ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Cooperation and Management in Regard to International Watercourse Systems introduced, for the first time in the drafting work of the ILC. It presents an article stipulating a principle of cooperation and it identified the specific rights and obligations that would be needed to implement this principle, including rights and obligations related to consultation, negotiation and the prior notification of planned measures. Article 8 (1) UN Watercourses Convention has become the main reference norm for the general duty to cooperate: 'Watercourse States shall cooperate on the basis of sovereign equality. The duty to cooperate seeks to achieve sustainable utilization and takes account of the interests of states that share the freshwater resources of an international watercourse. The general duty to cooperate gained a strong reconfirmation as one of the core principles of the law of transboundary water resources with the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses.
