The institutional design of river basin organizations – empirical findings from around the world

ABSTRACT

River basin organizations (RBOs) have become a key feature of international water resources governance, providing riparian states with multiple means for overcoming collective action problems that emerge due to the transboundary nature of resources. However, little is known about the RBOs themselves, especially with regard to their organizational structure as well as the mechanisms they actually employ for governing water resources. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the institutional design of all international RBOs by summarizing the empirical data available through the RBO Institutional Design Database in the context of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. It contributes to both water resources governance research, requiring institutional design data in order compare different RBOs or to comprehensively assess the contributions RBOs can make to better governing shared watercourses, as well as policy, facing the challenge of establishing new or reforming existing RBOs for more sustainable water resources governance in shared basins.

Keywords:

• International watercourses
• river basin organizations
• institutional design
• water resources governance mechanisms

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Prof. Aaron T. Wolf, Oregon State University, and the entire team of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database for their support. Special thanks goes to Jennifer Veilleux (then TFDD Database manager) for her help with getting the database online.

Notes

1. The notion ‘shared watercourses' comprises both rivers and lakes since most literature on this topic refers to ‘river basin governance' and ‘river basin organizations' only, but implicitly includes transboundary lake basins as well.

2. This paper understands RBOs as ‘institutionalized forms of cooperation that are based on binding international agreements covering the geographically defined area of international river or lake basins characterized by principles, norms, rules and governance mechanisms'. It is not the aim of the paper to engage in the discussion of what an RBO actually is. Instead, the paper acknowledges that for a number of institutions covered by the database, the notion RBO might not be the utmost correct one, e.g. because these institution do not possess all constitutive elements of an RBO as defined in Schmeier et al. (2013). For a more detailed discussion of the concept of RBOs, refer to Schmeier et al. (2013).

3. This acknowledges that some RBOs cover more than one watercourse. This is, for instance, the case with the International Joint Commission (IJC) that covers 11 different rivers that cross the US–Canadian border, or the International Commission of International Rivers (ICIR), governing Spanish–Portuguese transboundary rivers. At the same time, one watercourse can be covered by more than one RBO as we find, for instance, in the case of the Orange River Basin, which is covered by four different RBOs of different geographical and functional scope, or the Zambezi River Basin, covered by two different RBOs of different geographical and functional scope.

4. Overall, 27 single-issue RBOs, 26 multi-issue RBOs and 57 few-issue RBOs have been identified. For 9 institutions out of the set of 119 RBOs, information was insufficient for classification of the functional scope – they have therefore been excluded from this analysis, reducing the population size to 110 institutions.

5. The Working and Expert Groups of the ICBC, the ICPDR and the ICPO bring together experts for different topics relevant to river basin governance by the RBO. These are the Incidental Pollution, Communication, Cartography, Surface Water, Groundwater, Cost Efficiency Analysis, Floods/Droughts for the ICBC, River Basin Management Group/Hydromorphology, Economics, Pressures and Measures, Monitoring and Assessment Expert Group (including Groundwater and Accident Emergency Warning System), Flood Protection, Information Management and GIS, and Public Participation for the ICPDR, and EU Water Framework Directive (EUWFD), Floods, Accidental Pollution, Legal Issues, Monitoring, Planning and Management, Economic Analysis, Reporting for the ICPO.

6. Austria and Poland, each covering less than 1% of the basin, are neither member of the ICPE nor contribute to the RBO's budget. The cost-sharing key therefore relies on the assumption that the Czech and German territory of the basin constitute 100%.

7. These are Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR), Commission Internationale du Bassins Congo-Oubangui-Sangha (CICOS), Comision Technica de Mixta de Salto Grande (CTMS), Danube Commission (DC), Great Lakes Commission (GLC), International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR), International Joint Commission (IJC), Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) and Finnish–Norwegian Transboundary Waters Commission (TWC).

8. This figure displays the dispute-resolution mechanisms applied by RBOs, including combinations thereof – given that in many cases more than one dispute-resolution mechanism can applied, offering conflicting parties second instances for dispute-resolution. ‘RBO, bilateral' thus indicates that the first instance of dispute-resolution is the RBO itself, but if disputes remain unresolved, they would be referred to the conflicting parties for bilateral negotiation. Similarly, ‘bilateral, external' captures instances in which disputes are first negotiated bilaterally, but can be referred to external dispute-resolution or arbitration bodies in case bilateral negotiation fails.

9. A preliminary descriptive analysis of the RBO data shows, for instance, that RBOs in Europe and Asia mainly focus on coordination activities in areas such as water quantity or quality, while RBOs in Africa and Latin America more often have an implementation focus with regard to large infrastructure projects. Likewise, highly-institutionalized RBOs at the authority-level are much more common in Africa than in other regions of the world, notably in Asia. It does, however, remain largely unclear why these differences exist and how they influence water resources governance in the different regions.