Beyond Resource Wars: Scarcity, Environmental Degradation, and International Cooperation

8. Conflict and Cooperation along International Rivers

The consequences for humanity are grave. Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict. —UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, Asia Pacific Water Summit, 20071 Predictions of water wars, such as the one above, continue to resonate today, largely in the popular media.2 On a whole, scholars have distanced themselves from extreme predictions of water wars, yet ultimately have found themselves hypothesizing similar violent scenarios (Homer-Dixon 1999; Klare 2001).3 While it is true that water disputes have taken a military turn on at least seventeen occasions during the period 1900–2001, the last all-out war over water took place forty-five hundred years ago—between the city-states of Lagash and Umma (Hensel, Mitchell, and Sowers 2006, 407; Wolf and Hamner 2000, 66).4 In comparison, thousands of water agreements have been concluded, with the oldest dating back to 3100 BC.5 Consequently, as Aaron Wolf and Jesse Hamner (2000, 66) have noted, “the more valuable lesson of international water is as a resource whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation, and incite violence only in the exception.”6 While violent conflicts over transboundary water may be rare, political disputes and conflicts of interest over shared freshwater are not (Gleditsch 1998, 387). In fact, international disputes over shared rivers— say, due to water allocation or pollution problems—take place on a global scale and are not limited to one region. The environment and security as well as hydropolitics literature has thus turned to explaining why disputes have taken place over these issues, and how cooperation has often succeeded or failed in these contexts.7 Among the basic variables often associated with analyzing conflict and cooperation over freshwater is scarcity. Broadly defining scarcity 8 Conflict and Cooperation along International Rivers: Scarcity, Bargaining Strategies, and Negotiation Shlomi Dinar 166 Shlomi Dinar to include issues other than the common topic of water quantity, this chapter first considers how scarcity may lead to conflict and, more important given the theme of this book, cooperation. The section suggests that the relationship between scarcity and cooperation actually follows an inverted U-shaped curve rather than a linear relationship as generally hypothesized. Clearly, other factors are critical for explaining conflict and cooperation over transboundary rivers, and the chapter explores some overarching variables including geographic discrepancies between the river riparians, power differentials among the parties, and the nature of domestic politics among the states. While several other intervening variables may help to explain cooperation along international rivers (i.e., third-party mediators), this chapter contends that since the asymmetries among river riparians (geographic, military/economic, etc.) may often impede cooperation, offsetting such asymmetries is crucial. To that extent, different bargaining strategies are argued to be at the core of understanding how cooperation along international rivers is facilitated. Various examples of interstate regimes in the form of international water treaties are provided.8 Scarcity, Conflict, and Cooperation According to Arun Elhance (1999, 3), “Hydro-politics is the systematic study of conflict and cooperation between states over water resources that transcend international borders.” Indeed, the international and transborder characteristics of shared water bodies make them a compelling case for the analysis of conflict and cooperation. River riparians are physically interdependent, because water bodies respect no political borders. The hydrology of an international river basin links all the riparian states, requiring them to share a complex network of environmental, economic, political, and security interdependencies. Therein lies the potential for interstate conflict as well as opportunities for cooperation (Elhance 1999, 13). While the concept of scarcity in the field of hydropolitics is regularly associated with water allocation or quantity, countries may suffer from other aspects of water-related scarcity including energy, flood protection (flow regulation), or pollution control, and therefore may be likewise inclined to dispute over or manage an international river for hydropower, flood control, or environmental sustainability purposes. Conflict and Cooperation along International Rivers 167 Scarcity and Conflict Per the conflict side of the hydropolitical coin, scholars have generally argued that in arid regions, where water allocation issues are most pressing , scarcity may be exemplified in the periodic shortages that a nation may experience, which in turn may be intensified by the conflicting uses to which its neighbors have put the river. Consequently, conflicts may easily arise when users (individuals or states) are competing for a limited resource to supply the domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors (Falkenmark...