ILC's Draft Articles

With rapidly expanding populations, growing industrial development, and dwindling water supplies on national and regional levels, water is fast replacing oil as the world’s most valuable resource. Meanwhile, the growing importance of water in geopolitical affairs has increased the potential for international conflict over water resources. Thus as development and other threats Nations’ International Law Commission (ILC) to develop a treaty structure for the uses of international watercourses.

The ILC’s Draft Articles on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses are an attempt to codify the customary principles of international water law as those principles are manifested in past legal decisions and currently accepted international practice. The Draft Articles are intended as a set of guidelines for the watercourse should be equitable and reasonable, and that nations should work for the protection of ecosystems.

Though the Draft Articles are a significant step forward in the formulation of legal principles for the protection and regulation of international rivers, they are inadequate because they do not provide satisfactory ways of dealing with possible future environmental changes. One significant environmental threat to the world’s rivers is the increase of from increased runoff due to snowmelt or, more importantly, from decreased precipitation in many regions.

Treaties that allocate fixed amounts of water to various countries based on current usage, as suggested by the Draft Articles, will not be flexible enough to respond to these large fluctuations in river flows. Once specific water rights are allocated along a river in accordance with the Draft Articles, nations would have climate changes, such as how reduced flows will be allocated among the countries sharing a river.