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The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database Project

It is increasingly acknowledged that water will be one of the most pressing environmental concerns of the next century. As global populations and economies continue to grow exponentially and as environmental change threatens the quantity and quality of fresh water resources, attention has recently focused on the state, management, and conflict potential of those waters which cross international boundaries. Approximately 261 international watersheds and an untold number of transboundary aquifers cover about one half of the land surface of the globe affecting 40 percent of its population (Wolf et al., 1999). These international waters are resources whose management is especially intricate: they ignore our political boundaries, they fluctuate in both space and time, they have multiple and conflicting demands on their use, and applicable international law is poorly-developed, often contradictory and difficult to enforce. Not surprisingly, water has exacerbated political tensions around the globe, most notably between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, and all ten riparians of the Nile River. The fortunate corollary of water as an inducement to conflict is that water, by its very nature, tends to induce even hostile co-riparians to cooperate even as disputes rage over other issues. Alam (1998) has appropriately termed this trait “water rationality.” In fact, the weight of historic evidence tends to favor water as a catalyst for cooperation: nations have signed 3,600 water-related treaties since AD 805, while, in the same period, there have been only seven minor international water-related skirmishes (each of which included other non-water issues) [Wolf, 1998]. The only “water war” between nations on record occurred over 4,500 years ago, between the citystates of Lagash and Umma in the Tigris-Euphrates basin (Cooper, 1983). Given this disproportionate evidence in favor of “hydro-cooperation,” the processes of conflict resolution and amelioration warrant more study, despite the growing prevalence of literature which focuses on the unlikely prospects of “water wars.” Three works give good empirical evidence against the “water wars” framework: Wolf (1998) uses historical, strategic, shared interest, and institutional resiliency evidence; Ohlsson (1999) develops a Social Resource Water Stress Index to show human response and resiliency to scarcity; and Toset and Petter Gleditch (1999) examine the Correlates of War Dataset to show that water is not a significant correlate. In the face of this empirical evidence, it seems that the “water wars” argument would finally give way to “water reality.”