Environmental Security and Freshwater Resources: Ecosystem Regime Building

Abstract

We have previously argued that international environmental law does not adequately promote environmental security because it has failed to adopt an ecosystem orientation. In this paper we suggest that environmental security in the context of freshwater resources can only be achieved through a sophisticated understanding of regime formation and elaboration, linked with a determined pursuit of ecosystem orientation. Our underlying assumptions are twofold. First, the protection of shared water supplies is a “good” worth promoting, whether for intrinsic or instrumental reasons. Second, whenever a resource is shared, particularly a resource that can easily be exhausted or degraded,disputes between the states involved are inevitable. Perhaps surprisingly, we have suggested that the security dimension of the problem relates not only to the potential for disputes, but also—even primarily—to the first of our underlying assumptions. Thus,scarcities of resources should also cause concern when they threaten to undermine either the way of life of a given human population or internal structures of governance and activity through the fostering of subnational conflict and the significant reduction of options for action. In this sense we agree with Richard Ullman's now-famous attempt to redefine the very concept of security. In his view, and ours, a threat to security includes [any] action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the policy choices available to the government of a state or to private, nongovernmental entities (persons, groups, corporations)within the state.

The Ganges Basin management and community empowerment

“…The new institution needs to gather base-line data related to hydrology, ecology, basin communities, water stagnation, and salinity. This integrated perspective can reduce ecological system failures and the displacement of local people (Brunee and Toope 1997). The government of India needs to recognize the root causes of these failures and displacements.…”

Is Water Different from Biodiversity? Governance Criteria for the Effective Management of Transboundary Resources

“…They argue that the concept of drainage basin management has the longest history of all the ecosystem principles relevant to freshwater. 63 As scientific understanding of the hydrological cycle developed, it became evident that focusing solely on the river did not reflect the fact that freshwater bodies consist of various physical components. 64 This led to the recognition that management of only the international watercourse was an insufficient foundation for legal analysis concerning the rights of States in the uses of water.…”

ADAPTING THE LAW OF WATER MANAGEMENT TO GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER HYDROPOLITICAL STRESSES1

“…The "most highly qualified publicists" are also in general agreement on the rule of equitable utilization as the applicable rule of customary international law regarding internationally shared waters. Equitable utilization rests ultimately on the concept of an international drainage basin as a coherent juridical and managerial unit, a concept widely supported by naturalists, engineers, lawyers, and economists (Brunée and Toope, 1997;Dworsky and Utton, 1993;Francis, 1993;Korhonen, 1996;McCaffrey, 1991a;Tarlock, 1996;White, 1998). In addition to international arbitral and judicial tribunals, national courts litigating the rights of states of a federal union have reached similar conclusions.…”