Climate Change, Conflict, and Cooperation : Global Analysis of the Resilience of International River Treaties to Increased Water Variability
Although water variability has already been observed across river basins, climate change is predicted to increase variability. Such environmental changes may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions that are not equipped with an appropri...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/06/19646108/climate-change-conflict-cooperation-global-analysis-resilience-international-river-treaties-increased-water-variability http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18763 |
| Summary: | Although water variability has already
been observed across river basins, climate change is
predicted to increase variability. Such environmental
changes may aggravate political tensions, especially in
regions that are not equipped with an appropriate
institutional apparatus. Increased variability is also
likely to challenge regions with existing institutional
capacity. This paper argues that the best attempts to assess
the ability of states to deal with variability in the future
rest with considering how agreements have fared in the past.
The paper investigates to what extent particular mechanisms
and institutional designs help mitigate inter-country
tensions over shared water. The analysis specifically
focuses on identifying which water allocation mechanisms and
institutional features provide better opportunities for
mitigating conflict given that water allocation issues tend
to be most salient among riparians. Water-related events
from the Basins at Risk events database are used as the
dependent variable to test hypotheses regarding the
viability, or resilience, of treaties over time. Climatic,
geographic, political, and economic variables are used as
controls. The analysis is conducted for the years 1948-2001
with the country dyad as the level of observation. Findings
pertaining to the primary explanatory variables suggest that
country dyads governed by treaties with water allocation
mechanisms exhibiting both flexibility and specificity
evince more cooperative behavior. Country dyads governed by
treaties with a larger sum of institutional mechanisms
likewise evince a higher level of cooperation, although
certain institutional mechanisms are more important than others. |
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