Session 4 ‘The Role of the United Nations 2030 SDGs in Facilitating Transboundary Water Cooperation – Exploring Challenges and Opportunities’

In consideration of the most recent progress on reporting under the SDG Indicator 6.5.2, the International Water Law Academy (IWLA) at CIBOS, Wuhan University organized an online session under the topic of ‘The Role of the United Nations 2030 SDGs in Facilitating Transboundary Water Cooperation – Exploring Challenges and Opportunities’ on 30 October 2021. This meeting was session 4 of the International Symposium on the Belt and Road Cooperation and Boundary and Ocean Issues held by the CIBOS on 29 and 30 October 2021. More than 60 professors, experts, teachers, and students at home and abroad participated online or offline.

Prof. Patricia WOUTERS, the Founding Director of the IWLA, chaired this session. Two speakers with extensive experience in this topic were invited. Among them, JIN Hai, Director General of the International Economic & Technical Cooperation and Exchange Center, Ministry of Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China, elaborated on China’s approach to the UN 2030 SDG 6 including the endeavors made by China in promoting access to water and sanitation, increasing water-use efficiency, protecting water-related ecosystems, and undertaking transboundary water cooperation with co-riparian States. Director General JIN put forward that China's approach to transboundary river cooperation is built upon its core diplomatic doctrine, with 4 major guiding principles, namely, friendly cooperation, people-orientation, shared rights, and obligations, as well as an equal emphasis on development and protection. He summarized the existing range of transboundary water agreements and arrangements between China and neighbouring countries, including multilateral engagements. Director General JIN concluded that China would continue to endeavour to strengthen exchange and mutual learning with the international community, with a commitment to contribute to achieving the water-related goals and targets of the UN 2030 Agenda. China would also promote collaboration and exchanges with UNESCO and UNECE and other international water-related organizations in this field and seek to enhance programmatic cooperation with neighboring countries regarding the peaceful management of transboundary waters.

Prof. Alistair RIEU-CLARKE, from the Law School of Northumbria University (UK) (Founding Affiliate of the IWLA), was directly involved in the oversight of the SDG Indicator 6.5.2 reporting exercise on behalf of the custodian agency UNECE, and offered his expert insights into how States’ reports are evaluated and monitored. He highlighted the important role of the UN SDG Indicator 6.5.2 in facilitating transboundary water cooperation. Prof RIEU-CLARKE explained the origins, criteria, and key outcomes from the two rounds of monitoring exercises of the SDG Indicator 6.5.2, elaborating some of the existing state practice and sharing some lessons learned. Overall, it is noteworthy that an increasing number of countries have participated in the 2^nd reporting process, with more than 80% of countries sharing transboundary waters submitting their reports. According to Prof. Alistair RIEU-CLARKE, while progress has been made, some challenges remain, such as the need to improve the coverage of national reports, to enhance the quality of national reports, to better align data at the basin level, and to translate findings from reporting exercises into action. Nevertheless, opportunities for enhanced transboundary water cooperation will come from addressing these challenges. He indicated that monitoring exercises of the SDG Indicator 6.5.2 can be used in broader contexts, such as in the work programmes of the UNECE Water Convention, or the SDG work. In any event, improved reporting by national governments under SDG indicator 6.5.2 can help to improve the water-related decision-making process and strengthen transboundary water cooperation.

Three discussants shared their insightful ideas. Prof. Owen McINTYRE from the School of Law, University College Cork (Founding Affiliate of the IWLA), discussed the contribution of SDG Indicator 6.5.2 in respect of the practice of international water law (IWL). He argued that there is a virtual circle between the requirements of SDG Indicator 6.5.2 and the functioning of IWL. On the one hand, SDG Indicator 6.5.2 is about transboundary water cooperation. Prof McINTYRE asserted that the duty to cooperate is arguably the most fundamental principle of IWL, upon which all other procedural and substantive norms depend. While States develop joint mechanisms to fulfill these duties under IWL, SDG Indicator 6.5.2 flexibly and loosely identifies the four key elements of transboundary water cooperation that can make these principles under IWL meaningful. Though lacking compulsion and binding force, periodic reporting under SDG Indicator 6.5.2 promotes the sharing of experiences and lessons learned and employs tools to promote adherence rather than formal compliance. Facing challenges from climate change, urbanization, development of water resources, and ecosystem degradation amongst others, we have to move towards mechanisms that help to optimize water use, supported in large part by institutions. This approach is promoted under the SDGs and SDG Indicator 6.5.2, which enhance the opportunities for States engaging in transboundary water cooperation. He raised the question of what the future of the methodological evolution of SDG Indicator 6.5.2 might be, and whether there would be a further elaboration of the indicators used to measure transboundary water cooperation.

Prof. Otto SPIJKERS at CIBOS of Wuhan University (Founding Affiliate of the IWLA) observed the significance of water – it is an issue about life and death. Living in Wuhan, a city by the Yangtze River and with the largest urban lake in China (East Lake), he noticed how important water is to the local population. For these folks, water is not an academic issue, but an integral part of their lives. One of the famous buildings sitting beside the Yangtze River is the Yellow Crane Tower. Prof. SPIJKERS shared the poem, ‘Seeing off Meng Haoran for Guangling at Yellow Crane Tower’ by LI Bai. This poem was translated into English with the help of his Chinese teacher. Then, he told us the story of LI Bai’s death by drowning. Again, we came back to the life and death issue connected with water.

Based on his recent work on soft law in the law of international watercourses, David J. DEVLAEMINCK, Lecturer from the School of Law, Chongqing University and Founding Affiliate of the IWLA, discussed potential gaps in what kinds of formal and informal arrangements could be included in SDG Indicator 6.5.2 reporting. According to the Guide to reporting under the Water Convention issued by the UNECE in 2020, the requirement of ‘arrangements’ for transboundary water cooperation under the SDG Indicator 6.5.2 is understood as ‘formal commitments’ falling under the scope of ‘agreement’ defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. However, in addition to binding instruments, non-binding instruments are widely used by riparian States. Although they are not binding, they have an array of legal effects and are a platform on which further cooperation can build. One example is the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) launched in 2016 by the six riparian States. The LMC is established and developed through soft instruments and action plans that broadly reflect the principles of international water law, supported by institutional arrangements including regular meetings and information sharing. While they meet many of the requirements of reporting under 6.5.2, they are not a perfect fit. As such, there is a lack of clarity as to how these soft instruments might fit into SDG reporting. Dr. Devlaeminck suggests that it might be valuable for future exercises to offer States more flexibility about what might be seen as an ‘arrangement’ under SDG Indicator 6.5.2, to encompass these potentially informal arrangements and better reflect on the ground practice.

Prof. KONG Lingjie, Associate Dean at CIBOS of Wuhan University (Founding Affiliate, IWLA), offered several insightful comments and raised some questions. Firstly, reporting under SDG Indicator 6.5.2 may need to consider a broad range of diverse state practices and the varying needs of different transboundary basins. For instance, small transboundary rivers may not need formal cooperation arrangements due to their relative insignificance – is reporting required on these? Would the failure to establish cooperation arrangements mean failure of reporting under the SDG Indicator 6.5.2? Secondly, why have only a small number of countries not accepted the invitation to submit their SDG Indicator 6.5.2 reports, and what are their concerns? For instance, although China has rather extensive transboundary water cooperation practice (explained today by DG JIN), China did not report on all of these. Why did China decide not to submit a report on its transboundary water coverage? Thirdly, as China did not submit a report, can reports submitted by States sharing waters with China reflect China’s practices on transboundary water cooperation? Fourthly, how to ensure the objectivity of the criteria measuring the degree of transboundary water cooperation and of the evaluation process? Fifthly, in the consideration that States would feel uncomfortable with the word ‘indicator’, how to encourage more countries to participate in reporting? Finally, Prof KONG asked that while reporting may be very important, how can we translate the reports into action?

In response to the questions and comments above, Prof. Alistair RIEU-CLARKE and Director General JIN Hai elaborated on as follows. Prof. Alistair RIEU-CLARKE explained that there is considerable flexibility in reporting, such as within the broad working definition of the concept of ‘arrangements.’ The custodian agencies responsible for the SDG Indicator 6.5.2 reporting have tried to be quite flexible, which means that a lot of cooperative arrangements would fit into the criteria of ‘arrangements’. Also, Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators under the UN Statistical Commission were very keen to have objective criteria. In terms of smaller rivers, if you share less than 10% of a basin, then you don't have to report on these smaller rivers. As for the methodology of SDG Indicator 6.5.2, representatives of around 50 countries came together to reflect on and review the methodology after the first reporting exercise. For reasons of continuity they declined to make significant changes to the methodology. China indeed submitted a response in the second round of reporting exercises rather than a report. Whilst this response explained some of China’s practices of transboundary water cooperation, China’s response wasn't detailed enough to work out the specific criteria of the SDG Indicator 6.5.2.

Director General JIN Hai responded from the following four points. Firstly, observing from Prof. Alistair RIEU-CLARKE’s presentation that many big countries, such as the US, Russia, and China were put into the category of countries needing clarification under reporting, JIN considered that this reflected the complexity of transboundary issues. As large countries have so many neighboring countries following different methodologies, and circumstances vary greatly from region to region, from the river to river, detailed transboundary water reporting would be challenging. Thus, watercourse state will need more clarifications in the future. Secondly, noticing a trend for a group of international experts to design methodology/indicator/data collecting systems and then impose these on States, he advised that in the future, when this group of experts were designing the indicator system, they may need to consult more actively with those large countries with many transboundary waters in order to make it effective. Thirdly, he went back to the background intentions of reporting systems. Being involved in the early discussion negotiation process of SDG agenda or indicator systems, he found that some of the least developed countries sign up to the most ambitious targets, often beyond their own capacity, possibly with the intent of shaming developed countries. Further, in some cases, some countries were less interested in reporting since they could not get additional support from the outside world. And lastly, he deemed it necessary to harmonize the international statistic standards with the national statistic standards to make them more flexible.

Prof. WOUTERS and Prof. KONG closed the session by thanking the keynote speakers, DG JIN and Prof. RIEU-CLARKE, with thanks also to the discussants – Prof McINTYRE, Prof SPIJKERS, Dr. DEVLAEMINCK, and to the session participants.

(link to the video)