International Agreements on Transboundary Freshwater Resources

Abstract

A particular challenge facing international water law is the diversity of the geographic, climatic, hydrological, and socio-economic conditions along shared watercourses. International water law must accommodate these and provide rules for effective transboundary watercourse cooperation. This chapter shows how treaties approach this challenge at three mutually influential levels: global, regional, and basin-specific. Notably, the 1997 United Nations Watercourses Convention is the only international treaty that was negotiated at the global level on the uses of transboundary watercourses, establishing abstract rules adaptable to particular situations for any watercourse. This chapter presents the Convention’s main provisions and highlights the Nile riparian states’ interventions during its negotiation. Regional agreements can promote the development and harmonization of watercourse agreements within a region, but ultimately watercourse-specific agreements are indispensable for concretizing the principles of international water law and any existing regional water agreements for a particular watercourse. As shown here, the impact of the United Nations Watercourses Convention on treaty practice concerning individual watercourses is noteworthy. The establishment of joint river commissions to manage shared watercourses under such treaties has proven to be exceedingly beneficial.