mental agreements are the best—or indeed the only—ways to govern rivers and aquatic ecosystems that cross international political borders. In conclusion, Conca’s well-written and thought-provoking Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building is a serious book. It fills major gaps in IR theory, IWRM literature, and the discipline of environmental security, and it informs water resource managers of the implications of GATS. It demonstrates the real value of empirical research, taking its place alongside the paradigm-busting work led by Aaron Wolf at Oregon State University, Peter Ashton at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, Tony Allan at the Water Issues Group in London, and Nils Petter Gleditsch at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Conca’s work should be read by university students, water sector professionals, and IR scholars alike, and I sincerely believe that it will play a substantial role in placing the discipline of hydropolitics firmly on the IR research agenda.
Notes 1. These three roles resonate with a current initiative by the Universities Partnership for Transboundary Waters (UPTW) to understand governance of water and aquatic ecosystems as the manifestation of a “trialogue,” which is a specialized form of dialogue among government, science, and society. In conjunction with Group on Development Issues (EGDI) at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Water House, and UNESCO, UPTW hosted a special session at the Stockholm World Water Week 2005. Following a second workshop in October 2005, the trialogue governance model will be published in a textbook and a special edited volume of Water Policy, the scientific journal of the World Water Council. 2. This echoes research by Tony Allan and his team of graduate students at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Kings College London into what
90 ECSP REPORT
•
ISSUE 11
•
2005
they are calling “hydro-hegemony.” 3. For more information, see http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/ 4. Table 9.1 in Turton et al. (2004) identifies 30 international water agreements to which South Africa is a signatory, 20 of which are not listed in the Atlas of International Freshwater Agreements (United Nations Environment Programme, 2002). Ashton et al. (2005) has identified 59, but not all of these are limited to river basin management.
References Allan, J.A. (2000). The Middle East water question: Hydropolitics and the global economy. London: I.B. Tauris. Ashton, P.J., Anton Earle, D. Malzbender, B. Moloi, M.J. Patrick, & Anthony R. Turton. (2005). Compilation of all the international freshwater agreements entered into by South Africa with other states (Final Water Research Commission Report for Project No. K5/1515). Pretoria, South Africa: Water Research Commission (WRC). Bulloch, John, & Adel Darwish. (Eds.). (1993). Water wars: Coming conflicts in the Middle East. London: Victor Gollancz. de Villiers, Marq. (1999). Water wars: Is the world’s water running out? London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Gleick, Peter. (1994). “Water wars and peace in the Middle East.” Policy Analysis 36 (4). Hamner, Jesse, & Wolf, Aaron T. (1997). “Patterns in international water resource treaties: The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database.” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy (1997 Yearbook). Irani, Rustom. (1991). “Water wars.” New Statesman & Society 4(149), 24-25. Starr, Joyce R. (1991). “Water wars.” Foreign Policy 82, 17-36. Turton, Anthony R., R. Meissner, P.M. Mampane, & O. Seremo. (2004). A hydropolitical history of South Africa’s international river basins (Report No. 1220/1/04). Pretoria, South Africa: WRC. United Nations Environment Programme (with Oregon State University & the Food and Agriculture Organization). (2002). Atlas of international freshwater agreements. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program. Wolf, Aaron T., Shira B. Yoffe, & Marc Giordano. (2003). “International waters: Identifying basins at risk.” Water Policy 5(1), 29-60.