Some Developments in the Law of International Watercourses

Abstract

In this paper I will use the expression "international watercourse" in its broad sense, as meaning any freshwater resources shared by two or more States, whether they take the form of surface water, groundwater or any combination of the two. 2 See especially Judge Caflisch's Hague Lectures, L. Caflisch, "Règles générales du droit des cours d'eau internationaux" 219 RCADI, 1989-VII, 9. See also, e.g., L. Caflisch, "The Law of International Waterways and Its Sources", in: R.St.J. Macdonald (ed.), Essays in Honour of Wang Tieya (The Hague, Martinus Nihjoff publisher, 1993), p. 115; L. Caflisch, "Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas: Règle prioritaire ou élément pour déterminer le droit d'utilisation équitable et raisonnable d'un cours d'eau international?", in: AV. Ziegler, T. Burckhardt (eds.), Internationales Recht auf See und Binnengewässern, Festschrift für Walter Müller (Schulthess Juristische Medien AG, 1993), p. 29; and L. Caflisch, "La Convention du 21 mai 1997 sur l'utilisation des cours d'eau internationaux à des fins autres que la navigation", XLIII AFDI, 1997, 751.

Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model

“…But, since there currently is no binding international law for managing international rivers, the only guidelines that are available to us are international water doctrines from the (legal) literature (see for instance, Garretson, Hayton and Olmstead (1967) or McCaffrey (2001)). Two of these principles, used by Ambec and Sprumont (2002) for river situations concerning the rival consumption of water and by Ni and Wang (2007) for allocating the costs of cleaning a river from pollution, are the principle of Absolute Territorial Sovereignty (ATS) and the principle of Unlimited Territorial Integrity (UTI).…”

“…The principle of Absolute Territorial Sovereignty (also known as the Harmon doctrine) states that each country (agent) along an international river has absolute sovereignty over the part of the river on its territory (McCaffrey, 2001). For river pollution models the ATS principle favors upstream agents over downstream agents in the sense that it allows an (upstream) agent to choose any pollution level it prefers, without taking into account the consequences for downstream agents.…”

“…The principle of Unlimited Territorial Integrity states that each country (agent) along an international river has the right to demand the natural flow of the river into its territory that is both undiminished in quantity and unchanged in quality by the countries (agents) upstream to it (McCaffrey, 2001). For river pollution models the UTI principle favors downstream agents over upstream agents in the sense that an (upstream) agent is only allowed to pollute the river if it has the explicit consent of all agents downstream to it.…”

“…The TIBS principle states that the water in an international river belongs to all riparian states combined, no matter where it enters the river, and that each riparian state is entitled to a reasonable and equitable share in the optimal use of the river water (McCaffrey, 2001). In the (legal) literature on the subject it is also referred to as the principle of community (of interests) in the waters, the principle of common management or the drainage basin approach.…”

Transboundary water interaction III: contest and compliance

“…Frey 1993;Wolf 2002;McCaffrey 2007;Kehl 2011;Dinar et al 2012;Schmeier et al 2015). There is next to no effort spent on how change towards an equitable water arrangement actually comes about, however.…”