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CONFLICT AND COOPERATION WITHIN INTERNATIONAL RIVER
BASINS: THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY
Aaron T. Wolf, Kerstin Stahl, and Marcia F. Macomber
Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
INTRODUCTION
There are 263 watersheds that cross the political
boundaries of two or more countries. These
international basins cover 45.3 percent of the land
surface of the earth, affect about 40 percent of the
world’s population, and account for approximately 60
percent of global river flow (Wolf et. al 1999). Recent
studies that focus on the conflict potential of
international water stress the dangers of violence over
water resources (see, for example, Gleick, 1993;
Homer-Dixon, 1994; Remans, 1995; and Samson and
Charrier, 1997), while others call attention to the
possibilities and historic evidence of cooperation
between co-riparians (see Libiszewski, 1995; Wolf,
1998; and Salman and de Chazournes, 1998). The
fortunate corollary of water as an inducement to
conflict is that water provides an incentive for hostile
co-riparians to cooperate, even as disputes are waged
over other issues.
Conflicts between riparian nations regarding economic
development, infrastructural capacity, or political
orientation complicate water resources development,
institutions, and management. As a result,
development, treaties, and institutions are regularly
seen as inefficient or ineffective, and, occasionally, as a
new source of tensions themselves. Despite the
tensions inherent in the international setting, riparians
have shown tremendous creativity in approaching
regional development, often through preventive
diplomacy, and the creation of positive-sum,
integrative allocations of joint gains. Just in the last 50
years, 157 treaties have been negotiated and signed,
marking the initiation of institutional agreements
between riparian nations to cooperate and to mitigate
future conflicts over their shared water sources.
Supporting and nurturing the development of both
existing and future international river basin institutions
will be a key ingredient to meeting the goals of human
security and sustainable development around the world.
This paper outlines the initial findings of a study
conducted by the Basins at Risk (BAR) team at Oregon
State University that quantitatively examines the
history of international water relations and the
geographical and political setting in which that
spectrum of interactions has evolved. With both
physical and social variables in one database, linked by
basin, hypotheses of indicators of conflict are explored,
suggesting the centrality of institutions in ameliorating
water disputes. On the climate side, analyses
demonstrate that historically, extreme events of conflict
were more frequent in marginal climates with highly
variable hydrologic conditions, while the riparians of
rivers with less extreme natural conditions have been
more moderate in their conflict/cooperation
relationship. These findings are then followed by
recommendations regarding the role that universities
can play to aid the international community and
riparian nations in building effective institutions to
manage shared water resources.
THE BASINS AT RISK PROJECT & THE
TRANSBOUNDARY FRESHWATER DISPUTE
DATABASE
1
Over the past nine years, a research group at the
Oregon State University Department of Geosciences, in
collaboration with the Northwest Alliance for
Computational Science and Engineering, has been
developing the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute
Database (TFDD)
2
to aid in the assessment of the
process of water conflict resolution. The TFDD is a
collection of searchable and linked international waters
databases (text and digital) including:
• An events database containing a comprehensive
news file of 1,831 reported cases of international
water related disputes and dispute resolution (1950-
2000);
• A treaties database containing over 400 water-related
treaties, along with the full text of each;
• An annotated bibliography of the state of the art of
water conflict resolution, including approximately
1,000 entries;
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• A collection of negotiating notes (primary or
secondary) from fourteen detailed case-studies of
water conflict resolution;
• Descriptions of indigenous/traditional methods of
water dispute resolution; and
• An international waters Geographic Information
System containing digital thematic maps of the
world’s 263 international watersheds including
climate type, population density, population living
with water stress, etc.
As critical data are collected within a unified format,
analysis that assesses both physical and social variables
within the same context becomes possible. The Basins
at Risk (BAR)
3
project is an ongoing and evolving
multi-investigator research initiative that draws from
the resources of TFDD, and that aims to systematically
assess the process of international water conflict
resolution, in order to:
1. Collect and analyze biophysical, socio-
economic, and geopolitical data in a Geographic
Information System, and use these factors to
determine historically based indicators for future
tensions within international basins;
2. Identify basins that are at risk of conflict for the
coming decade using indicators determined in
the initial investigation; and
3. Identify and assess the potential for mitigating
factors and new technologies that may allow for
a future different than that predicted by
historically based indicators.
Using the TFDD, Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano (2003)
attempted to identify the indicators of settings with a
high potential for water disputes. By examining the
biophysical, geopolitical, and socioeconomic setting of
each historical incident of water conflict and
cooperation, they assessed factors contributing to water
conflict. Then, based on the correlation of each event to
its setting, they made a preliminary identification of
international basins that are at the greatest risk for
conflicts of interest and, possibly, tensions in the near
future.
The working hypothesis of the study was as follows:
The likelihood and intensity of conflict rises as
the rate of change within the basin exceeds the
institutional capacity to absorb that change.
This points to two critical components of the dispute
setting – the rate of change in the system, and the
institutional capacity. Internationalization (the break-up
of a basin into more than one country) or large
development projects such as the building of a major
dam are examples of incidents that represent high rates
of change in a basin. The likelihood of dispute over
such changes rises with low institutional capacity – for
example, when there is no treaty or other regional
agreement, or when relations are tenuous over other
issues. It is hoped that with the results of this BAR
study, the appropriate international agencies might be
able to focus preventive diplomacy efforts in basins
that appear to be at risk of future conflict, so that
conflict might be averted.
SPECTRUM OF RELATIONS BETWEEN
COUNTRIES OVER WATER
4
Studies on the history of international water conflict
have taken a largely anecdotal approach. In order to
contribute a more systematic approach to the literature,
the BAR project attempted to compile a dataset of
every reported interaction between two or more
nations, whether conflictive or cooperative, which
involved water as a scarce and/or consumable resource
or as a quantity to be managed
5
from 1950-2000. In
order to evaluate the intensity of interactions, either
cooperative or conflictive, a scoring system
6
was
developed, which assigned BAR intensity values from
-7 (indicating the highest level of conflict, i.e. war) to
+7 (indicating the highest level of cooperation, i.e.
voluntary merging of countries) to each event. The
study documents a total of 1,831 interactions, both
conflictive and cooperative, between two or more
nations over water during those 50 years, and found
several interesting results.
First, the number of historical incidents of cooperation
over international water resources outnumbers those of
conflict in a greater than two to one ratio (Figure 1). Of
all 1,831 events delineated, 1,228 were found to be
cooperative, while only 507 were conflictive.
Additionally, the BAR study found that most events are
mild; 42.8 percent of events fell between mild verbal
support (+1) and mild verbal hostility (-1) on the BAR
scale. Only 37 cases of acute conflict, in which
violence takes place (-5 to -6 on BAR scale), were
identified, and these events were not recent or
widespread. In the same time period, 157 treaties were
negotiated and signed.
7
Second, water plays a role as both an irritant and a
unifier of riparian nations. Despite markedly little
violence over water resources, water can act to degrade
relations between countries. This has been seen in
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relations between India and Pakistan, Israel and Jordan,
and Canada and the United States. However, history
shows that disputes over water between riparians can
be resolved, even as conflict over other issues ensues.
The Mekong Committee has existed since 1957,
providing a flow of information regarding water
resources even throughout the Vietnam War.
Furthermore, even in areas where water has acted as an
irritant, unifying efforts have sustained through periods
of particularly difficult relations between countries.
Third, nations cooperate over a broad spectrum of
issues, as shown in Figure 2. Joint management, water
quantity, water quality, infrastructure, hydropower, and
economic development are all issues that have induced
cooperation in a significant number of events.
However, examination of conflictive events reveals
that 86% of all conflictive events have to do with only
two issues – water quantity or infrastructure. Moreover,
of the most extreme cases of conflict, those ranking -6
or -7 on the BAR scale, nearly 100% fall into one of
these two issue categories.
Institutions play a key role in preventing and mitigating
conflict. Changes within basins can lead to conflict if
institutions are not in place. To avoid the political
intricacies of shared water resources, for example, a
riparian, generally the regional power,
8
may implement
a project that impacts at least one of its neighbors. This
might be to continue to meet existing uses in the face
of decreasing relative water availability – as for
example Egypt's plans for a high dam on the Nile or
Indian diversions of the Ganges to protect the port of
Calcutta – or to meet new needs and associated policies
such as Turkey's GAP project on the Euphrates. When
projects such as these proceed without regional
collaboration, they can become a flashpoint,
heightening tensions and regional instability, and
requiring years or, more commonly, decades to resolve.
Evidence of how institutions can diffuse tensions is
seen in basins with large numbers of water
infrastructure projects. Co-riparian relations have
shown to be significantly more cooperative in basins
with treaties and high dam density than in similarly
developed basins without treaties. Thus, institutional
capacity together with shared interests and human
creativity seem to diffuse water's conflict-inducing
characteristics, suggesting that an important lesson of
international water is that as a resource it tends to
induce cooperation, and incite violence only in the
exception.
Figure 1. Number of events by BAR scale.
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Figure 2. Spectrum of issue types in events database.
INDICATORS OF CONFLICT
The BAR study (Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano, 2003;
Yoffe et al., forthcoming) found that most of the
parameters commonly identified as indicators of
conflict (i.e., climate, water stress, dependence on
hydropower, dams or development per se, or level of
development) are actually only weakly linked to
dispute. Instead, the study suggests that institutional
capacity within a basin, whether defined as water
management bodies or treaties, or generally positive
international relations are as important, if not more so,
than the physical aspects of a system. In accordance
with the working hypothesis of the study, it was found
that when the rate of change within a basin exceeds the
institutional capacity to absorb change, we are likely to
find tensions.
The most rapid changes institutionally are associated
with internationalized basins – basins whose
management institution was developed under a single
jurisdiction, but which was made obsolete as that
jurisdiction suddenly became divided among two or
more nations. The most rapid physical change is
typically the development of a large-scale dam or
diversion project, but in this case, too, the institutional
capacity makes a difference. In other words, high
levels of animosity and/or the absence of a
transboundary institution can exacerbate the setting,
while positive international relations and/or the
presence of transboundary institutions can mitigate the
negative effects of such projects.
By using the parameters of rapid change and
institutional capacity, the BAR study identified basins
that may be at risk for conflicts over water in the near
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future. Basins that are becoming internationalized or
have major planned development projects and/or do not
have an institution in place to handle such changes
were deemed at risk. These basins include the Ganges-
Brahmaputra, Han, Incomati, Kunene, Kura-Araks,
Lake Chad, La Plata, Lempa, Limpopo, Mekong, Ob
(Ertis), Okavango, Orange, Salween, Senegal, Tumen,
and Zambezi. It should be noted that “basins at risk” is
a fluid concept, with the actual basins changing
constantly. Many of the basins originally named in the
study currently have processes of conflict mitigation in
progress, reducing the “risk” substantially.
Nevertheless, these indicators allow us to monitor for
“red flags,” or markers that may suggest new basins at
risk as they arise, among them tenders for future
projects and nations with active nationalist movements.
Subsequent Research on the Role of Climate that
Highlights the Importance of Scale:
9
Ongoing research is being carried out to look more
closely at the role that climate might play in conflict
over international waters. The initial findings of the
BAR study found no significant difference between
most climate types and the likelihood of disputes.
However, the BAR analysis utilized the international
river basin as the primary spatial unit of analysis, and
conflict levels for the basins were defined by averaging
BAR intensity values of all events (cooperative or
conflictive) within the period of the study. Different
climatic regimes within the boundaries of basins and
temporal changes in water availability may play an
important role, which can only be identified in an
examination of the systems at a finer scale than that
utilized in the Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano (2003) study.
This subsequent research looks at the role of scale,
both temporal and spatial, in international water
relations, using climate as a variable.
As with BAR, the geographic unit defined in this
subsequent study is the basin-country-polygon (BCP).
The BCP is a portion of an individual country within
an international river basin that experiences a self-
similar climate. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) 0.5
degree monthly mean precipitation (New et al., 2000),
the Tateishi Potential Evapotranspiration and Water
Balance (Ahn & Tateishi, 1994) and at-station
discharge data from the Global Runoff Data Center
(GRDC) were used to derive four hydro-climatic
parameters including 1) aridity, 2) inter-annual
variability of precipitation, 3) inter-annual variability
of discharge, and 4) river type within each BCP.
Aridity indices (I) (mean annual precipitation divided
by the mean annual potential evapotranspiration)
described BCP conditions falling within one of three
classes – I<0.2 (arid), I<0.5 (semi-arid), 0.5<I<1.33
(sub-humid) and I>1.33 (humid).
New indices and the relative frequency distributions of
events (cooperative/conflictive) are being used to test
the following hypothesis:
The intensity of conflict or cooperation (indicated by
BAR scale values) for BCP’s characterized by
particular hydro-climatic conditions (classes of
aridity, inter-annual variability of precipitation, inter-
annual variability of discharge, and river type) is no
different from any randomly chosen subset of BCP’s
of the same size.
The test was carried out for the134 BCP’s that had five
and more political events of conflict and cooperation
(Figure 3).
Preliminary Results:
As shown in Figure 4, the average BAR intensity scale
per BCP shows no relationship between
conflict/cooperation level and hydro-climatic
conditions, confirming the BAR project results of
Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano (2003). A new approach,
which concentrates on the frequency of the political
events of a particular intensity (both positive and
negative), however, shows that there are differences
between the four aridity index subsets.
The observed relative frequency for a certain BAR
scale level is expressed as an exceedance probability
compared to the 10,000 random sample replications.
The graph shows that in arid, and even more
pronounced in semi-arid regions, the relative
frequencies of the most conflictive events are
significantly higher compared to what one can expect
from random samples, while they are low for neutral to
slightly cooperative events. In arid regions, however,
there is also a high probability for the most cooperative
events. In sub-humid and humid regions, the relative
frequencies of the most conflictive events are
comparatively low. The other three hydroclimatic
parameters show similar results.
These preliminary results suggest that extreme
conflicts, but also extreme cooperation, are relatively
frequent in regions with extreme conditions
characterized by high inter-annual hydrologic
variability. The high frequency of events on both sides
of the conflict-cooperation intensity scale, however,
makes the basin appear moderate when averaging the
scale of all events (as done in the BAR study described
earlier), thus concealing a more complex relationship
with geographic indicators.
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International Basins
Number of political events
per basin-country-polygon
1
2-4
>4
0
Figure 3. Number of reported political events in the basin-country-polygons.
If there is an extreme-extreme relationship between
hydroclimatic conditions and political events of
conflict and cooperation, it can also be expected to be
present in the context of the time of occurrence of
natural and political events. Figure 5 shows a
composite time series of hydroclimatic variables and
events of conflict and cooperation over the Senegal
River, which is shared by four countries. Droughts
and desertification have affected the Sahel region in
the past decades, and it is clearly an exceptional
example of political tensions following the climatic
trend. However, it illustrates the importance of the
time context. In several water-scarce regions, treaties
have been signed during a series of wet years or
before major development projects. When water
stress later rises during a series of dry years, tensions
between the riparians of a shared river become likely.
The analyses demonstrate that historically, extreme
events of conflict were more frequent in marginal
climates with highly variable hydrologic conditions,
while the riparians of rivers with less extreme natural
conditions have been more moderate in their
conflict/cooperation relationship. The climate is a
dynamic system with large fluctuations that under
current climate change scenarios are expected to
become even larger in many regions. The entire
causal relationship between hydroclimatology and
water-related political relations, however, is certainly
complex and strongly dependent on socio-economic
conditions and institutional capacity as well as the
timing and occurrence of changes and extremes in a
country and basin.
SUPPORTING INTERNATIONAL RIVER BASIN
INSTITUTIONS: THE UNIVERSITIES
PARTNERSHIP FOR TRANSBOUNDARY WATERS
Three characteristics of international waters – the fact
that conflict is invariably sub-acute, that tensions can be
averted when institutions are established early, and that
these institutions are tremendously resilient over time –
suggest that water dispute amelioration is as important,
more effective, and less costly, than conflict resolution.
The choice for the international community in regards to
international water conflict is one between a traditional
chronology of events, where unilateral development is
followed by a crisis and, possibly, a lengthy and
expensive process of conflict resolution on the one hand,
or, on the other, a process where riparians are
encouraged to get ahead of the crisis curve through
information sharing, preventive diplomacy, and
institutional capacity-building.
Water professionals are generally not trained to deal with
the nuances particular to international water institutions.
Water managers generally understand and advocate the
inherent powers of the concept of a watershed as a unit
of management, where the quality and quantity of
ground- and surface-water are inexorably connected.
However, the institutions that have developed to manage
the resource have historically followed these tenets only
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-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
Basin-Country-Polygon
humid
sub-humid
semi-arid
arid
Index of Aridity
Average BAR Intensity Scale 1948-90
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
m
o
s
t
c
o
n
f
li
c
t
i
v
e
c
o
n
f
l
ic
t
iv
e
n
e
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t
r
a
l
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e
r
a
t
i
v
e
m
o
s
t
c
o
o
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e
r
a
t
i
v
e
(
-
7
t
o
-
5
)
(
-
4
t
o
-
2
)
(
-
1
t
o
1
)
(
2
t
o
4
)
(
5
t
o
7
)
significant <-> non-significant <-> significant
Exceedannce Probability (%)
Relative frequency of political events in BCPs with the
following Index of Aridity:
arid (0.01-0.2) n=12 semi-arid (0.2-0.5) n=23
sub-humid (0.5-1.33) n=63 humid (>1.34) n=36
Figure 4. Relationship between hydro-climatic conditions and conflict-cooperation level of political events in the
basin-country polygons. a) Average BAR intensity versus index of aridity. b) Exceedance probability of observed
frequency for a certain conflict-cooperation level.
-7
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0
400
800
1200
-400
-200
0
200
400
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
0
200
400
no. in thousand
Source: OFDA/CRED Disaster Database
no. people affected by drought
no. people affected by flood
Treaty
Treaty
<-conflict coop->
Source: BAR project/TFDD
Event level on conflict-cooperation scale
discharge (m3/s)
Source: GRDC
Bakel (Lower Senegal where river = border Senegal-Mauritania)
Kayes (in Mali upstream of border to SEN&MRT)
Source: CRU
Guinea Mauritania
Mali Senegal
precipitation anomaly
(year in mm)
Figure 5. Time-series of events of conflict and cooperation, precipitation anomaly, annual mean discharge and the
occurrence of natural disasters in the Senegal River basin.
7 UCOWR
in the exception. One obstacle to integrated watershed
management is the persistence of disparate worldviews
and jargon among professionals, be they engineers,
agronomists, hydrologists, public health officials,
political scientists, or sociologists. Water professionals
are educated in separate colleges, and then employed
by separate agencies, despite their common medium;
people trained in either science or policy tend to treat
the frameworks of the “other” side as a “black box.”
Additionally, the need for supra-national appreciation
of political, social, and cultural aspects of water in
handling international water issues complicates their
management.
International waters management has many
stakeholders, including international development
banks, development agencies, the private sector,
government ministries, provinces, municipalities, civil
society, and the environment. Each has their own
appropriate role in contributing to the development of a
global water governance culture that incorporates
regional peace, environmental protection, and human
security. Throughout the course of developing the
Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database and
studying the indicators of conflict over international
water, our group looked closely at the potential role of
universities in contributing to this pursuit. Universities
and research agencies can best contribute by continuing
to provide the services they have always provided
including:
• Acquiring, analyzing, and coordinating primary data
necessary for empirical analysis of the social,
political, and biophysical settings of watersheds;
• Researching and publishing on issues at the forefront
of current needs in the field of international waters;
and
• Training tomorrow’s water managers.
In response to the identification of institutional
capacity as a key factor in inducing cooperation in
international water issues, the Universities Partnership
for Transboundary Waters was founded by Oregon
State University in May 2002 as an attempt to provide
these services in order to help existing and future
international water institutions get ahead of the conflict
curve. Each of the five continents represented in the
Partnership includes two universities, each with strong
existing water resources programs – one with a
technical focus and one with a policy orientation.
Participating institutions include the University of
Zimbabwe, the University of Pretoria, the Asian
Institute of Technology, Yunnan University, Linköping
University, the University of Dundee, Universidad
Nacional de Litoral de Argentina, Universidad
Nacional de Costa Rica, Oregon State University, and
the University of New Mexico.
The Partnership’s programs are designed to meet the
unique needs of international river basin stakeholders,
practitioners, and officials, by working with them to
develop appropriate and innovative “hydrodiplomatic”
resources. The Partnership’s programs are as follows:
Education &Training: Courses and curriculum that
explicitly integrate technical and policy skills are
presented in a problem solving, interactive format.
This program builds common dialogue among future
decision-makers from disparate fields, countries, and
cultures, supplementing their existing knowledge
with applied management skills embracing equity,
cooperation, sustainability, and consensus.
Outreach & Information Resources: Access to data
and effective decision-making tools have been
regularly named as critical to building trust,
communication, and a medium for negotiations, as
an international network. The Universities
Partnership can consolidate, coordinate, and make
compatible information helpful to both students,
researchers, negotiators and practitioners.
Coordinated Applied Research: Reality driven,
implementation-oriented collaborative studies are
conducted on trans-boundary water at multiple
scales, within a variety to cultural and environmental
settings.
The “partnership” concept inferred by the
establishment of the Universities Partnership for Trans-
boundary Waters extends beyond the confines of the
ten founding member universities. It includes the
network of transboundary waters professionals from all
sectors (academic, policy and practioner) within and
between each of the five geographic regions
represented – North and Latin America, Southern
Africa, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia. The goal
is to position these institutions in a way that they can
serve as an effective bridge between education, policy,
and practice. With practitioners providing a real-world
context to research, each of the programs emphasizes
multidirectional learning and development of
information sources and education for the next
generation of hydrodiplomats. The type of off-the-
record dialogue that can occur at universities is
bolstered by their institutional nature, not constrained
by project-to-project funding or scope. The
continuation of this partnership through time will
contribute to the growth of the institutional base that is
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necessary to 1) chart the development of new methods
and paradigms for formulating water agreements, 2)
develop technologies to aid in decision-making, and 3)
tackle issues of contention such as globalization and
climate change. This type of institutional base could
effectively change the theater of traditional
negotiations, but will only be useful to the needs of the
future if they can be made amenable to the needs of
their constituents.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A draft of this paper was presented to the annual
meeting of the International Studies Association,
Portland, Oregon, 25 February – 2 March 2003. The
authors are indebted to Kristin Anderson for her editing
expertise.
ENDNOTES
1
This section is drawn from (1) Wolf, A.T. (2002)
International Water Conflict and Cooperation: A
Survey of the Past; Reflections on the Future
prepared for the UNESCO/Green Cross International
program: From Potential Conflict to Cooperation
Potential: Water for Peace, in collaboration with the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and from (2) Wolf et al. (2003) International Waters:
Identifying Basins At Risk. Water Policy. 2003.
2
Online at: www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu.
3
See Yoffe (2002) for complete details of the
methodology and initial findings of BAR.
4
This section draws from Wolf, A.T. (2002)
International Water Conflict and Cooperation: A
Survey of the Past; Reflections on the Future
prepared for the UNESCO/Green Cross International
program: From Potential Conflict to Cooperation
Potential: Water for Peace, in collaboration with the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and from (2) Wolf et al. (2003) International Waters:
Identifying Basins At Risk. Water Policy. 2003. See
also Yoffe et al. (forthcoming) for more detailed
results.
5
Excluded are events where water is incidental to the
dispute, such as those concerning fishing rights,
access to ports, transportation, or river boundaries.
Also excluded are events where water is not the
driver, such as those where water is a tool, target, or
victim of armed conflict.
6
For more details of how the event data were
compiled, structured, and assessed, see Shira Yoffe
and Kelli Larson’s, “Basins at Risk: Event Data
Methodology and Findings,”
<www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu>.
7
The only “water war” between nations on record
occurred over 4,500 years ago, between the city-
states of Lagash and Umma in the Tigris-Euphrates
basin (Wolf 1998).
8
“Power” in regional hydropolitics can include
riparian position, with an upstream riparian having
more relative strength vis a vis the water resources
than its downstream riparian, in addition to the more-
conventional measures of military, political, and
economic strength. Nevertheless, when a project is
implemented that impacts one's neighbors, it is
generally undertaken by the regional power, as
defined by traditional terms, regardless of its
riparian position.
9
This section is drawn from research currently being
conducted by Kerstin Stahl at Oregon State
University.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Aaron T. Wolf is an associate professor of geography in
the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State
University. His research focus is on the interaction
between water science and water policy, particularly as
related to conflict prevention and resolution. He is
author of Hydropolitics Along the Jordan River: The
Impact of Scarce Water Resources on the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, (United Nations University Press, 1995), a co-
author of Core and Periphery: A Comprehensive
Approach to Middle Eastern Water, (Oxford University
Press, 1997), and editor of Conflict Prevention and
Resolution in Water Systems, (Cheltenham, UK: Elgar,
2002). Wolf coordinates the Transboundary Freshwater
Dispute Database, an electronic compendium of case
studies of water conflicts and conflict resolution,
international treaties, national compacts, and
indigenous methods of water dispute resolution
(www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu), and is a co-
director of the Universities Partnership on
Transboundary Waters.
Kerstin Stahl is a postdoctoral research fellow (German
Research Foundation, DFG) at the Department of
Geosciences at Oregon State University. Her research
focuses on the influence of hydrologic conditions and
hydroclimatic variability on water-related political
conflict and cooperation in international river basins.
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She has also worked on different aspects of hydrologic
drought and has a PhD in Hydrology from the
University of Freiburg in Germany.
New, M. G., M. Hulme, and P.D. Jones, 2000.
Representing Twentieth-Century Space-Time Climate
Variability. Part II: Development of 1901-1996
Monthly Grids of Terrestrial Surface Climate, Journal
of Climate, 13: 2217-2238.
Marcia Fraser Macomber is the Director of Program
Development for the Universities Partnership for
Transboundary Waters. She served as an International
Development Associate with the University of
Michigan Population, Environmental Change, and
Security (PECS) Initiative, and worked on international
transboundary environmental issues with the U.S.
Embassy’s Regional Environmental Hub in Amman,
Jordan as well as in Tijuana, Mexico on a 2001
binational workshop entitled The Future of the U.S.
Mexico Border: Population, Development and Water.
She holds a B.S. in Biology from San Francisco State
University, San Francisco, California and a MS in
Resource Geography with a minor in Fisheries Science
from Oregon State University.
Remans, W., 1995. Water and War, Humantäres
Völkerrecht, 8(1).
Salman, S.M.A. and L. B. de Chazournes, eds. 1998.
International Watercourses: Enhancing Cooperation
and Managing Conflict. The World Bank, Washington,
D.C. (Technical Paper No. 414).
Samson, P. and B. Charrier, 1997. International
Freshwater Conflict: Issues and Prevention Strategies.
Green Cross Report.
Wolf, A., 1998. Conflict and Cooperation Along
International Waterways, Water Policy, 1(2): 251-265.
REFERENCES
Wolf, A., J. Natharius, J. Danielson, B. Ward, and J.
Pender, 1999. International River Basins of the World,
International Journal of Water Resources
Development, 15(4) 387-427.
Ahn, C.H. and R. Tateishi, 1994. Development of a
Global 30-Minute Grid Potential Evapotranspiration
Data Set, Journal of the Japan Soc. Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing, 33(2): 12-21.
Wolf, A., S. Yoffe, and M. Giordano, 2003.
International Waters: Identifying Basins at Risk, Water
Policy, 5: 31-62.
Amery, Hussein, 2002. Water Wars in the Middle East:
A Looming Threat, The Geographical Journal, 168(4):
313-323.
Yoffe, Shira, 2002. Basins at Risk: Conflict and
Cooperation over International Freshwater Resources.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Oregon State
University.
Gleick, P.H., 1993. Water and Conflict: Fresh Water
Resources and International Security, International
Security, 18(1): 79-112.
Yoffe, S., A. Wolf, and M. Giordano, forthcoming,
Conflict and Cooperation Over International
Freshwater Resources: Indicators of Basins at Risk,
Journal of the American Water Resources Association.
Homer-Dixon, T., 1994. Environmental Scarcities and
Violent Conflict, International Security.
Libiszewski, S., 1995. Water Disputes in the Jordan
Basin Region and their Role in the Resolution of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict. Zurich: Center for Security
Studies and Conflict Research, Occasional Paper 13.
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