Cross-border water governance in Asia

Improving the governance of water resources and distribution in Asia is increasingly taking on cross-border dimensions. Urbanization, intensification of primary production for export, global economic integration, increasing scales of projects such as very large dams, global warming and privatization of water infrastructure and services are all creating increasingly spatially extensive interactions and impacts over entire water basins extending across two or more national territories. Together these forces pose high risks of chronic as well as seasonal water shortages and flooding, pollution and degradation of riparian systems, and diversion of water from local to distant uses. In some areas of more extreme water scarcity, conflict over water has intensified across national, regional and ethnic lines. Large-scale dam and irrigation projects have changed ecologies and displaced very large numbers of people. Throughout the world, these water basins and watersheds are also sites of rich cultural histories and settlements reaching back to antiquity that are now in some cases witnessing severe threats to the economic basis for their societies due to water deterioration and disruptions.

Related Subject(s): Democracy and Governance