Nations Must Treat Rivers As Shared Resources

Water is running out for many people, cities and countries. Like all scarce resources, our unchecked use and abuse of water, especially rivers, has brought us to the point where human survival is at risk in many parts of the world. This article in Financial Times describes in detail how the sharing of water in Rivers Euphrates and Tigris among Turkey, Syria and Iraq is rapidly reaching a crisis level: Why water is a growing fault-line between Turkey and Iraq.

When oil and gas fields straddle international onshore or offshore boundaries, the countries agree to "unitize" the reservoir. This means that the countries will collaborate on the development of the field with a view to maximising the life of the natural resource. See more on this here: Definition of Unitization

The same principle can be applied to rivers which cross the national boundaries. At present the countries controlling the upstream part of rivers are not bound to take into account the needs of the downstream countries. Huge disputes have arisen in South Asia, the Nile river system and Tigris-Euphrates region (see FT article above). The Indus Water Treaty between Pakistan and India is perhaps one of the few agreements which has stood the test of time, but only just.

An agreement can be reached which gives all countries, through which a river passes, rights to the usage of water. The water "ownership" sharing can be based on the length of river existing in each country. Construction of dams, reservoirs, barrages or any other installation on the river will be planned, designed, constructed and operated jointly by the river owning countries.

Consideration will be given to the agricultural and power production needs of all countries. Stored water in all countries will be a shared resource, and will be used under the agreed terms and conditions. Live sharing of data will be utilised to make decisions regarding water flow, flood management, drought mitigation, storage levels, desilting and maintenance.

The template of this agreement can be hammered out by the UN with support from others. Governance rules can be determined in line with other internationally accepted avenues of dispute resolution.

The upper riparian countries will object to this move on the grounds of losing their exclusive control over their rivers. However, this will have to balanced against the risk of escalating conflict in future, which will inevitable result in destructive overt and covert wars. In some cases the countries will give up control but will also benefit where they are lower riparians. For instance, India controls the major rivers flowing into Pakistan and Bangladesh, but is also dependent on rivers originating in China.

Once this principle is agreed and implemented at national level, the same scheme can be utilised to resolve intra-country disputes, where states or provinces disagree over how the water is utilised.

Human civilization has relied on sustenance from the rivers for milleniums, and there is no reason why we cannot continue to do that in future. But delaying action is not an option.