The principle of no significant harm in international water law
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The principle of no significant harm in international water law Susanne Schmeier1 · Joyeeta Gupta1,2 Accepted: 21 October 2020 / Published online: 4 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Human impacts on freshwater systems and related ecosystems are ever-growing as demands for water, food and energy increase. The development of large-scale irrigation systems in response to food insecurity can affect the availability of water for other uses and users. The use of fertilizers or pesticides in agriculture can negatively impact on the quality of a watercourse and affect other uses in the same basin. The construction of dams for hydropower generation in response to energy security challenges can disturb the flow of a river, its sediment transport or the migration of fish species, negatively affecting those that depend on these resources and ecosystem services for a living in the same or other parts of a basin. The abstraction of groundwater from an aquifer in order to meet water supply and sanitation needs of the population can impact on the availability of water for irrigation in the same or in a different region. And the growing use of modern technologies in the context of globalization can also have impacts on the access and harm to water. Such developments increasingly threaten ecosystems, livelihoods and economic opportunities of people. The use of water resources by one actor can thus cause harm to others. Increasing pressure on water resources—coupled with the impacts of global climate change—is likely to lead to such harm ever more often and more intensively in the future. At the level of shared watercourses—rivers, lakes and aquifers that transcend the boundaries of nation states—these challenges are of even greater complexity. The use of water resources by one state can harm other states in the basin, potentially leading to tensions or conflicts between them. Such conflicts—as examples from around the world show— can have negative effects way beyond water resources and their sustainable management, including negative repercussions on economic relations, the deterioration of political relations and increasing regional instability. Aiming at mitigating such risks—for the environment and the services it provides to people, communities and countries as well as for cooperation and peace—the principle of no significant harm has developed in international environmental law more generally and
* Joyeeta Gupta [email protected] Susanne Schmeier s.schmeier@un‑ihe.org 1
IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands
2
Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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S. Schmeier, J. Gupta
in the field of international water law specifically. It was included in the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, the 1992 UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes as well as in numerous basin-specific agreements and is widely r
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