Governing environmental change in international river basins: the role of river basin organizations

Abstract

Environmental change such as variability in water availability, extreme events like floods and droughts, or water pollution pose a serious challenge to the effective management of internationally shared water resources. River basin organizations (RBOs) play an important role in addressing such challenges, developing responses and building resilience. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ability of RBOs to respond to changes by identifying institutional mechanisms and management practices that have been established by the respective institutions to react to transformations in the basins’ environment. Drawing on the literature of neo-institutionalism and hydropolitics, an analytical framework is developed that includes the following potential determinants for adaptive capacity: membership structure, functional scope, decision-making mechanisms, data and information sharing, dispute-resolution mechanisms, finances and donor support. Subsequently, the framework is applied to two case studies, the Okavango and the Mekong Basin. It is found that the inclusion of adaptation mechanisms contributes to ensuring river basins’ resilience to environmental change while the lack of RBO-internal adaptation mechanisms can hamper resilience and threaten sustainable development. Among these, the membership structure, functional scope as well as data and information-sharing mechanisms are particularly important for building the basis for long-term resilience to change.