. However, uncertainty is challenging traditional water resources management approaches and their legal frameworks. Being premised on stability and predictability can these frameworks adequately address uncertainty around transboundary waters? Water resources management has dealt with water variability for millennia. Today, in a complex international environment, it is subject to mounting uncertainty due to disrupted hydrological patterns and extreme weather events caused by climate change, an incomplete understanding of complex water systems as well as unpredictable stakeholder interactions. This uncertainty is threatening water security and consequently food, energy and environmental security. It is, therefore, crucial that the legal instruments underpinning riparian interactions are designed to deal with this vital issue. The research aim is to the ascertain the international legal background relevant to uncertainty in shared freshwater systems and develop an analytical approach to riparian treaty content and design to address those uncertainties. To this effect, different kinds of uncertainties relevant to shared waters are reviewed and characterized. Water cooperation, current and future water challenges and the management, present and future, of water resources are also investigated to contextualize the issues. The manner in which international law and international environmental and water law currently deal with uncertainty is also assessed. Further, relevant features and lessons are drawn from reviewing existing water treaties and approaches devised to address uncertainty in other disciplines to support the analytical approach being developed. In conclusion, the study endeavours to draw lessons from the approach developed to analyse water treaties and suggest improvements to the existing state of affairs in relation to the management and legal matters of shared water resources.
Author: Shubber, Z
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7057332634