Water conflict between Pakistan and India: Implications to regional peace and security

Pakistan and India are water stressed countries and the seed of water conflict between the two has been sowed by the Punjab boundary commission at the time of Partition. Trans-boundary water treaties have played a significant role in resolving the water disputes though the mechanism of conflict resolution varies and structurally fails to address the future problems that may arise. Indus Water Treaty (IWT) has been examined as an efficacious Model of conflict resolution and induced cooperation from 1960s to 1980s. Pakistan claimed that India is violating IWT by building dams and diverting waters of Western Rivers flowing from India to Pakistan. Therefore, the research attempts to answer the following questions. What is the cumulative effect of Indian dams being constructed on the Western Rivers? Can India Unilaterally withdraw the treaty? What would be the implications if India violates the treaty? Holistic content analysis of qualitative method and conflict theory has been used to investigate the water conflict between Pakistan and India. The key findings are that violation of treaty by India is perceived as security threat by Pakistan and also increase its economic concerns. The tension between the two neighbours over water sharing can lead to water war which poses serious threats to regional peace and security.

Transboundary Water Resources Conflict Analysis Using Graph Model for Conflict Resolution: A Case Study—Harirud River

One of the most important environmental issues today is the water crisis and the ensuing security challenges. Of these, transboundary waters pose the most significant security challenges. Resolving these conflicts and agreements over transboundary waters has always faced a variety of challenges, making it difficult to reach a mutually agreed solution. One of the transboundary water conflicts that have been exacerbating in recent years is the conflict between Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan over the use of the Harirud river water resources. The present paper aims to analyze, using the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR), a game theory model, the conflict between the three countries regarding the utilization of the water resources of the border river, Harirud. To this purpose, first, the current state of the conflict was investigated. Then, each of the three countries’ possible options and preferences was defined according to the past and present state of the conflict as well as the possible states. By defining the permissible movements and priorities of each decision maker, the equilibrium of the conflict was obtained. Next, four scenarios were defined, the equilibria were extracted in each scenario, and the results were interpreted. The implementation of the GMCR model algorithm regarding the Harirud water conflict between the three countries indicated that the current state is the most likely outcome of the conflict as none of the parties involved, given their preferences, and is motivated or able to change their strategy to help the conflict to a more favorable state.

Game Theory and Dealing with Water Conflict

In the last century, water conflicts have increased in many parts of the world for reasons such as a strong desire for rapid development and poor governance. The impact of these conflicts on various sectors of society such as economic, political and legal subsystems has led researchers to focus on providing solutions and practical methods to deal with water conflicts. Game theory is one of the most common methods used by researchers to manage water conflicts and water allocation in shared and transboundary river basins. Despite the special place of game theory in reductionist sciences, the application of this theory to dealing with conflicts in complex water systems faces challenges. Whereas, the critique of the effectiveness of the game theory method in water conflict management has been neglected. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the capacity to apply the game theory to deal with water conflicts. In order to achieve this purpose, while using library resources, the basics of game theory and the capacity to apply it in the management of water conflicts are analyzed. The results reveal that following the theory of rational choice and rationalism in the game theory method has led to ignore many dimensions and factors affecting the water conflict formation and the way to deal with complex water conflicts. Keywords: Water Conflicts, Game Theory, Peacebuilding, Shared and Transboundary River Basins

From Power to Legitimacy—Explaining Historical and Contemporary Water Conflict at Yesa Reservoir (Spain) and Gross Reservoir (USA) Using Path Dependency

Conflict over new dams and reservoirs is well-studied, but less is known about controversies over the reoperation of existing water infrastructure. This paper presents two cases of reoperation that have been embroiled in conflict: the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project in Colorado, United States, and the Yesa Reservoir Regrowth project in Aragon and Navarra, Spain. A historical analysis of each of the cases relies on process tracing, reaching back to their construction in the 1950s up to present day, and a cross-case comparison distills findings on the causes of historical and contemporary conflict. The paper adds empirical evidence to the phenomenon of path dependency, and argues that a transition of the dominant mechanism of institutional reproduction occurs in the cases—from power to legitimacy—which in turn informs us about the historical and present-day conflicts. We find that through the contemporary reoperation, water service providers are experiencing a legitimacy crisis related to the quickly-evolving values of water users, and their access to competing sources of knowledge and expertise.

Technical Note: Building a methodological framework and toolkit for news media dataset tracking of conflict and cooperation dynamics on transboundary rivers

Management of transboundary rivers will be one of the great political and environmental challenges of the 21st century if knowledge of conflict and cooperation is not fully developed. Transboundary river conflict and cooperation are critical for the sustainable development of river basins, regional security, and stability, and have significant scientific and practical implications. The construction of a dataset of transboundary water events – individual conflictive or cooperative interaction between riparian –provides important data support and factual basis for the study of transboundary rivers. However, the most representative research, the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, is built by means of manual reading for information extraction, thus difficult for fast updating, also does not cover the global changes in the past decade. This research aims to build a methodological framework for news media datasets tracking of conflict and cooperation dynamics on transboundary rivers, provide mass of relevant data for the research of transboundary rivers in the globe, prepare a potent research toolkit, lay a solid foundation for further data mining research, and better suit the big data age. In order to test the effectiveness of the methodological framework and toolkit for dataset construction, this research analyses the word frequency and themes of the articles in datasets. The results show that the datasets built by this framework can reflect comprehensive themes of transboundary water conflict and cooperation. Through the analysis of media activity in different river basins, it is possible to get a global overview of the participation of countries located within and outside of the basin in transboundary water issues.