Navigating the stormy waters: How the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN) is furthering discussions on water diplomacy in the South Caucasus and beyond

Water security in the South Caucasus region is under great threat. The three countries in the region, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, share the waters of the Kura-Aras River Basin with Iran and Türkiye (Turkey). The basin faces major water management challenges that can have a dire impact on the region’s water security in coming years. Third-party involvement in water diplomacy has potential to benefit the region greatly but also carries specific risks. In this blog article, Farhad Mukhtarov and Douwe van der Meer of the recently established South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN) discuss the network’s upcoming activities and show how it will help address issues related to transboundary water cooperation and beyond.

• Quick link to SWAN workshop on 18 June titled ‘The Water–Conflict Nexus and Diplomacy: The Case of the South Caucasus’
• Quick link to the conference panel on 21 June titled ‘Third-Party Engagement in Water Diplomacy and Governance: The Case of the South Caucasus’(Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding)

The Kura and Aras rivers are the lifelines of the South Caucasus, traversing the region diagonally from Türkiye (also known as Turkey) to Azerbaijan, where they meet to drain into the Caspian Sea. The levels of the two rivers have dropped dramatically over the past decade and are set to decrease even more as a result of national water management practices that fail to consider the wider region’s water security.

Source: Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Several challenges can be discerned:

1. Upstream dam construction

One major challenge for water availability, especially in downstream areas of the basin, is the construction of new water reservoirs (dams) in the upstream areas of two main rivers of the basin, the Kura and Aras. Some estimations (1) for example predict that the Kura-Çoruh Water Diversion is set to decrease the amount of water that flows from Türkiye, where the Kura originates, through neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan by at least 25%. Sakal (2) writes that the diversions of Kura river waters at Çoruh from the Caspian Sea Basin to the Black Sea Basin “means that the Government of Türkiye plans to divert 59.6% of the available volume of water in the Kura River, at the diversion”. Such major interbasin transfers may have a serious destabilising impact on downstream countries. Türkiye is also planning to construct a number of dams on the Aras River — a potential source of tension with downstream users Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

2. Downstream water abstraction

Besides upstream dam construction, water scarcity is being compounded by increased water abstractions downstream and by climate change. In Azerbaijan, the country through which the two rivers run through last before draining into the Caspian Sea, the total size of irrigated land has nearly doubled from around 1 million hectares in the early 2000s to 1,8 million hectares by 2019 as part of a plan to develop an agriculture-based economy. This has placed further stress on available water resources and their equitable distribution among citizens — an enduring global priority (SDG 6 for example calls for ensuring universal and sustainable access to water and sanitation). A recent World Bank Country Climate and Development Report for Azerbaijan indicated that if adaptation measures are not taken in time, crop production in the years 2051–2060 will drop dramatically (e.g. the yield of onions slashed by around 70%, of tomatoes by 60%, and of maize and potatoes by 50%) (WB, 2023). This would hit the bottom 40% of population (by income) the hardest.

3. Climate change

Water scarcity in the region is also likely to further increase as a result of climate change through a combination of decreasing and less predictable precipitation rates and the melting of the region’s glaciers, which would lead to strong surface water run-off into the sea. This brings the increased risks of droughts and floods together with landslides in mountainous areas of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. On average, river flooding already affects 100,000 people in Azerbaijan annually — the most affected country in the region due to its downstream positioning. If unaddressed, the costs of these disasters to the government would surge to USD 251 million per year.

4. Water pollution

Water scarcity aside, water quality is another problem in the region, as most of the sewage and industrial runoff flowing or discharged into the Kura and Aras is untreated. Although water pollution is a problem throughout the region, downstream countries struggle the most due to the absence of wastewater treatment facilities along the Kura and Aras rivers; most of the raw sewage and industrial effluents flow in these two major arteries of the region untreated, whereas Azerbaijan depends on these waters for domestic water supply and sanitation.

The need for transboundary water cooperation (and why it’s not working)

These challenges show the need for collaborative solutions. This cooperation has not been easy in past in the region fraught by ethnic tensions, separatist movements, military conflicts, and rivalries of major powers for influence (3). While cooperation on water management between the countries sharing the basin could potentially alleviate water management problems, they have cooperated only minimally so far. No multilateral treaty governs the Kura-Aras basin, and the countries of the basin have signed only few bilateral agreements inherited from the Soviet Union period (4).  The political situation in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and in the broader region moreover has been tense since the Second Karabakh War in 2020 and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine War, complicating current transboundary water relations.

Third-party involvement in water diplomacy

In light of these challenges and own motivations, external actors (those that are not part of the river basin) have become involved in water management in the South Caucasus. The EU has a strategic interest in the region traditionally seen as a “backyard” of Russia and Iran, with Türkiye also having a significant presence. For example, Türkiye and Azerbaijan have been in close cooperation, as recently manifested by the jointly prepared Karabakh Action Plan to revitalize agriculture in the region.

European Union countries consequently have a serious presence in the region (5) — both governmental and private sector companies from the Netherlands, Germany, and France are participating in water-related research, capacity-building efforts, and development projects. A big part of this presence is focused on helping Armenia and Georgia, countries committed to harmonising their water legislation with the European Union Water Framework Directive and other water-related directives, which include the adoption of new water management codes, the establishment of river basin management bodies, and the creation of participatory river basin management plans (6). The US also has a history of interest and engagement in the region, both geopolitically and from a developmental perspective; USAID has funded three projects on transboundary cooperation in the region in the past 20 years, with the latest launched in 2023 and to run until 2028.

Thus, third parties such as the European Union, USAID, and others have an important role to play in the river basins in the South Caucasus. While it is evident that these countries are active in the area out of self-interest, the impact of their presence can also be positive (e.g. enhancing dialogue, capacity building, and highlighting the attractiveness of the water sector for young professionals). Generally, external (or third-party) water diplomacy, both political and economic, has proven effective in fostering dialogue among participating countries and creating trade and economic ties that shift attention from resource sharing to benefit sharing(7). However, there are also complexities in this subject.

Short-term wins, long-term losses?

Indeed, third-party involvement in water diplomacy is not without risk (8). Powerful third-party donors, mediators, and development assistance partners may normalise unequal relationships in order to achieve tangible results such as basin agreements — a solution that may temporarily reduce tension but may backfire in the longer term due to the fact that arrangements have been forced from outside and without sufficient bottom-up trust-building and legitimacy. Such arrangements have been creating what has been called ‘negative peace’ for their tendency to create what seems to be peace on the short term while leading to greater tension on the longer term. This arguably happened in the Nile River Basin, where temporary diplomatic arrangements did not lead to a longer-term agreement among the riparian states involved in the negotiations (9). Instead, the situation escalated and is presently very tense.

Lastly, third parties also tend to prioritise technical cooperation and infrastructure projects, neglecting “soft” infrastructure such as trust building and information exchange; this perhaps has to do with the tangibility of technical cooperation and the challenges of institution building (10). This was one of the comments of the IOB, the Dutch Policy and Operations Evaluation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in its analysis of the Netherlands development cooperation work for water diplomacy between 2006 and 2016. As a result, it is important for water diplomats of third parties working in the South Caucasus to realise that efforts to build confidence, trust, and promote public diplomacy through cultivating scientific, cultural, and educational links between societies of conflicting riparian states (i.e. track-2 and track-3 diplomacy) are as important as technical infrastructure and expertise.

Another potential danger comes from the difficulties in balancing multiple and at times conflicting objectives that third parties may have, such as building/maintaining peace, providing development cooperation, seeking geopolitical gains (e.g. issue linkages) and promoting trade. These difficulties have been discussed in other contexts in detail, where third-party actors have engaged in economic and political diplomacy to the detriment of basin-wide solutions. For example, active US role in the Mekong River Commission has been linked to the lack of political will of China to join basin wide discussions. On the other hand, the difficulties that the Netherlands experiences in adjusting its export of water governance expertise and making it more socially inclusive suggests the inherent difficulty of the “win-win” scenario – both getting profits and helping partner countries (11).

The creation of the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN)

Academic and policy discussions and analyses of these complex dynamics is necessary both for increased security in the region and improved water diplomacy and management. This is important because there is little awareness both in the region and in European Union about the importance of water for economic and political stability in the region. It is also important because any meaningful change in water security will depend on the strength of bottom-up organic initiatives that emerge from the experts in the region themselves.

With this in mind, dr. Mukhtarov recently initiated the UNIC4ER seed funding project titled ‘Advancing EU Water Diplomacy in the South Caucasus’ in collaboration with the University of Oulu in Finland and the Koç University in Türkiye. UNIC4ER stands for UNIC for Engaged Research — an initiative of UNIC cities and universities to foster societally relevant research in a collaborative manner. The project sought to create a network of academics and practitioners from the region to collaborate on the issues of research and capacity building in the areas of water governance and diplomacy. You can read more about the project here.

Through this project, academic experts from all five countries of the Kura-Aras basin gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia from 3 to 5 April this year to discuss transboundary water relations and water diplomacy in the Kura-Aras basin. The workshop that took place in Tbilisi led to the establishment of the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN), which consists of regional water management experts and other experts on the topic of water governance from UNIC partner institutions. A follow-up meeting took place on 2 May in order to discuss the major outcomes of the inaugural workshop and to prepare for new events and activities. SWAN members will gather regularly to discuss follow-up activities such as writing joint grant proposals, supervising MA students, and conducting joint research, advocacy, and awareness raising. Two follow up events have already been planned and take place in June in the Hague.

Two upcoming network events

The first follow-up workshop is titled ‘The Water–Conflict Nexus and Diplomacy: The Case of the South Caucasus’ and will take place at the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague on 18 June 2024. This workshop, which includes panelists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the US, and Kazakhstan, is the first event to connect the discussion on water governance and diplomacy in the South Caucasus with the broader debates around third-party involvement in (regional) water cooperation to promote global security and solidarity.

The second follow-up event is a conference panel titled ‘Third-Party Engagement in Water Diplomacy and Governance: The Case of the South Caucasus’ that forms part of the Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding in The Hague. The panel will take place on 21 June 2024 and will enable discussion of the issues in the South Caucasus in the global context of water diplomacy, governance, and peacebuilding.

Through these two events, we hope to provide answers to some pressing questions and debates, including:

• The links between water governance and water diplomacy in the South Caucasus (i.e. EU Directives and the standards they promote in Georgia and Armenia but not in Azerbaijan; donor dependency and public sector capacity in Georgia and Armenia; reform fatigue; the lack of trust among the riparian states to collaborate)
• The nexus between water diplomacy and conflictwith a critical perspective on the role of donors (e.g. motivations of donors to fund projects given the multiple difficulties in the region)
• The nexus between water diplomacy and energy resources/infrastructurewith a critical perspective on the role of donors (e.g. motivations of donors to fund projects given the multiple difficulties in the region)
• Variation in how donors/third-party water diplomacy agents operateand in the agents themselves (who they are and how they operate); variation based on where they operate
• Donor-dependency and donor-driven project landscapes of water governance and diplomacy in the region —issues and challenges (e.g. how to make impact sustainable beyond project timelines, how to make sure the power disbalances are not harmful in the longer-term, how to make sure there is attention to local communities and not only national level government specialists/experts/officials in projects with a strong regional focus)

The results of these two events will be discussed by SWAN members and will be published after the summer as part of the strategy of the newly established network to facilitate exchanges between scholars and practitioners working on water security in the region and to promote positive change.

Endnotes:

1. Sakal, Halil Burak. “The risks of hydro-hegemony: Türkiye’s environmental policies and shared water resources in the South Caucasus.” Caucasus Survey 10, no. 3 (2022): 294–323.
2. Ibid.
3. Previous analyses have provided several reasons for the difficulties of transboundary collaboration in this complex context. See e.g. Campana, M. E., Vener, B. B., & Lee, B. S. (2012). Hydrostrategy, Hydropolitics, and Security in the Kura‐Araks Basin of the South Caucasus. Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, 149(1), 22–32.
4. See Sakal (2022: 300) and Campana et al. (2012) above.
5. Bilgen, A. and Mukhtarov, F. (2024) Selling Excellence: Hydrohubs and Policy Mobility in Neo-liberal World Order. In Edward Elgar Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Water Resources. Eds. Oliver Fritsch and David Benson. Edward Elgar. Forthcoming.
6. E.g. https://www.oecd.org/environment/partnership-eu-water-initiative-euwi.htm
7. Pohl, B., Swain, A., Islam, S., & Madani, K. (2017). Leveraging diplomacy for resolving transboundary water problems (pp. 19-34). Anthem Press, London.
8. E.g. Mukhtarov, F., Gasper, D., Alta, A., Gautam, N., Duhita, M. S., & Hernández Morales, D. (2022). From ‘merchants and ministers’ to ‘neutral brokers’? Water diplomacy aspirations by the Netherlands–a discourse analysis of the 2011 commissioned advisory report. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 38(6), 1009-1031. Also see footnote no. 8.
9. See Pohl et al. (2017).
10. Ibid.
11. See for example Van Genderen, R., & Rood, J. (2011). Water diplomacy: A niche for the Netherlands. Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Water Governance Centre. Mukhtarov et al. (2022) studies the report by van Genderen and Rood (2011) and provided an analysis of the challenges of the “win-win” and “neutral broker” modes of operation for the Netherlands in practice. These modes of operation are commonly used to reconcile the donor interest (e.g. the Netherlands’ interest in economic spin-offs) and donor needs (e.g. Indonesian interest in keeping Jakarta floods-free).

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About the authors:

Farhad Mukhtarov is Assistant Professor of Governance and Public Policy at the International Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University Singapore. Mukhtarov’s research can be summarized in three broad themes: water governance, politics of knowledge, and theories of policymaking. Geographically, Farhad’s work has covered Western Europe, the larger Mediterranean, and Central and South-Eastern Asia. He currently develops research in the South Caucasus.

Douwe van der Meer is a recent graduate of Leiden University with a degree in International Relations. As an intern at Clingendael Institute, Douwe researched transboundary relationships around the Aras River’s management. Douwe is active as a freelance researcher, consultant, and tour guide in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.

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