Integration in the management of international waters: Economic perspectives on a global policy discourse

Global Governance

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 455-477

  Dombrowsky, Ines ^a,b  

^a HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH UFZ   (Germany)

^b WORLD BANK   (United States)

Author keywords

Coase theorem; Integrated water resources management; Integration; International river basins

Indexed keywords

EID: 58649094680     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01404005     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Aaron T. Wolf, Jeffrey A. Natharius, Jeffrey J. Danielson, Brian S. Ward, and Jan K. Pender, "International River Basins of the World," International Journal of Water Resources Development 15, no. 4 (1999): 387-427;
2. UNEP, Atlas of International Freshwater Agreements (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2002).
3. Frank Marty, The Management of International Rivers: Problems, Politics and Institutions (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001).
4. John Waterbury, "Between Unilateralism and Comprehensive Accords: Modest Steps Toward Cooperation in International River Basins," International Journal of Water Resources Development 13. no. 3 (1997): 279-289.
5. Jesse Hamner and Aaron T. Wolf, "Patterns in International Water Resource Treaties: The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database," Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, 1997 Yearbook (Boulder: Colorado Law, 1998).
6. Ken Conca, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006);
7. Ken Conca, Fengshi Wu, and Ciqi Mei, "Global Regime Formation or Complex Institution Building? The Principled Content of International River Agreements," International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 263-285.
8. Ludwik A. Teclaff, "Evolution of the River Basin Concept in National and International Water Law," Natural Resources Journal 36 (1996: 359-392.
9. For an overview of a range of forms and functions of existing river basin organizations and commissions, see Stephen McCaffrey, "International Watercourses," in René-Jean Dupuy, ed., Manuel sur les organisations internationales/A Handbook on International Organizations (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998): 725-751.
10. ICWE, International Conference on Water and the Environment: Development Issues for the 21st Century, Dublin, 26-31 January 1992, Conference Report (Geneva: World Meteological Organization, 1992).
11. UNCED, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992, Agenda 21 (New York: United Nations, 1992), available at www.sidsnet.org/docshare/other/ Agenda21-UNCED.pdf (accessed 23 August 2005).
12. WWC, Second World Water Forum and Ministerial Conference, The Hague, 17-22 March 2000, Final Report (Marseilles: World Water Council, 2000), available at www.worldwaterforum.net/Ministerial/declaration.html (accessed 11 September 2002).
13. German Federal Government, International Conference on Freshwater, Bonn, 3-7 December 2001, Ministerial Declaration, The Bonn Keys, Recommendations for Action (Bonn: Lemmens Verlags & Mediengesellschaft mbH, 2001).
14. UN, Report on the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Johannesburg, South Africa, 26 August-4 September 2002, UN Doc. A/CONF. 199/20 (New York: United Nations, 2002).
15. WWC, Ministerial Declaration: Message from the Lake Biwa and Yodo River Basin, March 23, 2003 (Marseilles: World Water Council, 2003), www.mlit.go .jp/tochimizushigen/mizsei/wwf3/mc/md-final.pdf (accessed 28 November 2006).
16. WWC, 4th World Water Forum Ministerial Declaration, Mexico City, March 22, 2006 (Marseilles: World Water Council, 2006), available at www.worldwater forum4.org.mx/files/Ministerial-Declaration.pdf (accessed 17 May 2006).
17. See, for instance, World Bank, Water Resources Management. A World Bank Policy Paper (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993);
18. and World Bank, Water Resources Sector Strategy: Strategic Directions for World Bank Engagement (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004).
19. The World Water Council is a nonprofit nongovernmental umbrella organization established in 1996. Together with a host country it organizes the World Water Forum every three years; see www.worldwatercouncil.org/about.shtml (accessed 29 August 2005).
20. The Global Water Partnership (GWP), established by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Swedish International Development Agency in 1996, seeks to support countries in the sustainable management of water resources; see www.gwpforum.org/ (accessed 29 August 2005).
21. See Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Joyeeta Gupta, and Daniel Petry in this issue.
22. See, for instance, Volkmar Hartje, "International Dimensions of Integrated Water Management," in Ismail Al Baz, Volkmar Hartje, and Waltina Scheumann, eds., Co-operation on Transboundary Rivers (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002), pp. 7-34.
23. See, for instance, Walter Huppert, "Was ist IWRM?-Plädoyer für ein differenziertes Verständnis des Konzepts Integriertes Wasserressourcen-Management," in Susanne Neubert et al., eds., Integriertes Wasserressourcen-Management (IWRM): Ein Konzept in die Praxis überführen (Nomos: Baden-Baden, 2005), pp. 61-82; or Conca "Governing Water." Conca also shows how IWRM has remained a subject of contestation over time.
24. GWP, Integrated Water Resources Management, GWP Technical Advisory Committee Background Papers No. 4 (Stockholm: Global Water Partnership, 2000), p. 22.
25. Oran R. Young, The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).
26. See, for instance, Ludwik A. Teclaff, The River Basin in History and Law (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1967);
27. and Allen V. Kneese and Blair T. Bower, Managing Water Quality: Economics, Technology, Institutions (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press and Resources for the Future, 1968).
28. See, for instance, Malcolm Newson, Land, Water and Development: River Basin Systems and Their Sustainable Management (London: Routledge, 1992);
29. Peter Rogers, "International River Basins: Pervasive Unidirectional Externalities," in Partha Dasgupta, Karl-Göran Mäler, and Alessandro Vercelli, eds., The Economics of Transnational Commons (Oxford: Carendon Press, 1997), pp. 35-76;
30. Stephen McCaffrey, The Law of International Watercourses: Non-navigational Uses (Oxfprd: Oxford University Press, 2001);
31. and Claudia W. Sadoff, Dale Whittington, and David Grey, Africa's International Rivers. An Economic Perspective (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002).
32. Rogers, "International River Basins," p. 45; emphasis in original.
33. See, for instance, GWP, Integrated Water Resources Management;
34. and World Bank, Water Resources Sector Strategy.
35. Ismail Serageldin et al., "A Report of the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century," Water International 25, no. 2 (2000): 290.
36. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
37. For further details, see Ines Dombrowsky, Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management - An Economic Analysis (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007), chap. 1.
38. See http://ocid.nacse.org/cgi-bin/qml/tfdd/treaties.qml (accessed 1 April 2004). The database excludes treaties concerning navigation, fishing rights, and borders unless water as a resource is also mentioned. A count on 1 April 2004 revealed 506 treaties, including general agreements and regional conventions.
39. For further details, see Dombrowsky, Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management, annex 2.
40. The year 1980 was chosen as a start year in order to see whether the year 1992 marked a change in trend.
41. Overall these findings on membership are generally in line with those of Conca et al., who analyzed the participation ratio of forty-nine international river agreements (not organizations) established between 1980 and 2000. See Conca, Wu, and Mei, "Global Regime Formation or Complex Institution Building?"
42. See Lars Wirkus and Volker Böge, Afrikas internationale Flüsse und Seen. Stand und Erfahrungen im grenzüberschreitenden Wassermanagement in Afrika an ausgewählten Beispielen, Discussion Paper 7/2005 (Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, 2005);
43. and Anthony R. Turton, A Critical Assessment of the Basins at Risk in the Southern African Hydrological Complex, CSIR Report ENV-PCONF 2005-001, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), 2005.
44. Greg Browder and Leonard Ortolano, "The Evolution of an International Water Resources Management Regime in the Mekong River Basin," Natural Resources Journal 40, no. 3 (2000): 499-531.
45. The eighteen different issues include those used in the TFDD database and others that were added during the review of the treaties, as deemed appropriate.
46. Teclaff, "Evolution of the River Basin Concept in National and International Water Law."
47. Authors who have theorized the formation of international water regimes include David G. LeMarquand, International Rivers. The Politics of Cooperation (Vancouver: Westwater Research Center, University of British Columbia, 1977);
48. Thomas Bernauer, "Managing International Rivers," in Oran R. Young, ed.. Global Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 155-195;
49. Frank Marty, The Management of The Management of International Rivers: Problems, Politics and Institutions (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001);
50. and Stefan Lindemann, Water Regime Formation in Europe: A Research Framework with Lessons from the Rhine and Elbe River Basins, FU-rep 04-2006 (Berlin: Forschungsstelle für Umweltpolitik, Freie Universität Berlin, 2006).
51. Foreign policy itself is, of course, the outcome of complex domestic policy processes; see Robert D. Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games," International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427-460.
52. Furthermore, in some basins, such as the Rhine basin, private actors also became involved in international water negotiations; see Rainer Durth, Grenzüberschreitende Umweltprobleme und regionale Integration: Zur Politischen Ökonomie von Oberlauf-Unterlauf-Problemen an internationalen Flüssen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996). This notwithstanding, the analysis in this article also indicates that there appears to be a considerable difference between the mobius-web style of governance at the global level (see Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Joyeeta Gupta, and Daniel Petry in this issue) and a rather state-centered regional governance style at the level of international river basins.
53. Ronald Coase, "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1960): 1-44.
54. See McCaffrey, The Law of International Watercourses.
55. Coase, "The Problem of Social Cost," p. 15.
56. Scott Barrett, "Building Property Rights for Transboundary Resources," in Susan S. Hanna, Carl Folke, and Karl-Göran Maler, eds., Rights to Nature: Cultural, Economic, Political, and Economic Principles of Institutions for the Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), pp. 265-284.
57. See, for instance, Karl-Göran Maler, "International Environmental Problems," Oxford Review of Economic Policy 6, no. 1 (1990): 80-107.
58. Scott Barrett, Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 280f.
59. For an initial attempt, see Barrett, "Building Property Rights for Transboundary Resources."
60. For further details, see Dombrowsky, Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management, chap. 6.
61. See, for instance, Oliver E. Williamson, "Comparative Economic Organization: The Analysis of Discrete Structural Alternatives," Administrative Science Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1991): 269-296;
62. and Oliver E. Williamson, "Public and Private Bureaucracies: A Transaction Cost Economics Perspective," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15, no. 1 (1999): 306-342.
63. Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man (New York: John Wiley, 1957).
64. Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985).
65. For further details, see Dombrowsky, Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management, chap. 7.
66. Ines Dombrowsky, "Integriertes Wasserressourcen-Management als Koordinationsproblems," in Susanne Neubert et al., pp. 61-82.