A socio-hydrologic framework for understanding conflict and cooperation in transboundary rivers

Abstract

Abstract. Increasing hydrologic variability, accelerating population growth, and resurgence of water resources development projects have all indicated increasing tensions among the riparian countries of transboundary rivers. This article aims to review the existing knowledge on conflict and cooperation in transboundary rivers from a multidisciplinary perspective and propose a socio-hydrological framework that integrates the slow and less visible societal processes with existing hydrological-economic models, revealing the hidden feedbacks between changes in societal processes and hydrological changes. This framework contributes to understanding the mechanism that drives conflict and cooperation in transboundary river management.

Theoretical evaluation of integrated Basin at Risk (iBAR) method for international water conflict-cooperation analysis

“…Various disciplines have therefore investigated what may contribute to conflict and cooperation in STRBs, covering a wide variety of approaches in their studies (Wei et al, 2021;Offutt, 2022). Economic approaches focus on how water resources are economically valued, traded through market mechanisms, or distributed among different stakeholders, and how economic incentives influence cooperation or conflict in managing these resources (Blatter and Ingram, 2000;Arjoon et al, 2016;Zeng et al, 2016;Hossen et al, 2021), Statistical and datadriven approaches rely on historical data to identify patterns and correlations among the drivers of water interactions and provide insights for future scenarios (Vieira and Ribeiro, 2010;Farinosi et al, 2018;Veisi et al, 2020).…”