The UNECE Water
Convention:
Exporting Experience in Water Cooperation
to the World
Geneva, 2 December 2003 - More
than 150 major rivers and 50 large lakes
in the region of the United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
(i.e. Europe, Central Asia, North America
and Israel) run through or straddle
the border between two or more countries.
Managing them and sharing their resources
can cause problems and tension between
countries. To overcome this, the region
has gained considerable experience in
transboundary water cooperation.
One of the most important
tools UNECE has designed for such cooperation
is its Convention on the Protection
and Use of Transboundary Watercourses
and International Lakes.1
The UNECE Convention, signed in Helsinki
in 1992, sets an international legal
framework for cooperation on shared
water resources (rivers, lakes and groundwater).
But so far only UNECE countries could
benefit. Now all this could change.
Its Parties have just
held their third meeting since the Convention's
entry into force in 1996. At this meeting
in Madrid on 26-28 November, the Parties
decided to open up the possibility of
acceding to the Convention also to countries
outside the UNECE region. This means
that it will be possible for the rest
of the world to use the Convention's
legal framework and benefit from the
experience in transboundary water cooperation
that has been gained under it. This
amendment to the Convention could be
particularly important to the countries
that border the UNECE region.
The Parties also decided
to focus further work under the Convention
on Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. In these countries of
the former Soviet Union, many rivers
and lakes that used to be a purely national
concern within the Soviet Union are
now shared between sovereign States.
In Central Asia, for instance, water
is often at the heart of tense relations
between countries.
Thirty-five countries,
Parties and non-Parties, took part in
the meeting.
For more information, please contact:
Rainer ENDERLEIN
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements
Division
Palais des Nations, office 313
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 23 73
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org/env/water/welcome.html
___________
1The Convention
has been ratified by: Albania, Austria,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria,
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia,
Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal,
the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the
Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
and the European Community.
Ref: ECE/ENV/03/P24