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

This volume examines the legal regimes and arrangements related to transboundary waters established by the countries of South Asia in their attempts for fair allocation of their shared watercourses. It provides an analytical overview of the treaty regimes, then discusses challenges of treaty negotiations, implementation, and enforcement faced by these countries, which lead to their inability to harness optimal benefits pertaining to water and power. It also compares the provisions of the treaties with international water law, to analyze and understand areas of convergence and divergence. It argues that the challenges for ensuring fair and optimal water sharing arrangements in the region are related to political mistrust among riparian countries, political asymmetry, divergent national water ethos and approaches manifested in the adoption of the concept of water security, and imbalance in supply and demand, as well as weak understanding of international water law and fragile internal political governance. It ends with suggestions to assist these countries in moving forward with optimal, sustainable, and beneficial utilization of their shared watercourses. Annotation ©2018 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

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.