Governing International Watercourses: River Basin Organizations and the Sustainable Governance of Internationally Shared Rivers and Lakes (Earthscan Studies in Water Resource Management)

This book focuses on River Basin Organizations as the key institutions for managing internationally shared water resources. This includes a comparative analysis of all River Basin Organizations worldwide and three in-depth case studies from three different continents. The detailed case studies are the Senegal (West Africa), Mekong (South-east Asia) and Danube (Europe) rivers. The book contributes to the academic debate on how shared natural and environmental resources can be managed in a sustainable way and which institutional and legal mechanisms actually matter for doing so. It adopts the neo-institutionalist approach, according to which international environmental institutions do make a difference. The analysis not only confirms this argument for the specific case of shared water resources, but also refines existing hypotheses on the influence of different independent variables, namely the nature of the collective action problem, the constellation of actors and the institutional design of an international environmental institution. The work also contributes to the policy debate on how to better govern internationally shared natural resources and the environment. It provides policy makers with advice on which exogenous conditions to be aware of when managing water resources they share with co-riparians and which institutional design features and governance mechanisms to set up in order to increase effectiveness in management. Front Cover 1 Governing International Watercourses 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of figures 9 List of tables 10 Foreword 12 Acknowledgements 14 List of acronyms and abbreviations 16 1 Introduction: governing international watercourses effectively 22 The puzzle: why does river basin governance effectiveness vary? 22 Studying RBO effectiveness: why, when and how do RBOs matter? 25 The state of research: combining institutionalism and hydropolitics 28 Part I Theory of international river basin governance 40 2 Building a theory of river basin governance effectiveness 42 Institutionalized cooperation over shared resources 42 The effectiveness of institutionalized river basin governance 45 Exogenous conditions: problems and actors 52 The institutional design of RBOs 61 Summary: the analytical framework 78 Part II The empirics of international river basin governance 82 3 River Basin Organizations around the world 84 Introduction: water resources governance across the world 84 Exogenous factors for the effectiveness of RBOs: cross-basin observations on problems and situations 88 The institutional design of RBOs 101 Conclusion 133 Part III Case studies 138 4 The Mekong River Basin and the MRC: continuous cooperation in spite of adverse conditions 140 Water resources governance in the Mekong River Basin 140 The effectiveness of river basin governance in the Mekong River Basin 153 The MRC: institutionalized cooperation for overcoming the basin’s problems 163 Conclusion 190 5 T he Danube River Basin and the ICPDR: strong achievements by a narrow institution 192 Water resources governance problems in the Danube River Basin 192 The effectiveness of river basin governance in the Danube River Basin 204 The ICPDR: getting organizational set-upand river basin governance mechanisms right 212 Conclusion 236 6 The Senegal River Basin and the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Sénégal (OMVS): benign conditions, deficient effectiveness 238 The complexity of water resources use in the Senegal River Basin 238 The effectiveness of river basin governance in the Senegal River Basin 247 The OMVS: institutional impedimentsto river basin governance effectiveness 261 Conclusion 287 7 Conclusion 290 Appendices 294 Notes 318 References 330 Index 363