This paper analyzes the principled content of 62 international river agreements for the period 1980-2000. We ask two questions: whether governments are converging on common principles for governing shared river basins and whether the effort to create a global normative framework for shared rivers has shaped the principled content of basinlevel international accords. The data reveal a complex process of normative development. A few core principles emanating from global legal efforts have shown significant growth, diffusion and deepening at the basin-specific level. Others are common in basin agreements but show no diffusion or deepening. Still others are weakly represented in the data. If joint articulation of common principles is necessary for regime formation, then there is only weak evidence for a global rivers regime. But the data also reveal normative developments not captured by a regime-theoretic lens: a backlash reinforcing sovereign rights, the emergence of two seemingly conflicting clusters of principles, and an ambiguous relationship between some principles typically thought to be mutually reinforcing. The results show the need to treat principled content as an important dependent variable in the study of cooperation and to view institution building as a dynamic, multi-dimensional and multi-level process.The world's major rivers create complex challenges of international cooperation. There are an estimated 263 internationally shared rivers ) flowing through basins that cover some 45% of the Earth's land surface. One hundred and forty-five countriesFall but a handful of the world's nonisland statesFhave some portion of their territory in an international basin. Of these, almost two-thirds have at least half of their national territory lying in an international basin.

Environmental peacebuilding is a rapidly growing field of research and practice at the intersection of environment, conflict, peace and security. Focusing on these linkages is crucial in a time when the environment is a core issue of international politics and the number of armed conflicts remains high. This article introduces a special issue with a particular emphasis on environmental opportunities for building and sustaining peace. We first detail the definitions, theoretical assumptions and intellectual background of environmental peacebuilding. The article then provides context for the special issue by briefly reviewing core findings and debates of the first two generations of environmental peacebuilding research. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps that should be addressed in the next generation of research, and to which the articles in this special issue contribute: bottom-up approaches, gender, conflict-sensitive programming, use of big data and frontier technology, and monitoring and evaluation.

ABSTRACT. Over the past decade, the policy and scholarly communities have increasingly recognized the need for governance of water-related issues at the global level. There has been major progress in the achievement of international goals related to the provision of basic water and some progress on sanitation services. However, the water challenge is much broader than securing supply. Doubts have been raised about the effectiveness of some of the existing governance processes, in the face of trends such as the unsustainable use of water resources, the increasing pressure imposed by climate change, or the implications of population growth for water use in food and energy production. Conflicts between different water uses and users are increasing, and the state of the aquatic environment is further declining. Inequity in access to basic water and sanitation services is still an issue. We argue that missing links in the trajectories of policy development are one major reason for the relative ineffectiveness of global water governance. To identify these critical links, a framework is used to examine how core governance processes are performed and linked. Special attention is given to the role of leadership, representativeness, legitimacy, and comprehensiveness, which we take to be critical characteristics of the processes that underpin effective trajectories of policy development and implementation. The relevance of the identified categories is illustrated with examples from three important policy arenas in global water governance: the effort to address access to water and sanitation, currently through the Millennium Development Goals; the controversy over large dams; and the links between climate change and water resources management. Exploratory analyses of successes and failures in each domain are used to identify implications and propose improvements for more effective and legitimate action.

The environment is not usually viewed as the most important problem in war-torn societies. 1 Humanitarian relief, security, economic reconstruction, and political reconciliation all command attention as urgent priorities. Yet violent conflict does extraordinary damage to the environment on which people depend for their health and livelihoods; human insecurities in such settings have a strong, immediate ecological component as people struggle for clean water, sanitation, food, and fuel in a context of conflict-ravaged infrastructure, lost livelihoods, and disrupted institutions. Over time, more diffuse but equally important environmental challenges emerge: establishing systems of environmental governance, managing pressures on the resource base, creating administrative capacity, dealing with environmental effects of recovery, and finding sustainable trajectories for reconstruction. The scholarly debate over whether environmental degradation causes violent conflict is ongoing. But as the chapter shows, a growing body of scholarly literature and case documentation indicates that the failure to respond to environmental needs of war-torn societies may greatly complicate the difficult tasks of peacebuilding. At worst, tensions triggered by environmental problems or contested access to natural resources may lead to renewed violent conflict; more generally, failure to meet basic environmental needs undercuts reconciliation, political institu tionalization, and economic reconstruction. In the short run, failure to respond to environmental challenges can deepen human suffering and increase vulnerability to natural disasters. In the long run, it may threaten the effective

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