18.3 Motivation of cooperation

Although the trends of cooperation and the benefits of institutional cooperation have drawn a beautiful image, cooperation might not happen automatically. It was often aroused where there is some special scenario in the basins especially in less developed region. These scenarios may include, Regional crises, water scarcity and environmental problem; Wolf demonstrates that that there is no heavy arm conflict in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin and Nile river basin mainly due to the fact that incentives for cooperating still out weigh the benefit of violence (Wolf, 2000). Dinar argues that, the emergence of cooperation will be greatest when water scarcity is moderate, rather than very high or low (Dinar, 2009); Canter and Ndegwa use Lake Victoria as a case study for demonstrate that decrease of water quality can trigger cooperation rather conflicting (Canter & Ndegwa, 2002).

Compared to these scenarios, there are more universal and realistic factors for riparian states to hesitate on cooperation. The most critical obstacle is the concept of territorial sovereignty over water resources (Medzini & Wolf, 2004). Lack of incentive to cooperation can also be the causes of water abundance (Dinar, 2009). Another major barrier to hurt the confidence of basin stats is international water law. Although 1997 Convention (it has not come into force till now) has some important components to foster peaceful relations, it is somewhat vague and even contradictory in its principles. The document institutionalizes an inherent conflict between the principle of equitable use, which upstream countries prefer, and the principle of obligation not to cause significant harm, which downstream countries prefer (Wolf, 1999). It tries to balance the two principles, but failure is inevitable. It offers a series of considerations which ought to be taken into account and this lead to the pattern of votes and Status of ratification seriously asymmetry: Downstream riparians prefer to comply with it, whereas the upstream riparians prefer to go against it or to abstain (Wildberg, 2002). The rules, mainly influenced by environmentalists concept, may greatly restrict the rights of upstream states and hurt their initiative (Salman, 2010).