Crossing water borders

How should countries that share rivers manage water resources? That’s the topic of the latest title in the IUCN Water and Nature Toolkit Series.

A woman and children crossing the river at the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso.

SHARE – Managing Water Across Boundaries was launched before an audience of international water policy negotiators at the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in Changwon, Korea.

The book serves as a practical guide to transboundary water management. With more than 260 river and lake basins worldwide shared by two or more countries, managing water across borders is a critical challenge.

Country borders are often barriers to managing river basins as a single unit, according to the guide. Decisions made in one part of a basin are made without knowledge of the availability, use or needs for water in another part of the basin. Ecosystems often suffer as a result and tensions between nations emerge.

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Related content: Water and Wetlands Share: Managing waters across boundaries; Coastal Remote Sensing Toolkit; A Web Based Toolkit for Using Remote Sensing Data; Tips for Facilitating an Environmental Email List; Workshop: Reinforcement of the capacities for the improvement of the productivity of water on the level of the farms with AquaCrop; UNEP/IW:LEARN Regional IT Workshop (Athens)

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Crossing water borders

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