Subnational Hydropolitics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Institution-Building in Shared River Basins. By Moore, Scott M. 2018. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract

For a long time, the literature on water politics has focused on the possibility of water wars between countries. Scott Moore calls attention to the fact that no such major war has yet happened, and that most international conflicts over water have been resolved diplomatically, thanks to several international organizations that have facilitated formal cooperation agreements between countries. Curiously, despite the work of these organizations, conflicts over water persist, most of them within national borders. These subnational water conflicts are not only common but often entrenched and hard to solve. Subnational jurisdictions find numerous ways to secure their own interests and often find it hard to build cooperative agreements with their own central governments and other water-sharing neighbors. The book investigates core features of these subnational water conflicts, and the author underlines three variables that explain why some conflicts are harder to solve than others: decentralization, sectional identity, and political opportunity structure.According to Moore, the more decentralized a country’s political system, the more likely are conflicts over water. Sectional identity refers to the grievances that exist between different social groups (urban vs rural, racial divides, religious cleavages, etc.), and Moore argues that the stronger the grievances, the more likely water conflicts are to persist over time. Another factor that matters is how easy it is for civil society groups to enter and participate in political processes. If the political opportunity structure is open, nongovernmental organizations can join negotiations, and their participation leads to more cooperative agreements. If the political opportunity structure is closed, civil society participation is limited and conflicts over water become more entrenched. To better understand how these variables operate in the dynamics of water conflict, Moore presents case studies analyzing water management institutions in the United States, India, China, and France.The case of the Colorado River basin in the United States is an iconic example of interstate water conflict, most of it fueled by sectional identity politics (farmers vs. urban users, upstream vs. downstream users, etc.) These conflicts started to ameliorate after Native American groups began to take advantage of the open political opportunity structure and campaigned for more holistic water management practices. Moore compares these conflicts with more cooperative US institutions, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Delaware River Basin Commission. He concludes that political actors in these cases have succeed in establishing robust institutions due to the commitment and continued participation of third parties.The Krishna River basin in India is also characterized by interstate conflict over water. Indian states are divided along ethnolinguistic borders, which fosters even more conflictual sectional identity cleavages between upstream and downstream users. India’s political opportunity structure is rather closed, making it hard for third parties to build cooperative efforts among states involved. In the short term, a successful case of cooperation occurred in the Damodar Valley, where the central government initially played a role fostering the creation of a collaborative water management institution, but this initiative eventually withered due to the lack of civil society participation, indicating that the political opportunity structure there is rather closed.An internal contradiction in the book is the connection Moore tries to draw between conflict outcomes and the extent of centralized political systems. He argues that decentralization leads to more conflicts. But most of the case studies presented do not support this claim. The cases in the United States and India (federal countries with decentralized political systems) feature both conflict and cooperation over water resources, which are explained by a mixture of sectional identity and political opportunity structure. These cases show that decentralization can feature both cooperative and conflictual outcomes. Moore argues that “without a significant degree of decentralization, there is little incentive or ability for subnational leaders to engage in water conflict” (6). But he later shows that local leaders in highly centralized political systems such as in China still have incentives to pursue their own interests and to disobey central orders: “Local officials frequently warp or ignore central policy directives, while neighboring subnational jurisdictions engage in competition for water and disputes over the construction of water infrastructure” (158). He argues that a centralized system such as China’s is still highly conflictual. The only case that supports his argument is France, which involves a centralized system with cooperative outcomes. He argues that conflictual and/or cooperative outcomes in all cases across these four countries can be explained by a combination of sectional identity and political opportunity structure. This explanation is convincing, but the connection with the extent of political system centralization seems weak.The book nonetheless makes important contributions to the field of environmental governance. It debunks the idea that conflict is caused by geographical or physical characteristics such as up- or downstream positions, water scarcity, pollution, and flooding, arguing instead that “these physical factors represent simply a set of initial conditions” (206). Water conflicts are driven by a combination of ideational factors and political institutions, an insight that certainly deserves further consideration by scholars in the field.