Free Flow

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ransboundary

ater

anagement

as a way to achieve the sustainable management of

groundwater resources.

While the body of research about groundwater

governance is rapidly developing and international

actors are increasingly directing resources to this issue,

there are still very few effective groundwater govern-

ance regimes at the transboundary scale. In the absence

of good groundwater governance and in the face of

threatened transboundary aquifers, some states have

experienced conflict and others have been motivated

to seek out cooperative mechanisms for management.

Legal regimes, in particular treaties, are commonly

espoused mechanisms for cooperation. Nevertheless, in

keeping with the Year of Water Cooperation, IGRAC

wanted to better understand who is cooperating over

transboundary aquifers, how are they cooperating, and

what factors lead to this cooperation. Consequently,

IGRAC engaged in an in-depth study of factors that

enable cooperation over transboundary aquifers.

In recent years, significant attention has been given

to the potential for conflict over water resources, espe-

cially transboundary resources. However, research

has shown that it is considerably more likely that

stakeholders will use cooperative approaches than

conflictual ones. In a recent study by De Stefano et al.

of 2,586 recorded ‘water events’ documented between

1948 and 2008, only 31 per cent were considered

conflicts. While occurrences of specific cooperative

events are relatively well documented through media

and publicly available information, there is a gap in

understanding what conditions facilitate sustained

There are two key examples of project-based cooperation for trans-

boundary aquifers in which IGRAC participates. IGRAC provides

project management for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the

Dinaric karst Transboundary Aquifer System (DIKTAS) Project,

which aims to improve the understanding of transboundary ground-

water resources of the Dinaric region of South-East Europe. DIKTAS

is the first ever application of an integrated, transboundary manage-

ment approach to regional Karst water resources and ecosystems.

The GEF Transboundary Water Assessment Programme (TWAP)

is another key mechanism through which IGRAC is enacting inter-

national water cooperation. The objective of the programme is to

conduct a global baseline assessment of transboundary water systems,

including groundwater. In this programme, IGRAC is also developing

an information system to store, manage and disseminate information

derived from the TWAP assessment. In addition to addressing the

technical aspects of groundwater cooperation, these projects examine

the role of groundwater governance in a transboundary context.

The proper governance of transboundary aquifers requires

particularly high levels of international cooperation and coor-

dination. Consequently, IGRAC is increasingly involved with

programmes on groundwater governance through actions such

as contributing to the formulation of the International Law

Commission’s Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary

Aquifers. IGRAC also stresses the importance of using data and

information as the basis for groundwater management. Access to

this information is crucial to all stakeholders involved in ground-

water governance. Therefore, IGRAC is actively contributing to

the project Groundwater Governance – a Global Framework for

Action. The project is designed to raise awareness on the impor-

tance of groundwater resources for many regions of the world, and

to identify and promote best practices in groundwater governance

No cooperation/no conflict

Neutral state

In-flux state

Stabile state

Catalyzing

event

Cooperative dialogue

Conflictive dialogue

Collective action/

Agreement

Maintain status quo/

No agreement

Additional

information

Additional

information

Enabling

factors

Enabling

factors

Enabling

factors

The role of enabling factors in transboundary aquifer interaction

Source: IGRAC 2012