International Watershed Management

Conventions and Treaties

The Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes encourages riparian parties to enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements based on, for example, water quality and quantity-monitoring data exchanges. This convention is based on The Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers, published by the International Law Association in 1966, which embraces the theory of equitable utilization and by which each riparian state in an international basin is entitled to a “reasonable and equitable share” of the watercourse and commits to not cause “substantial injury” to coriparian states. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, adopted in 1997, added to the equitable and reasonable utilization of waters clauses, such as protection of the aquatic environment and promotion of cooperative management mechanisms, and made further provisions on data and information exchange and mechanisms for conflict resolution. However, the treaty most invoked internationally for watershed protection and management is the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (officially called The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance), which took effect on December 21, 1975, with presently 158 signatories, and addresses the protection of wetland habitats.

Establishing Effective International Watershed Management

Effective international watershed management requires comprehensive and multidisciplinary approaches and a flexible and integrative framework for addressing the biophysical, socioeconomic, and governance issues affecting water resources and their equitable distribution and use. There are several stages in the planning and management process for watersheds. Throughout the process, care must be taken that basic hydro-diplomacy principles are considered and that continued stakeholder consultation and public participation are ensured. The first step in the management process is establishing plan parameters and objectives, followed by identification of watershed components and processes (also known as a watershed physical inventory), which can be more or less detailed depending on the context. Once the basic basin characteristics and management objectives are set, the stakeholder consultation process to develop practical management options and alternatives can begin. Crucial steps in the development of a management strategy include determination of the legal and policy implications that pertain to all nations participating in the consultation process and a detailed assessment of the environmental, socioeconomic, and political impacts of the plan. While theoretically the steps leading to the top-down implementation of a viable watershed management plan are straightforward, in practice there are several limitations. These include lack of data; reduced accessibility in parts of the basin; inadequate funding; bureaucratic and administrative hurdles dictated by the different political situations of stakeholders; low levels of public awareness, information, and involvement; competing interests; and the relative lack of an international regulatory body or set of water laws pertaining to transboundary watershed management.

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