Searching for a Roadmap

Over the past few years, in almost every conversation I have been fortunate to have at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, three common concerns inevitably emerge among water stakeholders from around the world: current transboundary water management laws (and the treaties underpinning them) need to (i) enshrine more prophylactic—vigorously precautionary—principles, (ii) proactively account for an uncertain set of risks and scenarios and (iii) empower a wider range of stakeholders to shape basin- wide decision making.

Though there is consensus on the general validity of these concerns, there is no agreement about how to address them in practice. In my view, a roadmap to make clearer the best ways to proceed could be useful. When I have raised the idea of a roadmap, the first question I often hear is whether it should start from the top- down, designed by technical and political experts, via advanced modeling and flexible legal statutes, or if instead, it should begin from the ground- up, devised by the stakeholders and communities painfully aware of the day- to- day blind spots in the management of the natural resources.

In my experience, it only makes sense to start simultaneously from both directions. The choice should not be posed as an either- or proposition. A roadmap will not solve all the problems at hand. Rather, it should make it easier to choose the routes we want to take. We still need to decide on our means of transportation and who will join us on the journey. We also have to make the right turns at the right time. The value of a roadmap lies in guiding us to make the decisions that need to be made.

A second remark, raised by quite a few stakeholders, is that the roadmap developed in a particular basin, context- and- circumstance- specific, won't fully translate to other parts of the world. That makes sense. Though the conversation seldom stops there, as several observers frequently take this proposition a step further and argue that the need to take account of each specific context justifies their way of doing things.