Shared Water Resources in a Warming World: Conflict and Cooperation

Growing populations, rising resource demands, and mounting environmental pressures are putting increasing strains on global water supplies. From the Middle East to the Sahel and South Asia, stresses on the world’s crucial transboundary river basins—those shared by two or more nations—are stoking tensions and stirring conflict. Continuing global climate change will exacerbate the challenges confronting policy makers, altering river flows in every populated basin on Earth by 2050.
 
Meeting these emerging threats to the planet’s common water resources will require increased dialogue and collaboration among all riparian nations. How can international water diplomacy, multilateral development agencies, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders help build cooperative governance structures, institutions, and practices to ensure global water security in the 21st century? In a panel discussion co-hosted by the Stimson Center and the Wilson Center, water policy experts and practitioners explored innovations, insights, and impediments to the cooperative management of shared rivers around the world. The conversation included discussion of a new book onTransboundary Water Management and the Climate Change Debate by Anders Jägerskog and colleagues, and the findings of a new Stimson Center study of civil society initiatives to promote water cooperation in international river basins.  

Featuring: 
Anders Jägerskog, Counsellor for Middle East and North Africa Regional Water Issues, Embassy of Sweden, Amman, Jordan
 
Aaron Salzberg, Special Coordinator for Water Resources, US Department of State
 
Eileen Burke, Senior Water Resources Specialist, Nile Program, World Bank
 
David Michel, Director of the Environmental Security Program, Stimson Center

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