Shared Watercourses and Water Security in South Asia: Challenges of Negotiating and Enforcing Treaties

Shared water resources in South Asia face various challenges including scarcity, population growth, and climate change impacts on all the riparians. Consequently, national calls for water security have become louder. As a result, collaboration among the nations of South Asia for ensuring equitable sharing of such water resources has not been optimal. While most countries do not have reliable systems for data generation, those possessing some hydrological data consider them state secrets, restricting their exchange. Even when treaty obligations exist, data-sharing practices are ad hoc, and the range of information shared is limited. Thus, negotiating new transboundary water treaties amongst South Asia’s riparian countries has become a daunting task, and enforcing existing ones remains a real challenge.

Salman M. A. Salman (JSD 1972) is an academic researcher on water law and policy, a fellow with the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), and the Editor-in-Chief of Brill Research Perspectives in International Water Law. He is the recipient of IWRA 2017 Crystal Drop Award, and has published widely on water law and policy.

Kishor Uprety (Doctorate, Sorbonne University, Paris 1984) has been a lawyer at World Bank (USA) and UNIFAD (Rome), and a private practitioner, a lecturer of law, and an in-house counsel (Nepal). Dr. Uprety has authored and co-authored three dozen books and articles on various international law and development-related themes.