Negotiation Strategies in Transboundary Water Disputes

Abstract

Individuals, groups and nations often try to negotiate their differences with competing stakeholders. The process is circumscribed by applicable laws, the readiness of law- enforcement agencies to enforce them and the respective goals and priorities of each of the negotiating parties. This model has to be modified in international disputes over the management of water resources. Each sovereign nation is a law unto itself. Even when an applicable treaty exists, each country can choose to ignore it or interpret its terms as it pleases, in ways that other stakeholders might regard as a violation. This paper reviews the use of universal alternate negotiation strategies to modify this anarchistic framework that has characterized transboundary water management in the Middle East for almost half a century, plus pertinent illustrations from North America and the Indian sub-continent. Decision maker and those who may negotiate on their behalf have a choice of six universal negotiations strategies:

• 1. Negative non-zero sum games, or “Lose-Lose” solutions

• 2. Unilateral creation of new facts

• 3. Zero-sum games or “Win-Lose” negotiations

• 4. Positive non-zero sum games or “Win-Win” negotiations

• 5. Conflict and threats of violence

• 6. No action, causing opportunity costs from neglect and/or delay “World Government” advocates share as their goal the adoption of an international body of laws. Their dream of a better world includes the adjudication of disputes between states about environmental pollution or water rights by international courts which arbitrate or enforce international conventions and standards. But such a peace committed world does not yet exist. No member of the United Nations has as yet been willing to accept significant reduction in their sovereign powers, as did the 50 sovereign states which compose the United States.

Joseph W. Eaton is Professor Emeritus in the School of Public and International Affairs, the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. David Eaton is Bess Harris Jones Centennial Professor of Natural Resources Policy Studies, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. This research was support by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., as well as administrative support from the University of Pittsburgh and from the University Research Institute and Policy Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.