International Law

Because rivers know no borders...

WWF calls on governments to collaborate on the protection, equitable use, and sustainable management of the world's river basins that cross international borders. These river systems sustain millions of people and support vast vulnerable ecosystems.

"Civilization has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water."  
                                          - Paolo Lugari

Current Situation:

There are 263 transboundary river basins around the globe, covering nearly half of the earth’s land surface and crossing the territories of 145 countries. Such basins are home to 40% of the world’s population and generate around 60% of global freshwater flow.


Many of our great rivers are threatened...

We are living in a world where 54% of the world’s accessible freshwater is diverted for human consumption; a number of major rivers like the Nile barely reach the sea; growing water consumption and climate change threaten to increase water scarcity, and along rivers like the Indus there are already environmental refugees, as a result of the collapse of fishing, salinisation, erosion of delta lands and lack of water to grow crops.

...and we need better international agreements to protect them.

Many of the watercourse agreements that are in force in particular river basins simply define borders or regulate joint water resources development. Numerous others do not involve all states within a basin.

Most agreements contain serious gaps and failing. For example, they provide neither for integrated river basin management, nor for adequate ecosystem protection or pollution control. A lot of agreements also lack appropriate enforcement mechanisms and monitoring provisions.

Where no cooperative management frameworks exist, which is the case in 60% of the world's international watercourses, unilateral action by one state can significantly impact human health and livelihoods across the border.

Effective multinational governance mechanisms would support the sustainable management of places like the Amazon, Mekong, Indus, Sepik, Fly, Amur, Zambezi, and Congo basins. It would protect river ecosystems and communities dependent upon them and encourage nations to work together to sustainably manage and conserve water resources physically shared among them.

WWF calls on governments to take action to promote and accelerate:

There are good reasons to collaborate...

Without active measures to promote collaboration, growing water scarcity and degradation are likely to increase interstate conflicts in rivers like the Jordan, Tigris & Euprates, Indus, Ganga & Brahmaputra, Mekong, Nile & Okavango.

International norms regulating the rights and duties of basin and aquifer countries create a legal framework for transboundary cooperation on the management, use, and protection of water resources.

They foster dialogue and global security that are necessary to maintain ecosystems services and facilitate access to sufficient food supplies, to alternatives for sustainable energy production, to safe and affordable water, and to adequate sanitation, in furtherance of the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Those actions, if taken by governments, will provide states with minimum legal standards to support coordination and cooperation towards the sustainable, cooperative and equitable management of transboundary river basins.

For more information, please contact:

• Flavia Loures at +1 (202) 495-4716, or via email at flavia.loures@wwfus.org
• Amanda Cleghorn at +1 (202) 495-4467, or via email at amanda.cleghorn@wwfus.org