Transboundary Water Security: Reviewing the Importance of National Regulatory and Accountability Capacities in International Transboundary River Basins

Abstract

While the use of the term ‘water security’ is diffuse across disciplines and contexts (Cook and Bakker, 2012), it is increasingly acknowledged that water security cannot be examined from the water sector alone (WEF, 2011; Zeitoun, 2011). Water issues are tied with problems of food production and land development, increasing global population and, importantly, lifestyle changes that place demands on water resources through consumption of both food and energy. Climate change also has implications on water availability and use with mitigation and adaptation measures reviewing practices within the water sector. In addition, the broad notion of water security is deeply associated with concepts such as poverty reduction, sustainable development, and human security. As represented by the Millennium Development Goals, global agendas have long emphasized the crucial link between water and poverty (Mount and Bielak, 2011). The Ministerial Declaration of the 2nd World Water Forum in 2000 emphasized that water security contributes to sustainable development. Water security has been defined in the context of conflict prevention, based on geopolitical concerns over water availability and its implications to human security (GTZ, 2010). Water use and management through agricultural, climate, and energy policies and practices operate at local, national, international, and global scales. These policies and practices are also influenced by global and international agendas on development and geopolitics. This general description of water security provides some broad contours of the relationship between sectors and scales, and between related concepts.