Discussion and future outlook

The UNECE Water Convention has fostered the development of transboundary agreements, the establishment of joint bodies and cooperation at the political and technical levels for some 20 years. It does not replace basin-level agreements, but provides a basis and a framework for the conclusion of such agreements. It is cur-rently the platform for cooperation and sharing experience for more than 40 Parties.

The Convention’s institutional structure, scope and focus of work have evolved to respond to changing needs.

The work under the Convention has experienced a gradual shift of emphasis to the east, to the Caucasus and in particular to Central Asia.⁶⁶ Now, a shift is occurring beyond the UNECE region. Recent years have also seen increasing participation by countries from other regions in the Convention’s meetings and activities. A number of non-UNECE countries have formally expressed interest in acceding to the Con-vention once this becomes possible.⁶⁷ Hence, the opening of the Convention to ac-cession by countries from other regions is expected to gradually shape the work un-der the Convention.

There are various problems related to the status and availability of water resources, and addressing these problems effectively requires transboundary coordination and cooperation. For instance, the binding targets set in the EU for renewable energy⁶⁸ have led to a renewed interest in developing hydropower, and since hydropower de-velopments commonly affect river flow there may be transboundary implications on downstream uses and ecosystems. Where institutional arrangements for

transbound-65 European Environment Agency (EEA), European Waters – Assessment of Status and Pressures, EEA Report No 8/2012 (EEA, 2012), available at <http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/european-waters-assessment-2012> (visited 15 September 2015).

66 Lipponen and Kauppi, ‘Monitoring and Assessment’, supra note 45, at 266.

67 Trombitcaia and Koeppel, ‘From a Regional’, supra note 9.

68 Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, OJ 2009 L140/16. The Directive lays down lays down legally binding targets; notably, a 20 per cent share of renewable energy in the EU by 2020.

The UNECE Water Convention and the Support it gives to the Management of Shared Waters: From Obligations to Practical Implementation

ary cooperation are in place and functioning, there is a better basis for consultation of co-riparian countries and assessment of impacts, reducing potential for conflict.

Mitigating impacts of hydrological extremes, flood management in particular, is an area where good cooperation through exchange of monitoring information, early warning arrangements and smart management of infrastructure can greatly reduce the potential damage to all countries sharing the watercourse. At the other extreme, drought situations may put pressure on the water allocation agreed between the ri-parian countries.⁶⁹ To support countries and joint bodies in dealing with challenges related to climate variability and change, good experiences and practices of adapta-tion to climate change have been collected from all over the world in this thematic area of work under the Water Convention.⁷⁰ Another topical area where the Water Convention can provide assistance is in reconciling different water uses and reduc-ing intersectoral frictions in transboundary basins.⁷¹ It is increasingly clear that wa-ter administrations need to work closely with other sectors to improve coherence be-tween sectoral policies and to reduce impacts on shared waters.

To move forward and promote the principles of international water law, it will be essential to provide countries with assistance in implementing the Convention, and to strengthen the related capacity. One new means to that end is the Implementa-tion Committee, which was established to render practical, case-tailored assistance to prevent water-related disputes and to support Parties in their efforts to implement the Convention. Overall, rich experience has accumulated in the framework of the Convention, as documented in the guidelines and other soft-law instruments which have been developed thereunder. These are expected to find wider application in the future, supported by increasing dissemination in additional UN official languages.

Many bilateral and multilateral agreements in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia either make no explicit reference to groundwater, or have only a very limited application thereto. The Model Provisions on Transboundary

Groundwa-69 The Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the Waters of Portuguese-Spanish River Basins (Albufeira, 30 November 1998, in force 17 January 2000) regulates the transboundary waters in the shared basins between Spain and Portugal. It includes the transboundary Tagus, Minho, Duero/Douro, and Guadiana Rivers. This so-called Albufeira agreement was amended to be better able to account for the seasonal variability of flows and for low flows (Protocol of Revision of the Agreement on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the Waters of the Spanish-Portuguese Hydrographic Basins and the Additional Protocol, Madrid and Lisbon, 4 April 2008, in force 5 August 2009). The amendment is discussed from the point of view of climate variability and change in Els Otterman and Sonja Koeppel ‘Case study: The UNECE Water Convention and its Program of Adaptation to Climate Change in transboundary Basins’ in Juan Carlos Sanchez and Joshua Roberts (eds), Transboundary Water Governance: Adaptation to Climate Change (IUCN, 2014), available at <https://

portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/IUCN–EPLP–no.075.pdf> (visited 26 October 2015) 159–

174, at 172–173.

70 UNECE, Water and Climate Change Adaptation in Transboundary Basins: Lessons Learned and Good Practices (UNECE, 2015), available at <http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=39417> (visited 26 October 2015).

71 UNECE, Reconciling resource uses in transboundary basins: assessment of the water–food–energy–ecosystems nexus (UNECE, 2015), available through <http://www.unece.org/env/water/publications/pub.html>.

ters⁷² may provide practical assistance to countries in addressing this gap by pro-viding a model that could be adapted, for instance, to revise the scope of existing agreements or to complement them with a protocol on groundwaters. The Model Provisions build on the 2008 Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers,⁷³ devel-oped by the United Nations International Law Commission – a development which has drawn attention to the application of international water law to groundwaters and aquifers. Challenges in groundwater cooperation are technical, legal and also in-stitutional, and the work under the Water Convention tries to address all of these as-pects. On the technical side, the guidelines on monitoring and assessment of trans-boundary groundwaters are still relevant despite technical progress in groundwater monitoring and the Model Provisions are a helpful new soft-law instrument for sup-porting the development of the related legal and institutional basis.

The seventh Meeting of the Parties, to be held in November 2015, will decide on a number of issues that are important for the future of the Water Convention, among them the proposed regular reporting by Parties on transboundary cooperation, as well as the programme of work for 2016–2018. It will also be an important occasion for forging partnerships which will be key for extending the outreach of the Conven-tion and also for mobilizing resources to support countries in the development and regularization of their transboundary cooperation.

The fact that the Sustainable Development Goal on water (Goal 6), adopted by 193 UN Member States in September 2015 as part of the global Sustainable Develop-ment Agenda for the period 2015 to 2030,⁷⁴ has a target on IWRM (target 6.5) which explicitly mentions transboundary cooperation is a high-level recognition of its importance. Especially if the eventual monitoring of the transboundary coopera-tion aspect of target 6.5 will be based on the availability of operacoopera-tional agreements, arrangements or institutions for transboundary cooperation in shared basins as pro-posed by UN-Water,⁷⁵ the inter-agency coordination mechanism on water issues, the reporting under the Convention and the regular assessments of transboundary wa-ters can contribute to monitoring progress.

72 See supra note 11.

73 Articles on The Law of Transboundary Aquifers of the United Nations International Law Commission, adopted by the International Law Commission at its sixtieth session, in 2008, available at <http://legal.

un.org/docs/?path=../ilc/texts/instruments/english/draft_articles/8_5_2008.pdf&lang=EF> (visited 26 October 2015).

74 The Sustainable Development Agenda with 17 global Goals was adopted at the Summit on Sustainable Development on 25 September 2015 in New York. For more information, see 2015 – Time for Global Action for People and Planet, ‘Historic New Sustainable Development Agenda Unanimously Adopted by 193 UN Members’, available at <http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2015/09/historic-new-sustainable-development-agenda-unanimously-adopted-by-193-un-members/> (visited 26 October 2015).

75 UN-Water, ‘Metadata on Suggested Indicators for Global Monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goal 6 on Water and Sanitation’ (2015), available at <http://www.unwater.org/fileadmin/user_upload/

unwater_new/docs/Goal%206_Metadata%20Compilation%20for%20Suggested%20Indicators_UN–

Water_v2015–10–20.pdf> (visited 26 October 2015).