. . . Until the Well is Dry: International Conflict and Cooperation over Scarce Water Resources Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between water scarcity and international conflict and cooperation. In it, I find that drought affects international relations, but not always as current scholarship expects. Countries sharing a water resource and enduring a drought are less likely to go to war with each other, or even to experience any militarized conflict. Some tests show that cooperation between countries also dwindles during droughts. However, despite the evidence for a general trend toward less cooperation, countries experiencing a drought have a greater likelihood of water-specific cooperation as expressed in a treaty that explicitly addresses water supply amounts or benefits.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 7

2.1 Natural Resources and Malthusianism . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.2 Realism and Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2.1 Lateral Pressure Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2.2 Resource Scarcity or Abundance? . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.3 Resource Scarcity as a Cause of Conflict . . . . . . . 17

2.3.1 The Commons Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.3.2 Rationalist Explanations for War . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.4 Problems with Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.4.1 Domestic Influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.4.2 Internal Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.5 Resource Scarcity Without Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.5.1 Hegemonic Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.5.2 Potential Destruction of the Resource . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.5.3 Inability toWage War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2.6 Water and Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2.6.1 Orthodox Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.6.2 Prospect Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.6.3 Motivated Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.6.4 Is Cooperation Sustainable? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.7 How Will States Address Scarcity? . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.7.1 Unilateral responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2.7.2 Treaties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3 Theory 44

3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

3.2 Resource Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3.2.1 Theft or Piracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

3.2.2 Strategic Military Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.2.3 Tactical Weapon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

3.2.4 Territorial or Boundary Dispute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

3.3 Water Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

3.3.1 Endogenous Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.3.2 Exogenous Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.3.3 Technology and Desalination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.4 General Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.5 General Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

3.6 Water-specific Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.6.1 Domestic Treaty Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

4 Water Scarcity Data and Methods 72

4.1 Water Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

4.2 Drought Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

4.3 Country Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

4.4 Merging Country Maps and Drought Maps . . . . . . 82

4.5 Merging Country Maps and River Basin Maps . . . 86

4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

5 Drought and War 90

5.1 Water and Violent International Conflict . . . . . 91

5.2 International Conflict Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

5.3 Militarized Interstate Disputes Tests . . . . . . . . 101

5.3.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5.3.2 Unit of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.3.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.3.4 Water Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.3.5 Other Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

5.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

5.4.1 Individual-level Drought, Any Militarized Dispute . . . 122

5.4.2 Individual-level Drought, Violent Militarized Dispute . . 123

5.4.3 Shared Drought, Any Militarized Dispute . . . . . . . 124

5.4.4 Shared Drought, Violent Militarized Dispute . . . . . . . 126

5.4.5 Shared, Consecutive Multi-year Drought, Any MID . . . 126

5.4.6 Shared, Consecutive Multi-year Drought, Violent MID . 127

5.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

6 Drought and Conflict 134

6.1 Events Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

6.1.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

6.2 Unit of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

6.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

6.3.1 Methodology, Count Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

6.3.2 Methodology, Linear Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

6.4 Water Variables and Covariates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

6.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

6.5.1 COPDAB data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

6.5.2 PANDA data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

6.5.3 IDEA data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

6.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

7 Drought and Cooperation 164

7.1 Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

7.2 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

7.3 International Cooperation Data . . . . . . . . . . . 169

7.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

7.4.1 Methodology, Count Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

7.4.2 Methodology, Linear Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

7.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

7.5.1 COPDAB data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

7.5.2 PANDA data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

7.5.3 IDEA data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

7.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

8 Water Treaties 197

8.1 Theoretical Summary of Treaty Formation . . . 199

8.1.1 Unilateral Development and Endogenous Scarcity . . 199

8.1.2 Water Crisis Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

8.1.3 Domestic Treaty Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

8.1.4 Interstate Treaty Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

8.1.5 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

8.2 Treaty Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

8.2.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

8.2.2 Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

8.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

8.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

8.4.1 Hydropower and Navigation Treaties . . . . . . 207

8.4.2 Water Supply andWater Quality Treaties . . . . 211

8.4.3 Water Supply Treaties Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

8.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

9 Conclusion 222

9.1 Water Conquests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

9.2 Diffuse Cooperation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

9.3 Hydro-Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

9.4 Implications for States Affected By Drought . . . . 226

9.5 Implications for Governmental andNon-Governmental Organizations 227

9.6 Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

9.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

A The Golan Heights in 1967 229

B PDSI Values 234

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Political Science
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, International Law and Relations Political Science, General Geography
Keyword	Department of Political Science political science; international relations; water conflict; water cooperation; war; treaties; water scarcity; international cooperation; international conflict; GIS; international boundaries; drought Emory University PhD Thesis 2008
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Reiter, Dan, Emory University
Committee Members	Reinhardt, Eric, Emory University Wolf, Aaron, Oregon State University Dept. of Geosciences Davis III, David, Emory University

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