Shared rivers and conflict – A reconsideration

Neomalthusians have regularly predicted "water wars" while cornucopians have argued that there is no inherent water scarcity and liberal institutionalists have seen cooperation as a more likely outcome of competition for limited water resources than violent conflict. Three earlier studies have found a positive statistical relationship between shared rivers and low-level interstate conflict. Based on a more comprehensive dataset, an improved model of conflict, and a more appropriate control for geographical opportunity, we argue that these results are spurious and that we cannot establish a conflict-inducing effect of shared rivers over and beyond contiguity itself. In fact, the new dataset presented here makes it clear that nearly all neighbors in the international system share at least one river. This calls for a different approach to investigating interaction in shared river basins. This notwithstanding, freshwater and other shared resources may still provide a mechanism to explain why contiguity is robustly associated with conflict, so the water-conflict scenario cannot be dismissed. Indeed, our results show that among river-sharing states, basins with an upstream/downstream configuration increase the risk of conflict. The article finally discusses how river interaction should be further investigated based on these results and what new data are needed to enable such research.     

Conflicts over shared rivers: Resource scarcity or fuzzy boundaries?

Countries that share rivers have a higher risk of military disputes, even when controlling for a range of standard variables from studies of interstate conflict. A study incorporating the length of the land boundary showed that the shared river variable is not just a proxy for a higher degree of interaction opportunity. A weakness of earlier work is that the existing shared rivers data do not distinguish properly between dyads where the rivers run mainly across the boundary and dyads where the shared river runs along the boundary. Dyads with rivers running across the boundary would be expected to give rise to resource scarcity-related conflict, while in dyads where the river forms the boundary conflict may arise because river boundaries are fluid and fuzzy. Using a new dataset on shared water basins and two measures of water scarcity, we test for the relevance of these two scenarios. Shared basins do predict an increased propensity for conflict in a multivariate analysis. However, we find little support for the fuzzy boundary scenario. Support for a scarcity theory of water conflict is somewhat ambiguous. Neither the number of river crossings nor the share of the basin upstream is significant. Dry countries have more conflict, but less so when the basin is large. Drought has no influence. The size of the basin, however, is significantly associated with conflict. Modernization theory receives some support in that development interacted with basin size predicts less conflict, and we find some evidence here for an environmental Kuznets curve. The importance of basin size suggests a possible ‘resource curse’ effect for water resources.     

Resolving Water Conflicts: A Comparative Analysis of Interstate River Compacts

This paper examines compacts used by U.S. western states to engage in shared governance of interstate rivers. Compacts are viewed as inflexible, rigid governance structures incapable of responding to changing environmental and institutional settings because of the use of unanimity rules and the inability to directly regulate water users. Using data from a study of 14 western interstate river compacts we examine this claim. In particular, we explore the response of compacts to water conflicts. We find that members of compacts, closely related water agencies, and compact governments are capable of responding to conflicts. To better understand this finding, we identify the conditions under which compacts are likely to address conflicts, as well as the types of conflict solutions compact governments adopted.     

Assessing side-payment and cost-sharing patterns in international water agreements: The geographic and economic connection

To a large degree, conflicts over transboundary freshwater resources arise because property rights have not been clearly defined. International water law provides only hints and suggestions as to how states should resolve their water disputes, since legal principles and clauses are ambiguous and contradictory. But conflict often creates a need for cooperation, which is achieved by means of negotiations, and the specific outcome of negotiations is almost always codified in an international treaty. This article considers bilateral water agreements for rivers with particular geographical configurations and aims to answer a fundamental question: how and why do bilateral treaties vary in their design? Further, it examines international freshwater treaties to deduce the nature of treaty remedies, particularly the side-payment and cost-sharing arrangements, used for resolving conflict over rivers shared by two countries. The theory and testable hypotheses consider geography and economics in order to explore treaty design. In essence, the ‘willingness to pay’ of one of the states reflects on the property rights solution and can be explained by geography and economics. Three geographical configurations are investigated here. The findings affirm that side-payments frequently occur to offset an asymmetric geographical relationship between upstream and downstream states, and are commonly regarded as an appropriate instrumentality for solving a property rights dispute. Side-payments are non-existent when the geographic relationship among the riparians is symmetric and costs for the joint project are most always equally shared. As expected, in this latter case, the geography of the river acts as a focal point for equal participation. When economic differences are taken into account, especially when the upstream state is richer, the side-payment outcome is reversed. As expected, richer states internalize the costs of taking action in favor of poorer downstream states. When the geographical relationship between the riparians is of a symmetrical nature, while the economic relationship between the states is of an asymmetrical nature, the richer state often assumes the bulk of the cost burden. In this way, it provides a side-payment to the poorer state. Such patterns reveal how property rights disputes over issues such as water quantity, hydropower, pollution abatement, and flood control have been concluded. They suggest how ongoing disputes may be resolved.     

Conflict management of riparian disputes

This paper builds on a large literature that explores the linkages between resource scarcity and interstate conflict. Focusing on competing claims over cross-border rivers, we analyze peaceful and militarized techniques used by states to manage river claims, and compare the success of these techniques for resolving the issues under contention. We focus on two key factors to account for variance in the use and effectiveness of conflict management strategies: water scarcity and institutions. We argue that high levels of water scarcity increase the frequency of explicit claims over fresh water, increase the chances of militarized conflict over these claims, and make it more difficult for conflict management institutions to be created or to be effective. We also examine the role of peace-promoting institutions, both river-specific and general institutions, arguing that institutional membership should promote peaceful attempts to resolve river claims. Analyzing data on river claims (1900–2001) from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project, we find that greater water scarcity increases the likelihood of both militarized conflict and peaceful third party settlement attempts, while river-specific institutions reduce militarized conflict and increase the effectiveness of peaceful settlement attempts.     

The Role of Cross‐Scale Institutional Linkages in Common Pool Resource Management: Assessing Interstate River Compacts*

This article extends the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework's seminal research on common pool resource (CPR) management in new directions by exploring how the design principles of robust and enduring CPR management, initially proposed by Elinor Ostrom in 1990, can be used to measure and assess cross‐scale institutional linkages. This study examines data from 14 interstate river basin compacts in the western United States to identify the types of linkages established in these interstate settings, the factors that contribute to the emergence of diverse types of linkages around these shared resources, and how different types of linkages perform. Using Ostrom's CPR design principles to operationalize and measure linkages, the study shows that diverse types of cross‐scale linkages were created under the 14 interstate compacts, with linkages related to monitoring found to be particularly prevalent. The types and diversity of linkages can largely be explained by the conditions under which compacts emerged and the water management issues states jointly face. In applying the evaluative criteria operationalized by the CPR design principles, this research further shows that the monitoring and collective choice linkages created by compacts tend to be of higher quality, while enforcement and conflict resolution linkages appeared to be of the lowest quality. In addition to developing the IAD literature on CPR management, these findings offer critical insights for assessing the capacity of interstate river basin compacts in the western United States to manage shared resources successfully, as well as insights for what types of institutional investments may be needed for enhanced resource governance.     

The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war

Territory is connected to war in different ways. This paper explores the ontological face of war, from a political and spatial perspective. Heterotopias, like the Roman Field of Mars and US National Cemeteries, are used to throw light on the relationships between war and territory. The paper first traces the origins of the importance of territory to war, following the Foucaltian revision of Clausewitz to suggest how politics is the continuation of war by other means. It then proceeds to analyze two key displacements constitutive of the current relation between territory and sovereignty: the substitution of the loyalty to king for the loyalty to territory, and the further replacement of territory by the “map”. In the second half of this paper, special attention is given to the post-Cold War hegemonic state practices that have changed the discourses of war and thus constituted a new, postmodern, Field of Mars. The paper shows how the new postmodern “virtuous wars”, fought outside Western Europe and North America, reconfigure the Western politics, territory and sovereignty, particularly in the United States.     

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.     

Implications of hydro-political dependency for international water cooperation and conflict: Insights from new data

Hydro-political dependencies between countries are widely regarded as having important implications for international water cooperation and conflict. Quantitative ex-post empirical research on the subject so far uses very simple characterizations of international river geography to proxy for such dependencies, though. The authors developed a new geo-spatial dataset for water catchments worldwide. This dataset combines elevation models, flow accumulation approaches, hydrological data, and data on international boundaries to generate more precise and nuanced measures of hydro-political dependencies among riparian countries. The paper discusses these measurement concepts, illustrates how dependencies are distributed worldwide, and revisits three prominent quantitative studies on the issue to show how using improved data affects empirical findings. In contrast to a very popular presumption, upstream–downstream dependencies turn out to have a very small to insignificant effect on international water cooperation or conflict.     

Contexts for Conflict: Conceptual Tools for Interpreting Archaeological Reflections of Warfare

Abstract

There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding of past conflicts and challenged previously held ideas about warfare. Although archaeologists do not currently have interpretive frameworks to link the diverse sites and objects that form the archaeological record of war, modern military planners have developed such models. This paper uses sites from the North American Great Plains to suggest that military models of conflict analysis can contribute to a synthetic archaeological interpretation of conflict.