International River Basins Research Articles

Towards Design Principles for Good Multi-Level Drought Risk Governance: Some Lessons from the Rhine Basin

In times of climate change, periods of drought will occur more frequently. This causes challenges for water use, ranging from limitations on the navigability of water courses, limited availability of water for irrigation and drinking water supply, reduced hydropower production, increasing concentrations of pollutants, deteriorating water quality, and ecosystem degradation. Dealing with droughts, however, is a complex puzzle due to the multi-level governance characteristics of international river basins and the need to meet the freshwater demands of all sectors involved. This increases the need to address drought issues in a coordinated way, along all levels of decision making. Thus far, the way this must be executed has been under-researched. This paper addresses this knowledge gap as it aims to provide design principles for good multi-level drought risk governance in international river basins. In order to meet our aim, we first reviewed literature on multi-level and good governance and established an assessment framework. This framework was applied in a case study on drought risk governance in the international Rhine basin. Policy documents were analyzed and key informants interviewed. We found that although the governance practice in the basin meets most of our framework criteria, differences between the international level, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland also occurred. We have synthesized our findings into a list of 10 design principles for good multi-level drought risk governance, which could function as a starting point for the analysis and improvement of other multi-level drought risk governance practices.

Inclusive governance of hydropower on shared rivers? Toward an international legal geography of the Lower Mekong basin

Hydropower is now the largest source of renewable energy worldwide. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that current hydropower capacity will need to double by 2050 in order to transition to net zero and to arrest the rise of global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Much of the currently built and planned dams are on rivers shared between two or more countries. This raises the risk of increased inter-state conflicts. However, to exploit hydropower peacefully, the impact on local communities must also be considered. This foregrounds the need to build inclusive institutions that can mediate the different interests, norms, and values held by communities located across different scales. The article examines the role of international river basin organizations to manage this legal pluralism in shared river basins. In many basins globally, such as the Lower Mekong, the Columbia, the Zambezi, or the Senegal, international river basin organizations are tasked with the development of shared water resources. To understand to what extent river basin organizations can mediate the legal pluralism in a shared basin, the article develops an international legal geography approach to the governance of transboundary waters in an attempt to uncover marginalization and disempowerment in the process of law-making. It therefore expands the analytical scope of legal geography to the study of transnational spaces, in this case complex ecosystems for which there are no fixed jurisdictional boundaries. It then applies this approach to the case study of the Lower Mekong basin. Findings indicate that the Mekong River Commission, despite attempts to include project-affected people in decision-making, largely operates within a Westphalian framework of sovereignty to the detriment of more inclusive forms of governance. Project affected communities are largely unable to exert influence and are relegated to participation in alternative forums. These forums, or counter publics as Yong called them, are disconnected from official processes. While they give rise to marginalized voices and enable the creation of inclusive and participatory spaces, the exclusionary official decision-making processes continue to produce significant tension and conflict potential as hydropower is championed globally as a clean, climate friendly form of energy. As hydropower is set to double by 2050, inclusive participatory institutions in basins worldwide must be built to navigate complex stakeholder interests and to benefit those who are otherwise likely to lose out in net zero transitions. These findings are relevant for other shared basins, particularly across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America where hydropower is booming. An international approach to legal geography can foreground these hidden and marginalized voices and help identify ways to build inclusive institutions for the governance of shared resources.

Water, Culture and International Institutions

This article focuses on the integration of different values of water, ranging from intrinsic to emotional, in international treaties and transboundary organizations. After introducing the “four worlds of water” (Wolf 2017), we discuss the increased recognition of locally based cultural and spiritual values of water in global conventions, international freshwater treaties and regional river basin organizations. Global conventions generally use more technical and broad formulations and international treaties tend to focus on small geographic areas and the need to protect water, and environmental resources associated with water, while the cultural impacts of water management decisions on local communities are most apparent at the governance level of regional organizations.

Bridging gaps in groundwater management in International River Basin Districts (IRBDs) – through harmonized monitoring and data sharing

Study regionEurope, with focus on Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Finland, Poland, and Ukraine. Study focusThe Water Framework Directive (WFD) aims to obtain harmonised holistic Europe-wide water management based on an integrated river basin management model. This study analyses the efficiency of national groundwater monitoring programmes in meeting cross-border demands for harmonised data in IRBDs. Emphasis is placed on the core parameters, oxygen content, pH, conductivity, nitrate, and ammonium, specified by the WFD to be monitored in surveillance monitoring programmes. The findings offer recommendations for national water authorities on infirmities in groundwater management and how they could improve data transparency and availability for enhanced long-term management of shared resources. New hydrological insights for the regionA questionnaire distributed to nine European countries indicates large national differences in the extent of groundwater monitoring. This study highlights several key recommendations for moving forward with transborder groundwater management. Firstly, it is imperative that all nations adhere to ISO standards for field practices and analysis. Secondly, transborder collaborative projects to harmonise e.g., design of monitoring programmes, sampling, and analysis and cooperation on data analysis must be established. Lastly, there is a need to enhance the accessibility of groundwater data and associated metadata. The achievement of the WFD objectives encounters obstacles, due to weak transborder integration and the effects related to administrative boundaries.

Streamlining Pesticide Regulation Across International River Basins for Effective Transboundary Environmental Management.

Pesticide standard values (PSVs) are critical for environmental management, environmental quality control, and remediation. Some countries or regions share river basins; however, their pesticide regulations are inconsistent, which could create a barrier to transboundary environmental management. To address this issue, we propose PSV scores for neighboring countries in order to promote pesticide regulatory harmonization within international river basins. Representative pesticides were selected to define PSV scores, including chemicals that are currently and historically widely used. Countries or regions from five international river basins were chosen for analysis: the Amazon, Mekong-Lancang, Rhine-Meuse, Danube, and Great Lakes. PSV scores were calculated for each of four environmental compartments: soil, surface freshwater, groundwater, and drinking water. The results revealed that current regulatory agencies lack PSVs of current used pesticides for surface freshwater. With the exception of the member states of the European Union and the Great Lakes states of the United States, the majority of basin countries or regions lack uniform pesticide regulations in environmental compartments to facilitate transboundary environmental management. In addition, PSVs have not been established for a large number of pesticides currently used in agriculture, which could lead to water contamination by pesticides used in upstream environmental compartments (e.g., croplands). Also, current PSVs do not align across environmental compartments, which could cause inter-environmental contamination by pesticides used in upstream compartments. In light of the fact that current river basins lack uniform pesticide regulations, the following recommendations are provided to promote transboundary environmental management: (1) river basin regions should collaborate on pesticide regulation establishment, (2) pesticide regulations should be aligned across environmental compartments, (3) current-use pesticides should receive more attention, and (4) quantitative approaches should be proposed for linking PSVs across environmental compartments. This study provides a regulatory tool to identify possible gaps in transboundary environmental management and improve the pesticide regulatory policies. It is expected to establish cooperation organizations to enhance regulatory communications and collaborations for transboundary environmental pesticide management.

Representation of Hydrological Components under a Changing Climate—A Case Study of the Uruguay River Basin Using the New Version of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool Model (SWAT+)

SWAT+ is a revised version of the SWAT model that has the capability to route flow across landscape units in the catchment, which is expected to improve the spatial representation of processes in watersheds. We applied the SWAT+ model in the Uruguay River Basin, an international river basin in South America with a total surface area of 370,000 km2, in order to (1) assess the water balance components, (2) represent their spatial distribution, and (3) examine their changes over time. The catchment was divided into uplands and floodplains and a decision table rule was developed based on streamflow data. The SPOTPY Python library was linked to SWAT+ and used as a tool to perform sensitivity analyses and calibration. The model represented the fluctuations of discharge well, although there was a general tendency to underestimate peak flows. Blue (precipitation and runoff) and green (evapotranspiration and soil water content) hydrological components were spatially plotted. Overall, SWAT+ simulated a realistic spatial distribution of the water cycle components. A seasonal Mann–Kendall test suggests a positive increasing trend in the average temperature (p-value = 0.007; Sen’s slope = 0.09), the soil water content (p-value = 0.02; Sen’s slope = 1.29), and evapotranspiration (p-value: 0.03; Sen’s slope = 1.97), indicating that the ecosystem experienced a changing climate during the simulation period. The findings presented in this study are of significant value for the impacts of sustainable management and the evaluation of climate change on water resources in the Uruguay River Basin.

Learning from hydrological models’ challenges: A case study from the Nelson basin model intercomparison project

Intercomparison studies play an important, but limited role in understanding the usefulness and limitations of currently available hydrological models. Comparison studies are often limited to well-behaved hydrological regimes, where rainfall-runoff processes dominate the hydrological response. These efforts have not covered western Canada due to the difficulty in simulating that region’s complex cold region hydrology with varying spatiotemporal contributing areas. This intercomparison study is the first of a series of studies under the intercomparison project of the international and interprovincial transboundary Nelson-Churchill River Basin (NCRB) in North America (Nelson-MIP), which encompasses different ecozones with major areas of the non-contributing Prairie potholes, forests, glaciers, mountains, and permafrost. The performance of eight hydrological and land surface models is compared at different unregulated watersheds within the NCRB. This is done to assess the models’ streamflow performance and overall fidelity without and with calibration, to capture the underlying physics of the region and to better understand why models struggle to accurately simulate its hydrology. Results show that some of the participating models have difficulties in simulating streamflow and/or internal hydrological variables (e.g., evapotranspiration) over Prairie watersheds but most models performed well elsewhere. This stems from model structural deficiencies, despite the various models being well calibrated to observed streamflow. Some model structural changes are identified for the participating models for future improvement. The outcomes of this study offer guidance for practitioners for the accurate prediction of NCRB streamflow, and for increasing confidence in future projections of water resources supply and management.

Utilizing the strategic concession behavior in a bargaining game for optimal allocation of water in a transboundary river basin during water bankruptcy

In basins that lie across multiple administrative boundaries, for instance in international river basins like the Nile, water tends to be contested especially during times of scarcity. Riparian countries sharing a transboundary river basin may emphasize the multi-dimensionality of their water demands to obtain access to a greater portion of the available shared water. As a result, the frequency and intensity of water conflicts may increase, hindering the sustainable development of riparian countries and threatening the security and stability of the whole region. Therefore, designing a fair, reasonable, and adaptive allocation scheme is of paramount importance to ensure the integrity of livelihoods and ecosystem health. This paper analyzed the general features of transboundary river basins and built an allocation mechanism combining Bankruptcy Theory with Bargaining and Concession games. A Bankruptcy-Concession-Bargaining Game Model (BCBGM) was constructed to ensure multi-agent participation, multi-stage negotiation, and optimal allocation. Considering the different water demand preferences and linked satisfaction functions, the framework yielded an optimal solution by making concessions on the water claims of riparian countries. As a case study, the proposed model was applied to allocate the limited water resources of the Euphrates-Tigris River. To further measure the stability of model allocation results, a model was built to evaluate the stability of water allocation. The results show that the stability of the allocation output from the proposed allocation framework was relatively high compared to those obtained from classical allocation rules, such as Proportion, Adjusted Proportion, Constrained Equal Loss, and Constrained Equal Award. The model's results satisfied the Pareto efficiency, individual rationality, and maximized group utility. Therefore, for the most part, the allocation outputs of the proposed scheme were generally self-enforceable and sustainable.

The crises water security upwards of Iraqi after 2003: an attempt to determine handicaps wizards future prospects

The water crisis in Iraqi is considered as one of the most important issues that affect the national security. Thus, the water factor has become one of the main factors that threaten good neighborly relations and regional cooperation among riparian countries in the international river basins. The increasing role of the water security factor in the contemporary international politics can be attributed to a set of concerns such as the phenomenon of drought, food security, population explosion and increasing demand for water for domestic, agricultural, industrial and other purposes

Correction to: Conflict and cooperation in Aras International River Basin: status, trend, and future

Correction to: Conflict and cooperation in Aras International River Basin: status, trend, and future

Machine Learning for Water Quality Assessment Based on Macrophyte Presence

The ecological state of the Danube River, as the world’s most international river basin, will always be the focus of scientists in the field of ecology and environmental engineering. The concentration of orthophosphate anions in the river is one of the main indicators of the ecological state, i.e., water quality and level of eutrophication. The sedentary nature and ability to survive in river sections, combined with the presence of high levels of orthophosphate anions, make macrophytes an appropriate biological parameter for in situ prediction of in-river monitoring processes. However, a preliminary literature review identified a lack of comprehensive analysis that can enable the prediction of the ecological state of rivers using biological parameters as the input to machine learning (ML) techniques. This work focuses on comparing eight state-of-the-art ML classification models developed for this task. The data were collected at 68 sampling sites on both river sides. The predictive models use macrophyte presence scores as input variables, and classes of the ecological state of the Danube River based on orthophosphate anions, converted into a binary scale, as outputs. The results of the predictive model comparisons show that support vector machines and tree-based models provided the best prediction capabilities. They are also a low-cost and sustainable solution to assess the ecological state of the rivers.

Perception changes and the attribution of the impact of Lancang-Mekong hydropower dams in the media of riparian countries from 1971 to 2020

Study regionThe Lancang-Mekong River Basin, which flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Study focusMultilateral cooperation in the sustainable development of international river basins has been considerably hindered by insufficient recognition of the attitudes and concerns about water resource exploitation held by politicians and the public in riparian countries. This study used media reporting from 1971 to 2020 to combine sentiment analysis, dynamic topic mining, and statistical analysis to quantitatively examine the dynamics and drivers of attitudes towards Lancang-Mekong hydropower development. New hydrological insights for the regionReporting in affected countries underwent five stages: positive support but low actual participation in hydropower development (1971–1991), increasing concerns and active participation by most countries (1992–1994), an emerging negative attitude in downstream countries (1995–2008), spreading opposition by downstream countries (2009–2015), and the coexistence of cooperation and conflict (2016–2020). Media reports from upstream countries (i.e., China and Laos) were positive regarding hydropower development; downstream countries opposed hydropower and prioritized the negative impacts of dam construction. International shifts in attitude were dominated by vulnerabilities to extreme weather and affected by major geopolitical events, including local wars, interference from extraterritorial forces, and established regional alliances. This knowledge will strengthen international water use cooperation in light of global climate change and complex geopolitics.

Global Wetland Governance: Introducing the Transboundary Wetlands Database

The water governance discourse focuses on the use of water from rivers—and increasingly lakes and aquifers—for a variety of human uses, often in a competing manner. Largely missing from this discourse are wetlands. Despite an increased understanding of the benefits of wetlands, global wetland area continues to decrease. Particularly in international river basins, upstream water withdrawals are having negative impacts on wetlands, and the communities that rely on them downstream. Following the framework of transboundary water cooperation, the joint management of transboundary wetlands in the context of integrated basin management may prevent conflict and lead to further collaboration. As a first step to understand how wetlands may fit into water cooperation, this research employs spatial analysis and document analysis to identify transboundary wetlands and possible institutions to manage them, providing a basis for analyzing conflict and cooperation dynamics in them. The products of this research are a database and map of 300 transboundary wetlands, including the river basins (and, when applicable, the River Basin Organizations) they fall within.

Groundwater governance in international river basins – An analysis of the Norwegian-Swedish transborder area

Study regionScandinavia, Norway and Sweden. Study focusTransborder cooperation and knowledge of transboundary aquifers (TBAs) has evolved through an inventory under the convention on the protection and use of transboundary watercourses and international lakes (Water Convention) from 1992. Within EU countries, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) from 2000 intends to contribute to achieve the objectives of the Water Convention. This study analyses the national groundwater management systems in Norway and Sweden and their implementation of the WFD. Emphasis has been placed on international river basin districts (IRBD) and transborder cooperation. The findings offer recommendations for authorities and policy-makers on how they could improve the long-term management and ensuring transparent decision-making of transboundary groundwater management. New hydrological insights for the regionIn Norway and Sweden, TBAs play a minor role in supplying freshwater resources and sustaining socio-economic development in transborder areas. The analysis shows that surface water overrules ‘the invisible’ groundwater. This study highlights several factors that need to be addressed. First, the Norwegian national water management systems are fragmented and over-complex, which complicates national and transnational cooperation. Second, Swedish legislation must be revised to meet the requirements of the WFD regarding IRBD delineation. Finally, transborder dialogue and joint projects on groundwater mapping are necessary for mobilising resources and the necessary political support to obtain knowledge on TBAs.

STUDIES ON THE QUALITY OF THE DANUBE IN GIURGIU AREA

The Danube river basin collects water from 19 continental European countries, covering an area of 801,463 km2 (according to ICPDR), and making it the most international river basin in the world. Giurgiu Environmental Protection Agency monitors water quality quarterly and the quality of sediment annually, taken from the sectors corresponding to kilometers 502, 511 and 520. The research in this paper is part of this monitoring program. The present work "Studies on the quality of the Danube in Giurgiu area", aims to achieve the following objectives: Determining the structure of phytoplankton biocenosis; Determining the dynamics of the seasonal variation of the physical-chemical parameters in the studied period; Correlation of the variation dynamics of phytoplankton density with the main physical-chemical parameters; Determining the ecological status of water quality in the studied sector. Both sampling areas are characterized by a good ecological status - the values of biological, hydro-morphological and physical-chemical elements have moderate deviations from the values characteristic of unaltered (reference) areas or minor anthropogenic alterations. In the future, it is recommended to monitor the Danube River in order to prevent possible sources of negative anthropogenic impact and to monitor it with an annual frequency in order to make sure that the ecological quality status is maintained at least at the current level.

8. Western Europe

Editorial note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to include the 2019 report in last year’s volume, and, for that reason, it is included here. 2019 Report On 8 January, the Portuguese Republic deposited its instrument of accession to the 2001 International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems on Ships. Entry into force occurred on 8 April. Two main issues remain critical for international river basins: water quantity and quality. Minimum water flows delivered by Spanish dams, although in compliance with the 1998 Convention on the Co-operation for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the Water Resources of the Portuguese–Spanish River Basins (Albufeira Convention), do not qualify as adequate from an ecological water flow perspective. Poor water quality reaching the international border remains a serious problem, especially in the Tagus and Guadiana river basins. During the summer of this year,...

Initial soil formation in an artificial river valley - Interplay of anthropogenic landscape shaping and fluvial dynamics

Land rehabilitation is a strategy for restoring near-natural landscape systems in anthropogenically influenced environments. Especially in post-mining landscapes after open-pit mining, land rehabilitation gives opportunities and potential for near-natural landscape modeling. To evaluate its success, biological monitoring approaches with a focus on biodiversity are common. However, the loss of natural soils, which are the result of long-term formation, is an irreversible damage to the pedosphere. The natural soil functions must be completely re-established and it is difficult to examine its success.Our study area is located in the Inde River catchment (North Rhine-Westphalia, Western Germany), which is part of the international River Basin District Meuse. Due to the progress of the open-pit lignite mining, a 5 km long river course had to be relocated. To create a near-natural landscape and an appropriate development corridor for the river, a ~ 12 km long river relocation was designed. The artificial river section “Neue Inde” is still geomorphologically “naive” and characterized by temporary, highly energetic morphodynamic processes resulting in strong erosion processes in the river bed and the surrounding area. Our study investigated initial soil formation in a morphodynamically active artificial river valley, constructed with a restoration substrate called “Forstkies”.To characterize morphodynamics and to detect initial soil formation processes, we analyzed a transect of seven soil profiles. It includes floodplains and slope areas further away from the river. Allochthonous flood sediments can be differentiated from the underlying artificial restoration substrate by inherited enrichment of the pollutants Pb, Zn, and Cu. First initial post-sedimentary alterations are detected employing common soil parameters (grain size, CaCO3, total organic carbon and pH value) and geochemical weathering indices. The quality of the soils is appropriate to the state of development. The results obtained can be helpful for the planning of future restoration in post-mining landscapes.

How Ostrom's design principles apply to large‐scale commons: Cooperation over international river basins

AbstractMany conventional studies on common‐pool resources (CPRs) have examined the governance of local resources such as fisheries, forests, grazing systems, irrigation systems, agriculture, water resources, and land tenure. However, a limited selection of recent studies has been interested in large‐scale commons such as climate change, air pollution, and transboundary disputes. Despite Ostrom's design principles (DPs) providing a robust framework for solving CPR problems, there have been relatively few empirical challenges examining the effect of DPs on CPRs, especially in the large‐scale commons. This paper examines how Ostrom's DPs are applied to international commons that may cause complicated disputes among states. The case being studied is international rivers as international commons. Based on binary logit analysis, this research found that four of Ostrom's DPs—clear boundary, operational rules, monitoring system, and multi‐level governance—are positively associated with success in managing the international river commons (IRCs) as a CPR. Additionally, the results from fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) partially indicate that the co‐occurrence of monitoring, conflict mechanisms, and multi‐level governance would lead to more successful IRCs.

Future projections of flooding characteristics in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin under climate change

Climate change intensifies hydrological cycle, bringing critical challenges to the global and regional socio-economic development. Here we used four global climate models to project future precipitation that drives hydrological modeling of future 30-year daily runoff in a large international river basin, the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB). We applied four probability distribution functions to fit the flood peak and maximum 3-day flood volume series at four major hydrologic stations. The copula function was used to establish the joint distribution between extreme precipitation and flood peak to estimate the impact of precipitation change on floods. Results show that annual maximum 30-day precipitation (AM30D) and flood peak at Pakse station are highly correlated. Future basin-averaged AM30D is projected to increase under most climate scenarios, although AM30D varies widely in spatial distribution. The extreme values of AM30D (e.g., AM1D and AM3D) in the future (2021–2050) are larger than those in historical period (1981–2004). The temporal distribution of future AM30D is more uneven, showing the “bimodal” distribution. For the Yun Jinghong station, large uncertainty is estimated in change of direction of annual maximum flood peak and maximum 3-day flood volume. As for the other three stations, they are all projected to have larger flood risks in spite of different magnitudes. The larger the return period, the larger the increase, the greater the impact of climate change. The change of basin-averaged AM30D precipitation in the future will lead to the increase of flood peak at Pakse station via the bivariate frequency analysis. From the perspective of water conservancy project safety, considering the “adverse principle”, flood control design according to the design results derived from the joint distribution of two variables between AM30D and flood peak can reduce the risk of flood disaster. This study can provide scientific reference and basis for flood control and disaster reduction and water resources cooperation policy development in LMRB.

The Role of SADC in Transboundary Water Interactions: The Case of the Incomati International River Basin

Southern Africa is a water-scarce region with an inherent climatic variability and uneven distribution of perennial rivers, which limits the economic growth potential of the region and makes water a strategic resource. This puts water under the spotlight and begs the question how South Africa, eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) and Mozambique co-operate in the Incomati river basin despite the challenges confronting them? This article explores how equitable utilisation, sustainable development and information sharing envisaged by the SADC revised water protocol are perceived by the Incomati river basin stakeholders in practice. Through constructivist institutionalism, the article foregrounds agency as an important element to understand transboundary water interactions, arguing that structure and agency are mutually constitutive. This enables a shift from methodological individualism to an appreciation that structure and agency each possess independent analytic qualities that evolve with time. In turn, this produces complex transboundary water interactions that are interconnected through a triad of structure, ideas and agency. The article draws its analysis from 43 interviews conducted with different stakeholders in the Incomati river basin, participatory observations, informal conversations, a review of literature and SADC official documents. Despite various measures in place to promote regional development and integration, power still permeates SADC water governance in a way that affects information sharing and equitable and sustainable water management. Taking power as an explanandum, the article finds that, to a large degree, the constructed transboundary water relations in the Incomati river basin do not acquiesce to structural power. Instead of being passive, stakeholders constantly negotiate and renegotiate ways of governing the shared river based on the context and preferences.