The Challenges of 21st Century Transboundary Water Management and the Limits of International Water Law

Abstract

This Article explores the challenges to twenty-first century governance of international transboundary water resources. It contains three parts. Drawing upon both the existing international water law and the approaches found in federal states, the first examines the two primary principles governing the management of water: no significant harm and equitable and reasonable use. These principles are essential to the twenty-first century future of supranational-metanational water resource management. With those principles in mind, the second part considers three twenty-first century challenges to which they must be applied in order to reach some equity in the cooperation between transboundary states in the management of water resources: human rights, international relations, and the environment. The final part concludes that while it is necessary to understand the twenty-first century challenges facing international water law, it may not be possible, using that law, to develop a supranational/metanational framework that can respond with workable and enforceable solutions to those issues. The fragility of the existing law may be too great to overcome. Nonetheless, awareness of the challenges arms transboundary nations with the necessary knowledge to develop principles that may, possibly, address the difficulty of managing transboundary water resources.