The Southern African Hydropolitical Complex

Abstract

The literature on international river basin management has recently undergone an upsurge in high quality empirical research, with a number of distinct schools emerging. Examples of this include the outputs of the team working on the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) under Aaron Wolf at Oregon State University; the research into global water regimes by Ken Conca and his team at Maryland University; the group working at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) under the capable leadership of Nils Petter Gleditsch; and the efforts by Peter Ashton and his team working at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the African Water Issues Research Unit (AWIRU) in South Africa. This chapter will focus on specific outputs of these four efforts by using the Southern African Hydropolitical Complex (SAHPC) as a case study example. The first output is the finding by Wolf et al. (2003:29) that 17 international river basins are at risk, 8 of which are in Africa. The second is the conclusion by Conca and his team that there are some doubts on the emergence of an international regime for the management of transboundary river basins that is based on a converging set of core normative elements, via a global-framework or a basin-cumulative path (Conca and Wu 2002; Conca et al. 2003; Conca 2006:106). The third is the finding by Gleditsch et al. (2005) that where endemic water scarcity occurs in a shared river basin, there are substantial long-term incentives for the investment in water management measures to avoid conflictual outcomes.