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Environmental Earth Sciences

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01-01-2015 | Thematic Issue

Current legal challenges to institutional governance of transboundary water resources in Central Asia and joint management arrangements

Author: Barbara Janusz-Pawletta

Published in: Environmental Earth Sciences | Issue 2/2015

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Abstract

Transboundary water governance, understood as ownership, development and management of water resources, has been developing in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of national water legal systems. However, fairly developed water governance on transboundary basins in the region still requires strengthening through enhancing riparian states’ institutional cooperation at all levels of interstate cooperation—regional level, transboundary river basins and bilateral level. Joint management arrangements (JMA), which according to widespread international legal practice are used to facilitate interstate cooperation on transboundary water basins, still pose a sufficient challenge to all levels of transboundary water governance in Central Asia. The most developed JMA in Central Asia is the mechanism represented by International Fund for Saving Aral Sea (IFAS), representing all states on the regional level of water governance. Not a flawless legal nature of IFAS envisages current challenges to the development of JMA at all institutional levels of interstate cooperation in Central Asia. Further, it reflects the need for further development and strengthening of transboundary water governance in the region.

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UN Water Convention, however not in force yet, is a treaty of universal applicability to transboundary waters (For details on another water agreement applicable worldwide see footnote No. 17). This Convention is however supposed to enter into force in August 2014. According to Art. 8 states shall cooperate and “in determining the manner of such cooperation, they may consider the establishment of joint mechanisms or commissions, as deemed necessary by them, to facilitate cooperation on relevant measures and procedures in the light of experience gained through cooperation in existing joint mechanisms and commissions in various regions”. Further (Art. 24) convention stipulates that “establishment of a joint management mechanism may serve as a toll for management of an international watercourse, in particular, to planning the sustainable development of an international watercourse and providing for the implementation of any plans adopted; and otherwise promoting the rational and optimal utilization, protection and control of the watercourse”.

Helsinki Convention has been developed by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe for its member states, but its amendment from 2003 allows joining this convention also for UN members from outside the UNECE region, increasing its meaning. According to its Art. 9, riparian parties “shall on the basis of equality and reciprocity enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements or other arrangements, where these do not yet exist, or adapt existing ones, where necessary to eliminate the contradictions with the basic principles of this Convention/…/The agreements or arrangements shall provide for the establishment of joint bodies”.

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This explanation has been provided by authors of the cited paper for definition for a notion of “international river basin organisations (IRBO)”. It reflects state praxis based outcome of research on establishment and functioning of what is called in the present paper as “joint management arrangements”. The notion of IRBO is not common in legal teaching and for the purpose of the here presented paper not suitable, since this paper analyses, for instance, the legal nature of IFAS covering not just one international river basin, but the basin of the Aral Sea, which consists of the drainage area of the two rivers, Amu Darya and Syr Darya.

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Title: Current legal challenges to institutional governance of transboundary water resources in Central Asia and joint management arrangements
Author: Barbara Janusz-Pawletta
Publication date: 01-01-2015
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: Environmental Earth Sciences / Issue 2/2015
Print ISSN: 1866-6280
Electronic ISSN: 1866-6299
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-014-3471-7

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