During the process of bridging conflicting water interests, cooperation and conflict tend to co-exist. The main aim of this research is to identify the reason behind the intensified water relationship between China and Kazakhstan. In this regard, the main research question is: what are the barriers hindering the implementation of Sino-Kazakhstan water allocation cooperation? In order to answer this question, the research applies a qualitative analysis approach to assemble the crucial descriptors that allow the main barriers to be categorized, such as appreciation of water, initial willingness, institutional conflict resolution, and bureaucratic system constraints. This is intended to provide an assessment of the motivation, organization, and implementation of Sino-Kazakhstan transboundary water management, based on interdisciplinary literature on water management and international law. This research ultimately finds that the opposite interests, reluctance, ambiguity in the legal framework, and poor intra-governmental coordination negatively impact the implementation of Sino-Kazakhstan water allocation cooperation.

In establishing an equitable and reasonable use of a transboundary watercourse, States are to take into consideration a variety of factors, including the availability of alternative uses. This article seeks to provide a framework for assessing such alternative uses by first exploring treaty practice and relevant cases across the fields of international environmental law and international water law. Three key components are identified: comparable feasibility, practicality and cost‐effectiveness of alternatives. These components are then explored through a case study of Central Asian transboundary waters. The results demonstrate that the use of alternatives after analysing key components would help reduce the hidden cost of low efficiency and assist in finding optimal water use solutions in transboundary water cooperation.

The raison d’être of international water law is that it provides States with a toolkit to equip them to deal with complex problems relating to the joint use and sustainable management of transboundary freshwater resources. The principle of equitable and reasonable utilization is one such tool in this toolkit. When applying the equitable and reasonable utilization principle to a specific transboundary watercourse, States sharing that watercourse must decide which water uses are more important than others. But the general rule is that no water use takes a priori priority over others (this is the so-called no-inherent-priority rule). This paper examines three ways in which this no-inherent-priority rule can be relativized, by recognizing a certain degree of priority to certain categories of water uses. Based on an assessment of previous State practice, it is suggested that (1) existing uses enjoy a certain degree of priority over new uses; that water uses that are (2) more beneficial to a greater number of people and are less damaging to other uses and the freshwater ecosystems, enjoy priority; and that water uses that (3) immediately satisfy vital human water needs enjoy priority. States need some general guidance in identifying which water uses normally take priority in defined circumstances, and this paper provides such guidance, thereby making the tool more effective. States can decide to derogate from these general rules if the circumstances so require; they are, of course, not legally binding on them.