New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 15

New Water Policy and Practice

proach is promoted.

In this context, the drive by environmental non-governmental organizations to
promote River Basin Organizations is understandable, just as it is unhelpful for the many
other dimensions of water management. This
also explains the reticence of the majority of
developing countries when deciding whether to ratify instruments such as the UN Convention on Shared Rivers. This was approved
in 1997, but despite pressure from international environmental organizations such as
WWF, was only ratified by the 35 countries
needed for it to come into force in June 2014,
17 years later (UN 2014). Many of the countries that have ratified have no significant
international rivers; the 35th ratification, by
Vietnam, should be seen as riposte to China
for its oil exploration in contested parts of the
South China Sea rather than as a water management decision, since other countries sharing the Mekong river have not yet ratified.

This helps us to answer the question,
“does this matter”? In Southern Africa at
least, there is already evidence that the strategies used to assert regional environmental
sovereignty in water management and constrain national discretion have done damage,
by commission and