Intra-national rivalries: A submerged aspect of trans-boundary water governance

Abstract

A growing realization of the need to shift from a focus upon instruments to a governance1 systems approach is evident in the Rio+20 declaration 'The World We Want', the IUCN 'Natural Resources Governance' framework, UNEP's Environmental Governance sub-programme and in the UNEP I WGEA MoU (4/90 implementation - GE05).2 Despite more than 2000 international legal instruments and 110,000 national laws and regulations,3 resource governance outcomes fall short of being sustainable. Environmental law has to respond to political, social and economic system conditions that are less than optimal, including insufficient resources or political commitment, or the inability of society to change to the degree that is necessary. Effective law has to be designed and implemented based upon these realities. This chapter concerns water rivalries, in particular how the law interacts with other non-law variables to generate, shape or manage conflicts, and how these impact upon the effectiveness, efficiency and fairness of water policy. In international trans-boundary water law, conflict has been given a lot of attention because of the serious consequences of nation state conflicts and because the parties have equal sovereign status (Wolf, 1997; Waslekar and Futehally, 2013). However, in intra-national, settings rivalry issues do not seem to be given sufficient attention.