ABSTRACT
So goes a grim twenty-first century prediction echoed by well-respected institutions such as the World Bank. As demand for fresh water and populations rise, water scarcity is already on the national security agenda of many countries, especially in such regions as the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. But despite the sensationalist appeal of the “water wars” thesis, the history of hydropolitics, or the politics of water, is one of cooperation and negotiation. Compared to the one all-out war that was sparked solely for the sake of water, 4,500 years ago, thousands of agreements over water have been recorded (Wolf and Hamner 2000: 57). The aim of this work is to systematically analyze this history of cooperation and negotiation by turning to the actual treaties states have negotiated.
