The final section of the Orange River flows through the Namib coastal desert to the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay. Photo credit: Orange-Senqu River Commission/ORASECOM
On this World Water Day, we celebrate water as a resource that sustains life on Earth and provides the basis for economic development and prosperity.
World Water Day also reminds us that many people around the world face too much, too little, or too dirty water. Over-abstraction of water is increasingly threatening people and ecosystems. Thirty percent of wetlands have disappeared over the past three decades and freshwater biodiversity is declining faster than any other given increasing pressures on aquatic habitats. Water pollution and salinization reduce the ways water can be used. Across the globe two billion people still lack access to clean and safe drinking water.
Things become even more complicated when hydrological and political borders do not coincide. Addressing these problems is therefore particularly challenging in the world’s 313 transboundary surface water basins, nearly 600 transboundary aquifers, and more than 300 transboundary wetlands. Shared river basins cover more than 40 percent of the world’s land surface and are home to nearly 50 percent of the world’s population while providing nearly 60 percent of global freshwater flows.
Significant increases in water use in one country can affect water availability and impact development in other basin countries in various ways. Similarly, pollution from one country can undermine the opportunities to use water resources in neighboring countries sharing the same river, lake, or groundwater bodies and can trigger tensions within the basin. In the past years, and with increase in water uses and increasing climate change such conflicts have been on the rise.
Cooperation over water in transboundary basins is crucial. Over the last decades, states have developed a comprehensive legal regime to ensure that disagreements that occur over the use of shared water resources are managed in a cooperative way.
This includes two global water conventions – the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the 1992 Helsinki, or Water Convention – as well as more than 600 treaties covering specific regional basins or aquifers. Moreover, more than 120 basin organizations have been established. Many of these processes and institutions have been funded by the GEF including e.g. support to the Permanent Okavango River Basin Commission (OKACOM) and the Mekong River Commission (MRC). While legal and institutional arrangements for groundwater are still lagging behind, significant progress has been made in recent years.
This year’s World Water Day theme is water and peace. It is an occasion to embrace that these cooperation mechanisms have so far done quite well in preventing or mitigating conflict over shared water resources and generating benefits of cooperation. Regular data sharing builds trust between riparian states. Basin conventions help to discuss and solve competing interests before they escalate. Basin commissions also have been building blocks of regional integration, such as the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) in Europe.
Sharing these experiences will be vital in the coming years as increased water demand, reduction in freshwater availability, and pollution heighten the pressures on transboundary water resources and the need for cooperation. Climate change adds to these pressures and for the first time in human history is pushing the global water cycle out of balance, impacting the atmospheric flows of water vapor which interconnects watersheds across continents. Rainfall patterns have become more erratic and increasingly causing devasting floods and droughts leading to food insecurity and contributing to displacement. Dealing with these increased challenges from climate change can only be addressed when countries in shared basins cooperate to regulate flows for the benefit of all.
This is a good occasion to take stock of how we prepare for a future of increasing demands on water. How do we manage water so that all water needs are served in an equitable and sustainable manner? How do we adjust legal and institutional arrangements to deal with increasing variability to serve people’s and countries’ water needs while protecting or restoring critical ecosystems? How do we assure that conflict resolution mechanisms are sufficiently equipped for dealing with new types of conflicts as we observe increasing frequency and extent of floods and droughts in a world of a rapidly changing climate? Unfortunately, we are not there yet.
Building urgently needed resilience including through cooperation across countries and sectors requires increased support for cooperation processes and institutions as well as considerable investments in both nature-based and traditional infrastructure.
World Water Day is an important reminder to us to ensure sustainable investments in transboundary water resources. Together, the GEF and the Government of the Netherlands issue a call for prioritizing public financing for improving cooperation on shared surface and groundwater resources.
Cooperation over shared water resources brings many benefits. It can improve the efficient and effective uses of water and make water availability more predictable. It can reduce the effects of droughts. It can prevent further aquatic biodiversity loss and protect or restore freshwater ecosystems. It can ensure that communities get early warning for flood risks and pollution accidents. Water cooperation is central to reaching the sustainable development goals and the targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, among many other international commitments. But all this requires effective cooperation.
In a world with many conflicts, let’s make water a source of peace.
The GEF is a multilateral family of funds dedicated to confronting biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, and supporting land and ocean health. Its financing enables developing countries to address complex challenges and work towards international environmental goals. The GEF’s International Waters focal area is a unique source of grant funding support to help groups of countries strengthen cooperative governance frameworks and invest in shared freshwater and marine ecosystems. To date, the GEF has provided $2.85 billion related to International Waters across 400 projects, including financing for regional initiatives in 60 transboundary rivers, 14 transboundary aquifers, 16 shared lakes, and 22 multi-country Large Marine Ecosystems.
