Mapping the Resilience of International River Basins to Future Climate Change-Induced Water Variability, Volume 1. Main Report
The study presented in this report aims to increase our understanding of the global distribution of treaty and River Basin Organization (RBO) mechanisms that may confer resilience to variability in the hydrological regime and how that distribution aligns with current and anticipated regimes. Some basins will experience greater changes in hydrologic variability regimes than others, and we specifically seek to identify country-basin combinations with greater exposure to variability and few or no treaty/RBO provisions to manage the transboundary impacts of that variability. To do this, we assessed all available international water treaties for specific treaty mechanisms, mapped the spatial distribution of these mechanisms and RBOs, and compared it to both the current variability regime and projections of future variability regimes driven by climate change. We then identified specific basins that may merit further study in light of their potential risk of future hydropolitical stress. By identifying these areas at the global scale, we can contribute to efforts aimed at anticipating future challenges in transboundary water management and suggesting specific measures to adapt existing or new water agreements to the effects of climate change.