Climate Change and Water Variability : Do Water Treaties Contribute to River Basin Resilience?

Dinar, Shlomi ; Katz, David ; De Stefano, Lucia ; Blankespoor, Brian

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: water variability;    climate change;    river basin management;    international water treaties;    water allocation;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7855
RP-ID  :  WPS7855

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Climate-driven water variability is anatural phenomenon observed across river basins, butpredicted to increase due to climate change. Environmentalchange of this kind may aggravate political tensions,especially in regions that are not equipped with anappropriate institutional apparatus. This paper argues thatattempts to assess the ability of states to deal withvariability in the future rests with considering how riverbasins with agreements have fared in the past. The paperinvestigates whether basins governed by treaties witnessless tension (and by extension more cooperation) over sharedwater in comparison with those basins not governed bytreaties, using the 1948-2008 country dyads event data fromthe Basins at Risk project. The results provide evidence tosuggest that the presence of a treaty promotes cooperation.Furthermore, the number of agreements between ripariancountries has a significant positive effect on cooperation,which is robust across different specifications controllingfor a broad set of climatic, geographic, political, andeconomic variables.