Archive for the ‘Sustainable Development’ Category

Adapting Watercourse Agreements to Developments in International Law: The Case of the Itaipu Treaty

Tuesday, April 16th, 2019

The following essay by Dr. Maria A. Gwynn is a summary of her recently published monograph (under the same title), which appears in Vol. 4(1) 2019, of Brill Research Perspectives in International Water Law.  Dr. Maria A. Gwynn is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Public International Law of the University of Bonn, and conducted most of the research contained in this monograph while she was an Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow at Princeton University and at the University of Oxford. She can be reached at maria.gwynn [at] uni-bonn.de.

 

The UN Convention on the non-navigational uses of international watercourses recommends that states adapt their existing bilateral and regional agreements to the provisions of the Convention to promote equitable and reasonable uses of watercourses. This monograph assesses the practical consequences of this provision, and the prospects for achieving sustainable development with such action, and uses the Itaipu Treaty as a case study.

The Parana River

The Itaipu Treaty, which was signed and ratified by Brazil and Paraguay in 1973 and continues to be in force today, was established so that these two countries would jointly pursue the advantages that could be obtained from the exploitation of the Parana River to

The former Guaira Falls

produce hydropower through the construction of a dam. The Parana River is an international watercourse on the South American continent sourced by the La Plata basin. The dam was constructed at the river’s most powerful point, the Guaira Falls, formerly the greatest set of waterfalls on the South American continent, which disappeared after the construction of the dam.

The river’s great resources were not underestimated. Today, the sheer amount of energy that the Itaipu Dam produces has placed both countries among the largest producers of clean and renewable energy in the world. However, while Brazil consumes its entire share of the energy produced, Paraguay (whose available share of energy from the hydropower facilities far exceeds its own domestic energy demands) only consumes a small part of this clean and renewable energy source. Paraguay, instead, continues to use biomass sources (burning of coal and wood) to satisfy most of its energy needs. Under the Itaipu Treaty, Paraguay sells its unused allotment of energy to Brazil.In general, the Itaipu Treaty regulates the use and consumption of hydropower produced by the dam, making the provisions of the treaty very pertinent to understanding the two countries’ energy policies.

The Itaipu Dam and Reservoir

The Itaipu Treaty entered into force before the United Nations International Law Commission had finished its task of evaluating the international law and customs on the non-navigational uses of international watercourses, embodied in the UN Watercourses Convention, and before some of the major developments concerning international environmental law came about. However, the Itaipu

Treaty contains a renegotiation provision, according to which the two states must renegotiate some of its provisions 50 years following the conclusion of the treaty, i.e. in the upcoming year 2023. The monograph argues that this is a great opportunity for both countries to adapt their watercourse agreements to the current standard and principles of international law.

The monograph provides a detailed assessment of the advantages of adapting watercourse agreements to the standard and principles of all pertinent areas of international law, such as international water law, international environmental law, and climate change law. The first part of the monograph begins with an analysis of the initial approaches to the law of international watercourses in the first half of the twentieth century. It discusses some of the main principles of the law governing international watercourses and the work of pertinent institutions concerned with this area. In this sense, the first part of the monograph describes the status of the law on international watercourses at the time when the Itaipu project was first pursued.

Signing the Acta de Yguazu Agreement in 1966

The second part of the monograph discusses the Itaipu project in its legal and historical context. An analysis of the principles of consultation and notification for projects on international watercourses are particularly instructive. The monograph describes the relevance of the role of Paraguay, which despite being a main treaty party, has often been neglected in the scholarship.  The monograph shows how escalation of disputes to an international conflict regarding sovereignty was eased by benefit sharing agreements and inter-state cooperation of the countries of the La Plata basin. The monograph also offers a comparative analysis to similar cooperation and benefit sharing agreements signed at about the same time in other parts of the world.

The Itaipu Agreement

The third part of the monograph describes the advances in the law of international watercourses and of environmental law since the 1970s, and places the implementation of the Itaipu Treaty, which in turn is analyzed in the fourth part of the monograph, within this context. The fifth part of the monograph describes recent disputes concerning the non-navigational uses of international watercourses decided by the International Court of Justice in an analysis that connects the decisions of such judgments with the monograph’s object of study.

The monograph concludes by highlighting how the treaty provisions and their implementation could be affected by the developments in international law and the UN Watercourses Convention in particular. It argues that adapting watercourses agreements like the Itaipu Treaty to the provisions of the Convention is a way to foster

The UN Sustainable Development Goals

sustainable development. Doing so would be advantageous not only to the treaty parties, but also to the other countries in the water basin and to the international community as a whole.

The monograph is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Dr. Efrain Cardozo (1906-1973) and to Prof. Dr. Ruben Ramirez Pane (1920-2004).

The entire article is available here.

 

Posted in Brill Research Perspectives – International Water Law, International Water Law, Latin America, South America, Sustainable Development, Transboundary Rivers, UN Watercourses Convention | Comments Off on Adapting Watercourse Agreements to Developments in International Law: The Case of the Itaipu Treaty

The Greening of Water Law: Why and How We should Modernize Legislation to Account for the Environment

Monday, May 22nd, 2017

The following essay by Ariella D’Andrea is an introduction to the training course on “The Greening of Water Law: Implementing environment-friendly principles in contemporary water law,” which she designed and coordinated. The course is available on UN Environment’s InforMEA E-Learning Platform. Ms D’Andrea is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for Water Law (AIDA). She can be reached at ariella.dandrea [at] gmail.com

 

In the past century, water management focused primarily on developing the resource to satisfy human needs: irrigation, hydropower, industrial and municipal uses, and so on. National governments around the world put in place a broad range of infrastructure and mechanisms for the abstraction and use of water resources to implement their development policies.

This display of engineering skills for dam construction, diversion of watercourses, groundwater pumping and, more recently, desalination has not always been mindful of environmental concerns that may result from technological advances. More often than not, efficient water abstraction was the main objective with little thought given to the long-term availability or quality maintenance of the resource. This approach was based on the conception of water as a renewable rather than finite resource. Although water quantity and quality regenerate through the hydrologic cycle, we now know that the amount of water on Earth is constant. Of this water, only about 2.5% is freshwater and, of that volume, around 0.3% is readily accessible being found in rivers and lakes; the rest is stored in glaciers and ice caps or in aquifers underground.

All life forms need clean and sufficient water to thrive, which is produced by healthy ecosystems.  Time has shown that inconsiderate economic development may critically affect the rate at which freshwater is generated in the natural environment, thus compromising the crucial ecosystem-support function of water resources in a vicious cycle of progressive water salinization and biodiversity loss, at least in a local context.

Inspired by traditional knowledge, some countries have declared the environment or specific waterbodies as right holders. In Ecuador, Mother Nature or Pacha Mama was granted the right to the conservation of water resources (Water Resources Law 2014 based on the Constitution of 2008); New Zealand recently granted legal personality to the Whanganui River, with rights and duties as well a legal representative (Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017). Shortly after, the waterbodies and forests of the Indian State of Uttarakhand, including the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers and the Gangotri and Yamunotri Glaciers, were declared as legal entities by the High Court of Uttarakhand (Order of 20 March 2017 and Order of 30 March 2017). At this very moment, French Polynesia is considering the possibility of granting legal personality not only to its rivers but also to its ocean Te moana nui a Hiva (Parliamentary Question to the Minister of the Environment, 28 March 2017).

Greening-course2Clearly, a balance must be struck between people’s needs and those of the natural environment. Moreover, action must be taken to reverse the degradation of waterbodies, knowing that the status quo ante cannot always be restored. UN member States recently committed, under Sustainable Development Goal 6, to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”, including by implementing integrated water resources management and by protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems.

Water law can support this commitment by guiding water use and management towards sustainability. To do this, it must become ‘greener’. In practice, the water law ‘greening’ is the process by which legal provisions regulating the use of water resources progressively incorporate environmental concerns. The greening of international treaties, regional agreements and domestic legislation on water resources may be carried out by: freshwater treaty negotiators as they bring environmental principles and concerns to bear on negotiations over shared freshwater bodies; domestic legislatures embedding environmental provisions into laws and regulations, and by judges interpreting legal provisions in light of environmental law.

Legislation reflects the society it regulates; therefore, early domestic water laws generally supported the ‘development craze’ and focused on abstraction and use of water resources rather than protection and conservation. Similarly, early international water law, including bi- or multilateral agreements on shared waters, focused on allocation of those waters between riparian countries rather than preservation.

Environmental concerns started making their way in both domestic and international water law in the second half of the 20th century and, more conspicuously, after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when the greening wave acquired momentum and depth. It was during that decade that two major treaties on transboundary waters were adopted: the 1992 UNECE Water Convention, and the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention.

The interdependence of water and nature is now widely recognized, not only in the scientific world but also by policy- and lawmakers. The environment is increasingly being recognized as a water user, competing with the different human uses of the resource, and a wide range of solutions are emerging to ensure that environmental concerns are duly accounted for in water law.

‘Green’ provisions often aim at controlling effluent discharge to minimize pollution of natural waterbodies, or more innovatively promote wastewater reuse thanks to advances in water treatment technology. They also aim at establishing an ecological flow of water in rivers to allow aquatic life or a water reserve for human and environmental benefit. An environmental impact assessment may be required before developing infrastructure that might affect water resources. Certain standards may be established to protect aquatic biodiversity (e.g. migratory fish passage in dams), prevent soil erosion (e.g. reforestation of river banks) or prevent groundwater pollution (e.g. protection of recharge areas). Legislation may also recognize ecosystem services, such as the provision of freshwater or the regulation of floods, and establish payment or compensation schemes for those who maintain healthy ecosystems.

The most progressive examples of ‘green’ provisions are generally found in domestic legislation, with international water law often lagging behind despite the ‘green’ potential of its main guiding principles – equitable and reasonable utilization, no significant harm and ecosystem protection. A vast range of multilateral environmental agreements adopted during the last 50 years, such as the 1997 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, may effectively support the process of water law greening, both at domestic and international level, by prompting normative reform and orientating judicial interpretation towards environmentally-sound application of water use principles.

Funded by UN Environment (formerly UNEP), the online training course on “The Greening of Water Law: Implementing environment-friendly principles in contemporary water law” was developed by the International Association for Water Law (AIDA) with the contribution of 10 authors and 6 reviewers, as a guide for policy makers, technocrats and experts. The course focuses on the implementation of international principles for sustainable water management, stemming from both binding and non-binding instruments, and on their implementation in domestic legislation, transboundary agreements and related court/arbitration decisions.

The program is accessible free-of-charge from the INFORMEA website. It involves a series of slides and readings, including a brief and group exercises presented as a manual for lecturers, and requires 5 days to complete considering one module per day. A condensed version of the training course will be presented in a Special Session at the XVI World Water Congress of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) that will be held in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this month.

Further reading:

Burchi S., Balancing development and environmental conservation and protection of the water resource base – the “greening” of water laws, FAO Legal Paper Online #66, June 2007

Eckstein G., et.al., The Greening of Water Law: Managing Freshwater Resources for People and the Environment, UNEP, 2010

 

Posted in International Water Law, New Resources & Information, Sustainable Development | 1 Comment »

The Sustainable Development Goals Process: Making International Water Law More Sustainable and Ecosystem and Public Participation-Friendly

Sunday, September 21st, 2014

The following post is by Dr. Otto Spijkers, Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Utrecht University. He can be reached at O.Spijkers [at] uu.nl. The essay is based on Dr. Spijkers’ forthcoming article in the Journal of Water Law.

 

One of the more formidable global challenges today is ensuring the sustainable management of freshwater resources. In many recent speeches and reports, including by Mikhail Gorbachev, one reads that urgent action is necessary to prevent a nightmarish world with polluted lakes and rivers, deadly droughts and floods, water scarcity, and the resulting water wars. This post analyzes how the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process might guide the evolution of the existing international water law framework toward a structure that is more friendly toward sustainable development, ecosystems, and public participation.

The Role of Water in the SDG Process

The SDG drafting process takes place through two work streams, which will come together in autumn 2015 when the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopts the list of SDGs in the form of a resolution. The first is a work stream led by the UN Secretary-General and supported by many reports and consultations. The second is led by the UNGA Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (OWG). For an overview of the SDG drafting process, see here and here. After the UNGA adopts the SDGs, the SDG process will focus on implementation, dissemination, monitoring compliance, and creating awareness of the SDGs – a bit like the current status of Millennium Development Goals process.

From the beginning of the SDG drafting process, water has been identified as an important issue. The Future We Want, the outcome document of the 2012 Rio+20 Conference, which set the SDG drafting process in motion, placed water at the heart of sustainable development. Since then, participants in the work streams have struggled to find the proper place for “water” in the SDG process. For example, a proposal for a separate water goal was presented by the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (consortium of scientists) proposed to include in the list of goals a commitment that “water resources are managed sustainably and transparently.” The UN Global Compact (consortium of responsible businesses) suggested calling upon all States to look critically at overconsumption of water resources, especially in the agricultural sector. And the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (group of experts) proposed including a separate SDG on water, but focusing on individual entitlements to water – making it more of a human rights issue than a sustainable transboundary water management issue. Finally, and most importantly, the Outcome Document of the OWG, around which all subsequent discussions on the SDGs will be organized, included an SDG on the sustainable management of water.

All of these efforts do not mean the mission has been accomplished. At the 24th World Water Week in Stockholm, the Executive Director of the Stockholm International Water Institute rightly noted that nothing is certain until the UNGA adopts its resolution at the end of 2015.

All in all, water was – and still is – on the minds of many people involved in the SDG drafting process, but there exist various and widely diverging views on how exactly the reference to water should be phrased: As a human rights issue? As an economic issue? As an environmental concern? Despite these different opinions, there are some views emerging from the SDG process on which there is general agreement.

Three Emerging Views from the SDG Process

The first view suggests that States should be encouraged to interpret and apply international water law as a legal framework for the sustainable development of water resources. Sustainable development requires a development policy that meets the socio-economic needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (UNECE Convention) notes in its Preamble that “water resources shall be managed so that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourse (Watercourses Convention) refers to the principle of sustainable development in the Preamble and in Article 24. Moreover, Article 5 links the “sustainable utilization” of shared watercourses to water law’s bedrock principle of reasonable and equitable use. Hence, there are plenty of references to sustainability in water law’s most important legal documents. But this says little about the precise balance between the rights of present and future generations to benefit from water resources. Some States still believe that international water law is meant to regulate the economic use of shared watercourses, but not to protect the environment of these watercourses. The SDG process, with its focus on sustainability, provides an ideal opportunity to convince all States to approach the water law framework always wearing spectacles with green glass.

A second view would encourage States to stimulate the further development of the ecosystems approach to international water law. The year 2015 might very well be the year of the ecosystems approach. The ­Post 2015 Water Th­ematic Consultation already made many references to the protection of freshwater “ecosystems.” This emphasis on ecosystems is supported by various national consultations. An explicit reference to an obligation to “restore and maintain ecosystems to provide water-related services” in the targets of the SDG on water was proposed by UN-Water. In the OWG’s Outcome Document, the term ecosystem is applied in a broad sense, and with a lot of confidence. Since there is still much uncertainty about the meaning of the term “ecosystem” in international law, the SDG process could seize the moment, and encourage the further development of the ecosystems approach through international water law. We do have a legal basis: Article 20 of the Watercourses Convention and Article 3(1)(i) of the UNECE Convention both include an explicit reference to the ecosystems approach. And if a whole decolonization wave in the 1960s and 1970s could be based on one meagre reference to “self-determination” in the United Nations Charter (Article 1(2)), it is conceivable that two articles could serve as the basis for a legal regime on the protection of freshwater ecosystems. Article 20 of the Watercourses Convention, in particular, may then become a treaty-within-a-treaty, setting up by itself a legal regime on the protection of freshwater ecosystems.

The third view suggests using the legal framework of international water law to facilitate public participation at all levels of water governance. Both the Women’s Major Groups (see here and here) and Business and Industry called for a more “participatory” water governance system. UN-Water suggested that any system of water management should include “participatory decision-making.” In the Outcome Document of the OWG, the importance of public participation, especially by local communities, in water governance is acknowledged. All of this might encourage States to exploit with more confidence the potential of international water law in facilitating public participation in the sustainable management of waters. No general right of the public to participate can be found in the Watercourses Convention or the UNECE Convention. But the Conventions do not oppose it.

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