Shared Water Resources in a Warming World: Conflict and Cooperation

Jun 22, 2015 | The Stimson Center
Washington, D.C.
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Growing populations, rising resource demands, and mounting environmental pressures are putting increasing strains on global water supplies. From the Middle East to the Sahel and South Asia, stresses on the world’s crucial transboundary river basins—those shared by two or more nations—are stoking tensions and stirring conflict. Continuing global climate change will exacerbate the challenges confronting policy makers, altering river flows in every populated basin on Earth by 2050.
 

Meeting these emerging threats to the planet’s common water resources will require increased dialogue and collaboration among all riparian nations. How can international water diplomacy, multilateral development agencies, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders help build cooperative governance structures, institutions, and practices to ensure global water security in the 21^st century? In a panel discussion co-hosted by the Stimson Center and the Wilson Center, water policy experts and practitioners will explore innovations, insights, and impediments to the cooperative management of shared rivers around the world. The conversation will include discussion of a new book, Transboundary Water Management and the Climate Change Debate, by Anders Jägerskog and colleagues, and the findings of a new Stimson Center study of civil society initiatives to promote water cooperation in international river basins.