Institutional Capacity Development in Transboundary Water Management

by Ruth Vollmer, Reza Ardakanian, Matt Hare, Jan Leentvaar, Charlotte van der Schaaf and Lars Wirkus; UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC)

Transboundary cooperation on water as one aspect of good water governance will become increasingly important in the future. A global legal framework for cooperation on water exists (see Box 1); yet it lacks binding force in many parts of the world. A variety of factors, ranging from hydrogeographical features of the basin to the socio-political realities and donor commitment, determine the likelihood and eventual shape of transboundary water cooperation. Cooperative institutional arrangements can be categorized according their purpose (single vs. multi-purpose cooperations) and their cooperation intensity, including a greater or lesser transfer of authority to a joint body. It must be recognized that cooperative institutional arrangements in this context cover an extremely broad spectrum, a fact that is not always clear because of the different uses of the term ‘institution’. And despite growing attention to and support for this topic, the institutional capacities of transboundary cooperative mechanisms are often weak compared to the challenges they face.

The recent international workshop on Institutional Capacity Development in Transboundary Basins  was the impetus for considering, in this paper, the requirements for capacity development to support
cooperative mechanisms.

Creator	by Ruth Vollmer, Reza Ardakanian, Matt Hare, Jan Leentvaar, Charlotte van der Schaaf and Lars Wirkus; UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC); United Nations University, UN Campus, Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, D-53113 Bonn, Germany/ Tel. +49 228 815 0652 ; Fax +49 228 815 0655 -- © UNESCO 2009 (email: info@unwater.unu.edu)
Publisher	by Ruth Vollmer, Reza Ardakanian, Matt Hare, Jan Leentvaar, Charlotte van der Schaaf and Lars Wirkus; UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC); United Nations University, UN Campus, Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, D-53113 Bonn, Germany/ Tel. +49 228 815 0652 ; Fax +49 228 815 0655 -- © UNESCO 2009
Type of document	Report
Rights	Public
File link	n/a
File link local	transboundary-waters181792E.pdf (PDF, 497 Kb)
Source of information	UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC)
Keyword(s)	Transboundary Shared Waters
Subject(s)	HYDRAULICS - HYDROLOGY , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RIGHT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY , WATER DEMAND
Relation	http://www.transboundarywater.se/
Geographical coverage	n/a