An Assessment of Strategic Issues in the Policy Fie ld Relating to Water Resource Management in Southern Africa

The vital role of water for human beings and development has received worldwide attention. Through the activities of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organisations since the beginning of the 1970s, much emphasis was placed on the global status of water, namely water scarcity in absolute terms, and a lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Later on, some specific regions of the world were identified as the scarcest regions with shared surface and groundwater resources between two or more countries, which received much more attention than other parts of the globe. Under such striking developments, water was picked up as a sensational issue by the popular press. And, scholarly interest joined them. Hence, there has arisen an ongoing debate among scholars on the issue of management and utilisation of water resources, as well as on the likelihood of a conflict that would be a result of the worsening situation of water supply and demand. In the debate one can delineate basically three groups of scholars and experts whose views can be associated with any of the three leading schools of thought in international relations theory: the realists, the political economists, and the institutionalists. The paper will discuss these contending approaches to water disputes in transboundary river basins with particular references to the international relations theory. Global Water Predicament and Transboundary Water Resources Management The Earth has 1,386,000,000 km of water total, but only 2.5% of that is freshwater. Less than 1% of the world freshwater is usable in a renewable fashion. During the past century, the world population has tripled, and water use has increased seven folds. All water management is multi-objective. There are various conflicting interests embedded in water resources management. Hence, conflicts over water resources occur at multiple scales, from sets of individual irrigators, to urban versus rural uses, to nations that straddle international waterways. Transboundary water disputes occur whenever demand for water is shared by any sets of interests, be they political, economic, environmental, or legal. Thus, transboundary waters share certain characteristics that make their management especially complicated, most notable of which is that these basins require a more complete appreciation of the political, cultural, and social aspects of water (Wolf, 2002). There are 263 watersheds that cross the political boundaries of two or more countries. The Cold War terminating in the 1990s marked a significant increase in the number of transboundary rivers. These international basins cover 45.3% of the land surface of the earth, contain about 40% of the world’s population, and account for approximately 60% of global river flow. A total of 145 nations include territory within international basins (Wolf, 2002). International Relations Theory: Contending Approaches to the Water Dispute in the Transboundary River Basins Under such striking developments, water was picked up as a sensational issue by the popular press. And, scholarly interest joined them. Hence, there has arisen an ongoing 1 Some of the discussions in this article are drawn from A. Kibaroglu, Building a Regime for the Waters of the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin, Kluwer Law International, London, The Hague, New York, 2002. 2 In the headlines of daily papers and in certain columns of some outstanding magazines and journals, there were