Book on River Basin Organizations in Water Diplomacy by Affiliate Member of our IWLA Academy Susanne Schmeier

Tensions and disputes between states sharing international watercourses can be observed in numerous basins around the world and have increasingly made headlines in the past years. This includes basins in which institutional arrangements for cooperation have been established by riparian states, signaling an overall interest of riparian states in the cooperative rather the conflictive management of their shared resources. A newly published book by Anoulak Kittikhoun (Mekong River Commission) and Affiliate Member of our IWLA Academy Susanne Schmeier (IHE Delft) investigates which role river basin organizations play in preventing and mitigating disagreements and disputes over shared water resources. Through contributions from numerous authors – academics as well as practitioners in river basin management – that cover many of the world’s basins (including the Aral Sea, the Congo, the Danube, the Great Lakes, Helmand, the Jordan, the Mekong, the Niger or the Nile basins), it highlights the technical and the water diplomacy functions river basin organizations perform and how and under which circumstances they indeed prevent or mitigate disputes and strengthen cooperation. The book therewith aims to both contribute to the academic discourse on transboundary water conflict and cooperation and to provide policy makers in shared basins with insights into how to strengthen the water diplomacy role of river basin organizations and which pitfalls to avoid.

Find more information here: https://www.routledge.com/River-Basin-Organizations-in-Water-Diplomacy/Kittikhoun-Schmeier/p/book/9780367218133.