ABSTRACT
Pundits, policymakers, and prominent international figures have long prophesied that the next war will likely be over water. Water is not only necessary for all of humanity’s needs, but is becoming increasingly scarce, is unequally distributed, and is often transboundary in nature. Transboundary fresh water refers to water bodies such as lakes and rivers that are shared between two or more states thus making conflict over the allocation or management of the resource possible. The more impressive history regarding international hydro-politics is that of cooperation in the form of international water agreements. Water scarcity, for example, has been identified as an important variable. In fact, since institutions could potentially play an important role in mitigating conflict and enhancing cooperation, research on water treaty design has explored a variety of water treaty mechanisms including side-payment and issue-linkage stipulations as well as enforceability, information sharing, and monitoring instruments, among others.
