The Law of International Watercourses

The Law of International Watercourses examines the rules of international law governing the non-navigational uses of international watercourses. The continued growth of the world’s population places increasing demands on Earth’s finite supply of fresh water. Because two or more states share many of the world’s most important drainage basins – including The Danube, The Ganges, The Indus, The Jordan, The Mekong, The Nile, The Rhine, and The Tigris-Euphrates – competition for increasingly scarce fresh water resources is likely to increase. Resulting disputes will be resolved against the backdrop of the rules of international law governing the use of international watercourses. In addition, these rules are of importance to donor institutions and governments that provide development assistance for projects relating to shared fresh water resources. While the law of international watercourses continues to evolve due to the intensification of use of shared fresh water resources and, consequently, increasingly frequent contacts between riparian states, the basic rules are reflected in the 1997 UN Convention on the law of the non-navigational uses of international watercourses. This book devotes a chapter to the 1997 Convention but also examines the factual and legal context in which the Convention should be understood, considers the more important rules of the Convention in some depth and discusses specific issues that could not be addressed in a framework instrument of that kind. In particular, the book studies the major cases and controversies concerning international watercourses as a background against which to consider the basic substantive and procedural rights and obligations of states.