On-line data base a wellspring for water accords

Wolf's on-line data base includes information about 150 water-related treaties and 39 interstate compacts. The map above shows the watersheds of the world.

February 3, 2000
Web posted at: 12:30 PM EST (1730 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

An on-line data base is fast becoming a reservoir of information for water negotiations across the country and the world.

Aaron Wolf, an assistant professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, is the mind behind the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. He turned on the tap in 1991, developing the data base because he wanted useful treaty information about watersheds available to himself and others.

In nine years, Wolf has amassed the largest electronic collection of treaties known to man. Soon he'll have an annotated bibliography to go with it.

The gathering and updating of such data has not been attempted since 1978, when the now-defunct United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs looked after the Register of International Rivers, a compendium 214 international waterways covering 47 percent of Earth's land surface.

Wolf's data base has been on-line for about a year. Already the reservoir of information he has accumulated includes 150 water-related treaties across the globe and 39 interstate compacts in the United States. The water level gets higher as Wolf continues to pump more material onto the site.

His motivation is simple and noble at the same time. Wolf wanted to create a resource that parties involved in a water dispute could study in assessing and resolving their own thorny conflicts.

The data base has been "tapped into fairly regularly," Wolf said, by negotiators from all corners of the world. There's almost no such thing as a water conflict that hasn't been seen before, he said, and the old conflicts can point the way to modern solutions.

With a few clicks on a computer-mouse, on-line browsers can learn about freshwater treaty rights along the Nile River, pictured here.

Wolf's data base provides historical perspective and breadth, as it contains information about water treaties currently under consideration.

Water treaties are a special breed, according to Wolf. Even if two countries are mortal enemies, they are more likely to back down when it comes time to negotiating water resources. "Though nations do sometimes use water rights as a political tool, they will not only come to agreement eventually but they will also honor that agreement, even when violence breaks out over other issues," he said.

Wolf cited many examples, including adversaries such India and Pakistan or Egypt and Sudan. "All have at some point negotiated over water," he said.

Wolf has the figures to prove his point. There are about 3,600 known water treaties in the world but only eight recorded cases of countries going to battle over water. The last time war broke out over water was 4,500 years ago when the ancient Mesopotamian city-states of Umma and Lagash took up arms, according to Wolf.

"People recognize how profoundly deep our relationship with water is," said Wolf. "It is so vital on so many levels: political, economic, religious and cultural."

Because of water's inherent value, Wolf said, water rights often can be negotiated to produce "win-win" situations for both sides. "The more people involved, the greater the possibilities are for a solution," he said.

Water rights and land borders in the Golan Heights are major stumbling blocks in peace talks between Israel and Syria, Wolf noted. An agreement by the countries to consider the water needs of neighboring countries could oil the wheels of the negotiations, he said.

"Once you get past the issue of sovereignty over the land, there are a lot of things we can do with the water," Wolf said. "For instance, Turkey and Syria have an ongoing water dispute on the Euphrates River. But Turkey and the U.S. are important NATO allies. Maybe Turkey could be persuaded to concede a modest amount of water to Syria in this different dispute in exchange for some Syrian concessions on the Israeli border. That's just one of several possibilities."

The next phase of Wolf's on-line watershed is something he calls "Basins at Risk." In it, Wolf will integrate geographical, geopolitical, environmental and economic information about a given water basin to create models of the basin's potential future.

"The goal is to identify those river basins at most risk of conflict in the next five to 10 years," he said.

Groups pool resources to assess world's water
January 18, 2000
Populations outrunning water supplies
November 1, 1999
Science or no science, the sick keep taking the waters
October 8, 1999
Absent shoreline challenges Mars water theory
October 4, 1999

Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database
Oregon State University

• Department of Geosciences
  

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.