6. Issues of Transboundary Water Management

Having taken a few weeks off blogging has given me the opportunity to review previous posts, especially my introductory post where I outlined what I thought would be the focus of this blog, that of conflict and water. So the aim of this short post will be to explain and reflect on the reorientation of my focus. In my introduction I started by purporting the causational relationship between water scarcity and conflict, but actually ended up looking mainly at the relationship between citizen and state materialised through water and sanitation infrastructure. 

Why this focus? Firstly the literature on such a topic is more widely extensive, as well as further research has displayed that the supposed relationship between water scarcity and conflict is more tenuous than presupposed. A study by Giordano et al (2002) aiming to quantify whether water scarcity is causative of transboundary conflict via the case study of Israel, India, and South Africa, indicate that national water-related events do relate to water and non-water events at an international level, yet a causative as opposed to correlational relationship cannot be determined. The study does highlight however the dependence on the hydropolitical dynamics within a river basin, as well as differing historical and political conditions. Building on this, Scheumann & Alker’s (2009) paper outlining the import of groundwater aquifers in sustainable water usage in Africa, reinforces that accurate transboundary water management is heavily variant on hydropolitical circumstance and an understanding of groundwater aquifers. Within institutional frameworks, national unilateral development and management of water resources has been favoured over transboundary development. The international focus on intra as opposed to extra state depicts why water predictions are inaccurate; we treat water as a nationally bounded substance where it is not. One country acting on the groundwater aquifer shared with 10 other countries will have impacts across users of the aquifer. The below map illustrates the extensive transboundary nature of water resources across the African continent. 

Figure 1. Transboundary Aquifers in Africa (UN-IGRAC, 2016)

The transboundary nature of African water resources is a central issue in international water cooperation, it ensues the need for sharing agreements in water scarce regions, such a pressing need is highlighted by the current lack of enforceable mechanisms compelling sharing of water, as well as data on which to create water sharing agreements. (Taylor, 2019). Without accurate data on current water usage, prediction models regarding future water availability are rendered obsolete. 

In response to the crisis of water data absence, Sonaar Luthra (2019) proposes tracking real-time water quality, “tracking water like we track weather.” Climate change has resulted in an evolving weather system where the rate of flow between water systems is increasing at a continuous rate, rendering previous forecasting systems (though one could say already outdated) void of continued usefulness. Luthra is CEO of startup Water Canary, which creates water quality assurance devices using “spectral analysis to examine water by light wavelength” as opposed to traditional non reusable water quality testers which use chemical tests. GPS and water quality data is then sent online to “create a crowdsourced map of water quality” (Cheshire, 2011). This technology is part of the worldwide heightened movement of citizen agency and could be a crucial component in resolving one of the cardinal issues in transboundary water management - that of sufficient data collection and sharing. The technology enables a method of data collection outside government and nationalist policy, decentralised and crowdsourced technologies aim to circumvent the state in the same aspirations that Africa-based privatisation projects held (Bayliss, 2003). 

However, although decentralised and IoT technologies improve access to data, simply having this database does not necessitate that it will be used by governmental water organisations. DHI (2018) estimates only 5-10% of data collected in a typical utility are used for actionable information. Water data would need to be combined with transboundary water sharing agreements and enforceable mechanisms for such agreements; water is a highly regulated and the mere presence of data cannot automatically propel transboundary cooperation. Furthermore such a wide database could not only result in an absence of tangible action, but a newfound issue regarding the ethics of such data collection. Luthra proposes dispersing his ‘water canary’ water quality testing devices into the citizen population, whom would take up agency for testing local water with data then being sent automatically to an open source network, making water quality data available to everyone with access to the internet. Such data could be utilised for malintent or collated by unknown persons whom would then have intimate data regarding availability of water of a vulnerable population. 

In conclusion, although data collection and data sharing are key components in achieving the goal of transboundary water management, the attainment of water sharing agreements and enforceable mechanisms for such agreements must be attained. Although better data collection would not necessarily achieve this, a dataset highlighting key areas for improvement could not only create more efficient water sharing plans but also more accurate forecasting models of water scarcity across national borders. The aim of this post has been to posthumously explicate and reflect upon the change of direction of my blog focus, from the tenuous relationship between water scarcity and conflict to the more tangible issue of achieving both intrastate and transboundary sustainable water management.