The UNECE Water Convention: Exporting Experience in Water Cooperation to the World

Geneva

More than 150 major rivers and 50 large lakes in the region of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) (i.e. Europe, Central Asia, North America and Israel) run through or straddle the border between two or more countries. Managing them and sharing their resources can cause problems and tension between countries. To overcome this, the region has gained considerable experience in transboundary water cooperation.

One of the most important tools UNECE has designed for such cooperation is its Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.¹ The UNECE Convention, signed in Helsinki in 1992, sets an international legal framework for cooperation on shared water resources (rivers, lakes and groundwater). But so far only UNECE countries could benefit. Now all this could change.

Its Parties have just held their third meeting since the Convention's entry into force in 1996. At this meeting in Madrid on 26-28 November, the Parties decided to open up the possibility of acceding to the Convention also to countries outside the UNECE region. This means that it will be possible for the rest of the world to use the Convention's legal framework and benefit from the experience in transboundary water cooperation that has been gained under it. This amendment to the Convention could be particularly important to the countries that border the UNECE region.

The Parties also decided to focus further work under the Convention on Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In these countries of the former Soviet Union, many rivers and lakes that used to be a purely national concern within the Soviet Union are now shared between sovereign States. In Central Asia, for instance, water is often at the heart of tense relations between countries.

Thirty-five countries, Parties and non-Parties, took part in the meeting.

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¹The Convention has been ratified by: Albania, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the European Community.

Ref: ECE/ENV/03/P24