An interesting article on the UN Watercourses Convention!

I read the article "Renewed hope for the UN Watercourses Convention" by Jamie Pittock, published in the Water21 -magazine in August 2009. It gave me new information on the ratification process of the Convention. I found especially interesting the different perspectives that the countries who have/haven't ratified the Convention have. I thought I'd share with you the best bites of the article, freely written:

The 5th World Water Forum was held in 2009 in Istanbul. Surprisingly, in Forum's thematic and regional panels, the support for the ratification of the UN Watercourses Convention was stronger than ever. In September 2009 the eighteenth member country (Spain) ratified the Convention, which means, that 17 more countries need to ratify it in order to the Convention to come into force. In the Forum, however, more than ten countries committed to join the Convention. Among them were Spain and France, which are likely to influence the Francophone and Hispanic countries.

Despite the strong support for the ratification, the UN Convention was missing from the key international processes announced at the Forum. Also, the 3rd UN Water Development Report launched at the Forum didn't mention the ratification and implementation of the UN Convention, although it predicted increasing water conflicts between countries. The Ministerial Statement of the Forum didn't have a specific mention of the Convention either, although "existing agreements" in general were mentioned. The Article didn't explain WHY the Convention was avoided from mentioning - it would be very interesting to know.

Some examples of different countries' perspectives on the ratification of the Convention:

Turkey (hasn't ratified): "Opponents to the UN Framework Convention have argued that each transboundary basin and dispute has its own peculiarities and characteristics and should therefore be treated spearately. The States which abstained (27) or voted against (3 versus 103) the Convention drew attention to the lack of consensus on several of its key provisions, mainly on those governing dispute settlement and further to imbalance created between the lower and upper riparian States." (President Suleyman Demirel in a 2004 speech to the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute)

Iraq (has "accessed"): "With the increasing demand and competition on water resources (...) and the intensive pace of construction of dams and water diversion schemes in neighbouring countries, it became obvious that an internationally accepted framework was the only viable solution for potential differences between the riparian countries. Only in this way can we ensure a real partnership between all relevant countries on water sharing rather than upstream verses downstream approach that leaves the downstream partners vulnerable." (Ambassador Hassan Janabi, Iraq's permanent Representative)

France (ratification procedure initiated): Regarding the 1992 UNECE Water Convention, The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the EU's Water Framework Directive: "The three instruments are essentially complementary. There wouldn't be any contradiction for France to join the 1997 Instrument. (...) The essential for us is more related to the wider scope of the 1997 UN Convention, which would become the first international instrument related to international watercourses, whereas the existing frameworks have only regional force. That would be a step forward." (Laurent Stefanini, French Ambassador for the Environment)

I will end this post by giving you a link to WWF Water Conventions page. WWF has a role in promoting the UN Watercourses Convention and the UNECE Water Convention and in 2006 it launched a global initiative to accelerate its ratification process.

Helsinki rulz! (+ the Convention)

I've been trying to understand what kind of legislation exist that regulates or guides the use/management/protection of transboundary waters. For what I now know, there are at least two important laws: (1) Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, (2) The Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. So I read them, and thought I'd summarize you the content AND character of those laws and in the end I'll tell some of my own observations or reflections. Voilá!

Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses

•  The convention was adopted in 1997 by the UN and was decided to enter force when 35 countries would ratify the document. In november 2009 there were 18 signatories, which means, that the convention is not yet in force.
• The convention discusses the uses and protection of all waters that cross international borders, including surface and groundwater.
• Parts of the convention are for example:
• Definition of important concepts
• The relation of the convention with other similar agreements
• Definition of equitable and reasonable utilization of waters: what are the relevant factors that must be taken into account?
• Obligation not to cause significant harm to other watercourse states
• Obligation to exchange data and information on the condition of the watercourse between states
• The correct procedure of notificating other watercourse states of planned measures
• Regulations on protection and preservation of ecosystems nearby transboundary watercourse
• Emergency situations: notification, appropriate measures
• Settlement procedure of possible disputes between the watercourse states

The Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers

• The law was adopted by the International Law Association in Helsinki in 1966.
• Rules of the law are applicable to the use of an international drainage basin except if some other convention or agreement among the basin state provides otherwise.
• Parts of the law are for example:
• Equitable utilization of waters: every basin state has right to a reasonable and equitable share in the beneficial uses of the waters. Factors that have to be taken into account when defining a reasonable and equitable share.
• The responsabilities of each state in the prevention and reduction of water pollution.
• The correct procedure for settlement and prevention of disputes.

Are you still following? As I haven't studied law, I guess there is a lot I didn't understand completely, but I think I more or less know now what is the content of transboundary water laws/agreements. Some time ago, when I was doing my bachelor thesis, I became familiar with the River Uruguay Statute, which is a similar agreement as these two, but regional, made by two countries. Despite the scale difference, I remember that the content of the statute was pretty much the same as in these two global once, just more detailed. So by knowing these two documents one can more or less now what is always taken into account when making such an agreement - global or regional.

How I understood the character of the Convention is that it was aimed to facilitate the making of more detailed regional agreements on the use of transboundary waters, as the regional agreements are often insufficient or don't even exist.

Some questions that I started wondering when reading these texts:

 Why hasn't the Convention been ratified by more than 18 states? Has the promotion been insufficient or is it because of the content of the Convention?   

What is the real potential of this kind of international laws/agreements? Can they really have real influence on a regional scale, prevent conflicts or facilitate the making of regional agreements? What are the hindrances?

Ok, next time I'll probably post you something about the stakeholder analisis that we are going to do together on monday. Btw, I think our last meeting was good! In the end I felt that we had a consensus of what we are doing, which is not obvious :)