It's World Water Day 2024!
Our OA Ambassadors raise awareness in their local communities about global OA movements as well as related opportunities through IWA Publishing. To tie in with the 'Water for Peace' theme of World Water Day 2024, in this Spotlight Blog, Kator Jethro Ifyalem looks at the use of data and monitoring systems to enhance peace and security in water management.
Kator Jethro Ifyalem is a civil engineer and MSc student from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, committed to environmental sustainability. Connect with Kator on LinkedIn!
Many major rivers, lakes, and aquifers cross international boundaries, serving as a lifeline for all countries in their basins. The Danube River, for example, flows through 10 countries, with a catchment area in 19 countries. The Guarani Aquifer provides water to Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina. Such transboundary waters create hydro-political interdependencies - action by one country can significantly impact others who share the resource. Without cooperation guided by scientific evidence, unilateral projects like dam construction or water withdrawal could spark tensions over perceived inequities. Past disputes have even escalated to military threats between countries like India and Pakistan over shared rivers. Robust data collection and monitoring mechanisms are valuable in supporting evidence-based decision-making, cooperation across borders, and early warning of potential disputes.
Data Collection for Informed Decision-Making
To enable cooperation and prevent disputes over transboundary waters, decision-making must be grounded in facts and research rather than politics and emotions. Comprehensive monitoring and consistent data allow countries to assess the availability and demand of a resource, model future scenarios, and negotiate appropriate allocation based on realities on the ground. Data to be collected should include meteorological information, stream flow rates, reservoir levels, water quality metrics, consumptive uses like irrigation, groundwater table, and ecosystem health indicators. Standardized protocols should be jointly developed so data is cross-comparable. The involvement of stakeholders such as scientists and civil society, and the making of monitoring data transparent and accessible builds trust between countries.
Early Warning of Water Conflict Risks
Improved monitoring also enables early warning systems to anticipate and defuse tensions over shared waters. By identifying changing conditions and risks, countries gain lead time to proactively resolve issues through discussion rather than allowing disputes to escalate unchecked. Well-designed early warning uses regularly updated physical, social, and economic data related to water flows and usage, policy shifts, demographic trends, development projects, governance changes, and public sentiment metrics.
Water Diplomacy for Sustaining Peace
While data and monitoring enable non-politicized negotiations and pre-emptive mitigation of disputes, ultimately political will and water diplomacy are essential for navigating the complex web of interests surrounding transboundary waters. Technical water managers must cooperate closely with foreign ministry diplomats in regular bilateral and multilateral discussions over joint objectives like flood control or water quality protection based on scientific evidence.
Ultimately, while quality data and monitoring enable rational negotiations and risk mitigation over transboundary waters, the human dimensions of water diplomacy and stewardship promote peace where purely technical management alone cannot. Integrating all three spheres maximizes the potential for evidence-based cooperation against the tide of climate pressures, mistrust across borders, and competition over the vulnerable global water commons that threaten our collective future.
In conclusion, water crises compound political fragility. Cooperative water management anchored in data offers opportunities to build confidence and sustain peace. As climate change and human demands increase complexity in already intricate hydro-political balances, enhancing monitoring and data transparency allows upstream and downstream countries to equitably allocate shared waters. Early warning systems can detect rising tensions years in advance for pre-emptive resolution. Consistent cooperation around joint water objectives supported by facts helps transcend political differences.
With foresight, stewardship, and diligence, sharing water across borders can catalyse collaboration rather than conflict. Sustaining even fragile peace agreements over contested resources demonstrates our human capacity to overcome divides. In that sense, water can flow through nations fluidly, just as it flows through the porous bounds of banks, canals, and pipelines that try in vain to impose hard borders on nature's hydrologic cycle, ultimately connecting us all.