SIWI i spänd förväntan! UNESCO och SIWI har under en längre period fört en dialog om behovet av ett så kallat Kategori II center kring ’Vattensamarbete’.

Under 2013, som också av FN utnämnts till det ”Internationella året för samarbete kring vatten”, förväntas UNESCO besluta om den svenska ansökan om att få etablera ett center kring vattensamarbete. SIWI kommer att vara värd för centret och Uppsala Universitet och Göteborgs Universitet är partners. UNESCO driver sitt arbete, bland annat det som rör vattenfrågor, genom etablerandet av centers med olika fokusområden. UNESCOs vattenprogram har under en längre tid arbetat med bland annat ett program som heter PCCP (from Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential), där man tagit fram studier kring ämnet. Den forskning och det policyarbete som SIWI bedriver inom ramen sitt tematiska arbetsområde för gränsöverskridande vatten tillsammans med School of Global Studies, Göteborgs Universitet samt Institutionen för Freds- och Konfliktforskning, Uppsala Universitet, är av stor relevans för UNESCO:s arbete. Ett center kan också ses som en viktig kunskapsbas för det mer praktiskt inriktade ”Shared Waters Partnership”-program som SIWI implementerar på uppdrag av FN:s Utvecklingsprogram (UNDP).

Arbete kring gränsöverskridande vattendrag, samt frågor kring internationellt samarbete, fred, säkerhet och utveckling, har sedan lång tid varit svenska prioriteringar. Sverige har en långvarig tradition av stöd till olika internationella flodområden, i Afrika, Mellanöstern och Asien. Ett UNESCO-Center vid SIWI med fokus på dessa frågor kommer att på ett tydligt sätt markera Sveriges prioritering av dessa frågor, samt också tydliggöra den svenska resursbasens kapacitet vad gäller att arbeta med frågorna. Både UNESCO och SIWI ses som neutrala parter med hög trovärdighet, och har därmed förutsättningar att kunna bli engagerade i olika processer, även i potentiellt konfliktfyllda områden.

Marseille is nice. Another day with nice weather and intersting discussions. SIWI has been very active - today for example a new report on land aqcusitions and transboundary water management was launched that received a lot of attention and interest both from media as well as forum participants. The topic is new interesting and an emerging and important area that requires much more attention. The water aspect in the new land deals have largely been forgotten (or ignored) and there is a need to include water aspects in the land contracts. A land investment is a water investment.

Listen to Anders Jägerskog's radio interview here, "Leasing Land, Leasing Water".

SIWI booth at the 6th World Water Forum

This week, when the Cancun negotiations are supposed to move into top gear, I feel it is relevant to give some thoughts to how climate change (or even the perception of it) may affect transboundary water management. While this is certainly not the focus of discussions or negotiations in Mexico, it is an important area that needs to be further understood.

Much of the knowledge we have, as well as existing agreements/regimes over transboundary water are increasingly volatile because of increased water use. Also, they are becoming  unworkable due to the perception that climate change is altering the basic parameters for water governance. Whether correct or not, perceptions of climate change are undermining existing agreements.

According to the Oregon State Database on transboundary water agreements over the period of the last 200 years, riparian countries have signed nearly 400 water-sharing agreements. While that is a positive sign one  key question is, however, dual: to what extent are these agreements actually contributing to meaningful cooperation, and how can they be kept functioning particularly in the face of climate change induced uncertainty? Many of these agreements are essentially rigid instruments that are modifiable only under certain limited conditions. Thus, it is not only that we need functional agreements on transboundary waters; we also need the agreements to be sustainable, lasting and progressive Unfortunately, more than 40% of present agreements do not even mention ‘uncertainty’ in their texts.

Transboundary waters need to be dealt with. However, this is not an easy process. The increasing competition and the difficulties emanating from the altering parameters caused (or so claimed) by climate change are creating further uncertainties. Agreements on transboundary waters are in general not adapted to deal with uncertainties and a changing world, but are often characterised by rigid volumetric allocations of the resource, based on averages of a historical pattern. The keyword that is lacking is flexibility. States are not prone to  sign agreements with uncertain consequences for them in the future. So even though we may know now that agreements should be more focused on sharing waters in percentage terms rather than in cubic metres, it  does not mean it will be easy to get there. 

To address these issues the Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, Stockholm International Water Institute (www.siwi.org) and Peace and Development Research at School of Global Studies at Gothenburg University have joined forces to research this important area. The basic thrust of the research (funded by Sida-SAREC) will focus on the question: how are Transboundary Waters to be governed given the increasing demands on global water resources and the increasing perceptions of a Global Climate Change?

The research, which starts in 2011, will draw upon cases from Africa (Nile and Niger), Middle East (Jordan Basin and Asia (Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra).
While some countries recently have called for the water issues to be more prominent in the Cancun meeting it is receiving less attention than it should. Knock on effects of climate change (or the mere perception of it) such as the one described above merits more attention in the future. It is important also to address future scenarios and adaptation options  at river basin level . Sweden is currently financing a UNEP led project to address such questions in the Nile Basin. Such regional analysis coupled with political and governance research will equip us better for the challenges that are coming.

by Dr Anders Jägerskog, Associate Professor of Peace and Development, School of Global Studies, Göteborg University and;
Senior Programme Manager, Water Resources
Regional Team for Economic and Environmental Development (REED), Sida
Embassy of Sweden, Nairobi, Kenya

A relatively recent trend in the field of land-water-food is the increasing purchase of land for farming in developing countries, primarily in the African continent. In the wake of the food price crisis of 2007-2008 the speed with which this has happened has increased dramatically. It has been called neo-colonialism by some and the new golden commodity by investment firms. Global food producing firms are looking for means to secure production and the export restrictions imposed by major food producers in the world during the recent food price crises of 2007-2008 has lead food importing countries to look for alternative avenues for maintaining food security as well as for bio-fuel and palm oil (IFPRI, April, 2009). We see investments by countries such as China, India, South Korea, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and companies such as Dubai World Trading, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Daewoo, Hyundai, Alpcots (Swedish), Skebab (Sweden) targets developing countries in primarily Africa such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Madagascar with arable land, higher water availability, low labour costs and weak legislation.

The interest from firms as well as water scarce countries is to be expected but a range of questions on for example land rights, water allocation and food markets need to be raised in relation to the above characterised development. Conflicts largely (so far) have been local and national (cf Madagaskar coup and the reversing of an agreement with Daewoo from South Korea) but will be increasingly international. Traditionally the agricultural production has not been part of the ‘resource curse’ attention which has focused on oil and diamonds but could potentially create political insecurity in areas, with consequences being felt over borders.

A question that has not been adequately analysed so far is the effect that these investments will have on the water situation in a country as well as on shared waters. The potential conflicts around land as a backdrop in combination with increased water scarcity in the countries where investments are being made will mean that transboundary issues will come to the fore. The investors (whether governments or private sector) will want reliable access to water for irrigation, that also requires energy some of which needs to come from hydropower, of its crops on the bought or leased land. This directs attention to the internal water resources of the countries as well as its shared transboundary waters. In Southern Africa the Zambezi river will come under scrutiny. In West Africa Niger river is an option. How this dynamic will play out is too early to say but clearly merits attention. Many questions still to be analysed – who will pick up the task?

by Dr Anders Jägerskog, Associate Professor
Senior Programme Manager, Water Resources
Regional Team for Economic and Environmental Development (REED), Sida
Embassy of Sweden, Nairobi, Kenya

The influential political scientist and communications expert Harold Lasswell defined in the 1930s politics to be revolving around the question: who gets what, where, when and why? Essentially that question is a question of power. The power over resources and their allocation as well as over ideas.  

Working in the East African context the questions Lasswell contemplated are extremely relevant today. Reflecting back on my year living in Kenya the region has moved from one extreme to another. Last autumn it experienced severe drought (see: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/637224/-/ulmj6i/-/index.html) and this spring the region has experienced extreme flooding (see: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/03/05/kenya-massive-flooding-in-samburu-as-ewaso-nyiro-river-bursts-its-banks/). Not that it is unusual with large fluctuations in this part of the African continent. Still, the feeling among people are that the extremes and effects of them have increased. In the autumn the herders were wandering inside Nairobi to find places for their cattle to eat and right now many people see their houses and livelihoods destroyed by floods. Ironically, with the dams overflowing there is still water rationing in some parts of the region.

While some effects are felt throughout the societies those hit hardest are the poor and disadvantaged. Along the lines of Lasswell’s thinking the UNDP:s Human Development Report from 2006 (Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis) identified power and inequality to be at the centre of the water issue. Striking and new to many in 2006 (who previously mostly discussed the water crisis in terms of scarcity (too little water) or abundance (too much water)) the conclusion that it is power and inequality that affects people’s water situation more than natural factors is more true than ever in the East African context.

Still in 2010 it is clear that power determines who gets what water, where, when and why. People with little or any access to power will be at liberty of those making the decisions be it in terms of water allocation or flood protection measures. The need to look for explanations (and solutions) to the water crisis beyond water mere scarcity is as strong as ever. This will inevitably need to involve increased participation by those disadvantaged.

by Dr Anders Jägerskog, Associate Professor, First Secretary
Senior Programme Manager, Water Resources
Regional Team for Economic and Environmental Development (REED), Sida
Embassy of Sweden, Nairobi, Kenya
 

Sitting at the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi with responsibility for transboundary waters (I am responsible for the Swedish support to the Nile Basin Initiative as well as the Lake Victoria Basin Commission) my thoughts are going back to the basic political science on international politics that I read a long time ago. What does that have to do with development cooperation and support to transboundary water management one may ask? Well, quite a lot I think.

Having observed transboundary water management programmes and the people involved in managing those as well as the complexity (technical as well as political) which is associated with these programmes I am inclined to think that perhaps bit more of Machiavellian analysis would make sense. Anyone that has read his seminal book The Prince would be familiar with the pre-eminence of power in its hard and brute form. He can be seen as the forefather of what has become the realist strand of political science. However, most people working with development cooperation and support to, among others, transboundary water management programmes are clearly not realist. Quite the contrary, we tend to be fans of Immanuel Kant (although not always aware of it) who is behind what is called the idealist or functionalist school of thinking. An idealist tend to believe that cooperation over a “low politics” issues such as water may be something that spur cooperation over even more sensitive political areas. And that cooperation would spur more cooperation.

Often it has been assumed in the debates over transboundary water that if we build technical cooperation that would lead to more political contacts, improved relations and eventually equitable agreements signed. Still, that is not really what is happening in cases such as the Nile or the Jordan River Basin.

It may be argued that in the development business (myself included) there has been a tendency not to engage to much with the perspective that realism represents. This perspective has been left to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs security people and the Ministry of Defence. In sociological language there has been a de-emphasising of the risks associated with such a perspective. Arguably, often development practitioners adopt more of a functionalist approach to matters. This may result in that certain risks are missed with potentially serious consequences. Issues of power relations in a river basin context are but one example. If these are ignored in the preparatory work there is a risk that investments may be misguided or that there is a risk that the results of the investments may be derailed by political conflicts not anticipated at the outset (because the development practitioners had their ‘functionalist’ glasses on).

Thus, it may be so that some investments that were viewed as going to result in good results actually do not and that this is, from a realist perspective, understandable when looking at the assumptions made at the outset of the project/programme. What to do about it? Well, to start with it may be argued that a bit more of a Machiavellian analysis would do the development community a favour.

by Dr Anders Jägerskog, Associate Professor, First Secretary
Senior Programme Manager, Water Resources
Regional Team for Economic and Environmental Development (REED), Sida
Embassy of Sweden, Nairobi, Kenya
 

Det är en ännu en het dag i Almedalen. Ämnet för morgonens frukostseminarium  var också i någon mening ”hett”. Vattenfrågan i Mellanöstern diskuterades. Stockholm International Water Institute, Swedish Water House och Svenska Kyrkan arrangerade ett seminarium med titeln ”Maktmedel, konfliktskapare eller enande faktor? Vattnets roll i Mellanöstern”. Jag inledde seminariet med en presentation över vattensituationen i Jordanflodsområdet med specifikt fokus på Israel-Palestina konflikten. Inför seminariet har jag och Anders Berntell skrivit en debattartikel i Göteborgsposten som publicerades idag.
 

Efter mig kom Henrik Fröjmark som gav en bild över hur Svenska kyrkans samarbetsorganisationer arbetar med vattenfrågan på Västbanken och vilka svårigheter de möter på grund av den israeliska ockupationen. Därpå följde en paneldebatt med Niklas Ekdahl (fd DN och numera frilansande journalist), Heidi Avellan (politisk chefredaktör, Sydsvenskan), Peter Weiderud (s) samt Anders Wijkman (kd). Debatten och diskussionen svepte över stora områden, kopplade ihop vattenfrågan med den politiska situationen, klimatfrågan samt med markfrågor. En gemensam syn hos alla var att det knappast finns en lösning på vattenfrågan utan en lösning av den politiska konflikten. Samtidigt lyftes det fram att alldeles oavsett om parterna kan nå en förhandlingslösning av konflikten så kommer det på sikt ändå inte att lösa den prekära vattensituationen - som sannolikt förvärras av de kommande klimatförändringarna och kompliceras av den näst intill skenande befolkningsökningen i regionen.

Snart är det dags för seminarium nummer 2 för dagen – Anpassning till klimateffekter i utsatta länder – en försummad nyckelfråga i klimatförhandlingarna?
 

This morning I left a seasonably warm and sunny Stockholm for a yet much warmer, sunnier and drier part of the world – the Middle East. Currently I am sitting on the KLM flight from Amsterdam en route to Dubai, promising a nice (or maybe not so nice) 38 degrees, for a two-day conference entitled Water Investments World – Middle East 2009. The Middle East region and the oil wealthy Gulf states in particular has been in the forefront for deploying some of the new technologies relating to desalination and
other water technologies during the last decades. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the ultra-dry United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one of the highest per capita water consumptions of the world, despite the lack of almost any natural water resources. Thanks to large oil reserves the UAE has been able to manage high water demand through desalination.

The conference I am headed for will focus on issues such as investments in water infrastructure, the challenges facing the water sector in the region as a result of the ongoing financial crisis, and how to strike a balance between supply and demand in the region.  I have been invited to act as chairperson the first day of the conference, take part in a panel focusing on the regional outlook on natural water resources, and to deliver a key-note on “Demand management as an essential and effective water policy tool in the Middle East”.  My presentation will draw on one relatively recent SIWI policy brief:”On the Verge of a New Water Scarcity: A call for Good Governance and Human Ingenuity” as well as an article that I co-authored with Håkan Tropp as a background paper for the UNDP 2006 Human Development Report: "Meeting the Water Scarcity Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa". Hopefully it can stir some useful debate around the question of supply oriented approaches and more demand oriented approaches, much needed in at least part of the Middle East region.

The lion’s share of participants in the conference is coming from the private sector and public companies. It seems that I’ve been invited to provide a slightly different (and hopefully complementing) perspective, focusing on policy development, and the water challenges facing the Middle East region. The coming days promise lot’s of interesting and informed discussions about the future of the region’s waters as well as the possible scale of investments in its water sector.
 

by Anders Jägerskog, project Director, SIWI

The weather in Istanbul is improving. Still cold and a little windy but more sun than early on in the week. The spirit is still high but towards the end of an intense week participants are starting to look a little drained.

Despite going towards the end of the Forum, yesterday’s and today’s session on transboundary waters brought up a lot of emotions and resulted in intense discussion. Acting as a co-chair of the introducing transboundary session on basin management and hydrosolidarity it almost felt as if I was caught in the cross-fire. Seemingly semantic questions on whether to use terms such as ‘international waters’ or ‘transboundary waters’, ‘sharing water’ or ‘sharing benefits’ were areas for passionate debate. The organizers of the transboundary theme of the week – UNESCO and INBO – certainly face a challenge in summarizing the key results and outcomes. One does not envy them.

Last night I also chaired a session organized by the Palestinian Water Authority in which an option for an inclusive (including all five riparians – Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory) Jordan Basin future may look that, over time, will put all parties better off in terms of water availability. While the concept is thought-provoking and received positive responses from various parts of the basin the idea may well be hostage to political developments. This event will be followed up at a seminar during the World Water Week in Stockholm in August.

Today I talked at a session organized by the Euphrates Tigris Initiative for Co-operation (ETIC) about so called ‘track two’ initiatives and presented the Transboundary Waters Opportunity (TWO) Analysis that SIWI has been developing with colleagues in Namibia (PRA) and South Africa (CSIR). The presentation gained a positive response and the conceptual framework of the TWO analysis will be utilized in by the ETIC network.

Tomorrow - the final day of the Forum – coincides with the UN World Water Day with the theme – Shared water – shared opportunities where SIWIs Executive Director Anders Berntell will take part.
The days here start early and have a tendency to end very late. I do not foresee that this day will be any different. I am quite happy that it is only one day left…..
 

by Anders Jägerskog, Project Director, SIWI

It’s a cold rainy day here in the ancient city of Istanbul as the 5th World Water Forum heads into its second half.  The media has served a dual role as observers and participants in the proceedings, often injecting well-informed questions to spark discussions at main sessions and side events alike.

The Swedish Water House delegation has certainly gotten its share of attention. 

Readers of this morning’s edition of the Daily News & Economic Review – Turkey’s highly regarded English language newspaper - read of comments by SIWI Executive Director Anders Berntell at yesterday’s panel on Food, Water, and Energy. The article titled “Better Management of Water” also featured a prominent solo photo of Anders as he made his remarks. Earlier in the day, Anders recorded an interview about trading water with Radio Free Europe to be broadcast today at several times across most European countries. On Monday, Anders sat with a lead economic writer for The Economist to inform a major focus feature now in development at the London-based publication.
 

SIWI's Anders Berntell in the panel on Food , Water and Energy. Photo by Mehmet Kacmaz © NarPhotos

Dr. Anders Jägerskog arrived here in Istanbul late yesterday, and had barely stowed his gear when he sat for a lengthy recorded interview with the Middle-East correspondent for The World – the popular news and analysis radio program jointly produced by PRI for National Public Radio in the United States and by the BBC. Anders engaged the correspondent in a lively, wide-ranging discussion about the role that water plays in many of the region’s issues.

Four days down, four more to go. We expect the focus to sharpen as the forum moves toward its conclusion.

by Michael McWilliams, Communications Director, SIWI