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This paper examines China's water governmentality in advancing the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC). It attends to how discourses, used as a political instrument, are framed, justified and contested in the reshaping of international hydrosocial territories. China's official and popular discourses present the LMC as promoting multilateral politics, economic benefits and social integration, while they obscure polarizing politics, external interventions and regional conflicts. Using strategies of positive publicity first, top-down communication and mutual empathy creation, these discourses aim to deflect attention away from controversies and geopolitics in the region to construct governable hydrosocial territories. However, in a transnational context where the Chinese state cannot unilaterally control geographical imaginaries, alternative discourses depict China as a "hydro-hegemon" that poses threats to downstream countries. The discursive dichotomy reflects multiple ontologies of water and power struggles in international river governance, bringing regional stability and sustainable development into question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that illustrative example connects international river historiography with a related body of social scientific theory dealing with international water conflicts, under the sign of "hydro hegemony". Topics include considered that Mark Zeitoun and Jeroen Warner coined the term hydro hegemony in a 2006 article considering the patterns and processes of international water disputes.

The number of international agreements on transboundary water bodies and streams was found to increase rapidly in the late XX and early XXI century. The institutional and regulatory conditions required for solving the problems of international rivers and lakes are discussed. A system of governmental bodies in Russia, dealing with the use and protection of transboundary water bodies and streams is described. The international cooperation of Russia in the management of transboundary water bodies and streams is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article explores China's management of its international rivers. China has various domestic pieces of legislation, including the Water Law of 2002, to regulate the uses and protection of its international rivers. It is clear that international water law influenced China inasmuch as there are similarities between the 1997 Watercourses Convention and the Water Law of 2002, and even China has recognized the influence of international law in the formation of its Water Law of 2002. This runs contrary to the widespread belief among Western commentators that China generally does not engage in these types of matters with international water law in mind. As evidence, these commentators point to China's objection to signing the 1997 Watercourses Convention and its refusal to join any river-basin commissions for any of its international rivers. This Article, however, shows how China has been strongly influenced by the international water-law regime and has engaged with other states in the management of its international rivers, albeit with a limited number of states. This Article posits that China can further benefit from engaging in international fora when trying to manage its domestic water issues [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the framework for the protection of tarpon with problems concerning the maintenance of adequate flows for international rivers. Topics discussed include traditional water rights regimes like those governing transboundary flows of water with the movement of migratory fish populations such as tarpon, international water use agreements and need of the system that effectively manages migratory fish populations in the same manner that existing international riparian rights.

The article discusses the scope of water quantity management (WQM) in the European Union (EU) and focuses into the applicable legal framework for cooperation in WQM between (EU) Member States in International River Basin Districts. It cites a legal uncertainty with respect to the legal basis and scope for the issuance of legislation on the quantitative aspects of water management.

The history of the formulation of water-resource distribution is considered with reference to transboundary water bodies in international law. The problems, history and present status of water-resource utilization and protection with a focus on the Samur and Severskii Donets transboundary rivers are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydro-political dependencies between countries are widely regarded as having important implications for international water cooperation and conflict. Quantitative ex-post empirical research on the subject so far uses very simple characterizations of international river geography to proxy for such dependencies, though. The authors developed a new geo-spatial dataset for water catchments worldwide. This dataset combines elevation models, flow accumulation approaches, hydrological data, and data on international boundaries to generate more precise and nuanced measures of hydro-political dependencies among riparian countries. The paper discusses these measurement concepts, illustrates how dependencies are distributed worldwide, and revisits three prominent quantitative studies on the issue to show how using improved data affects empirical findings. In contrast to a very popular presumption, upstream-downstream dependencies turn out to have a very small to insignificant effect on international water cooperation or conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous analysis of transboundary water governance has been focused primarily on state-centred approaches. The articles in this special section move us forward from this focus in three ways. First, they highlight the crucial role played by non-state actors in shaping water governance outcomes. Second, they show us how these actors can increase the 'room for manoeuvre' in negotiations. Third, they provide an entry point for developing process-focused approaches in transboundary water governance research. This article argues such an approach might improve our understanding of transboundary water outcomes and suggests new focus on how key actors form networks of alliances and shape decision-making landscapes at multiple governance levels and arenas. From a scholarly perspective, it brings to light the blurred boundary between state and non-state actors, as derived from a better understanding of the elusive links between actors and organisations; it unravels additional layers of complexity in the hydro-hegemony concept and bends the rigid notion of power asymmetry, towards the subtleties of power relations and interplays in transboundary decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a typology of international rivers based on asymmetries in economic and political power among riparian states. This typology is then used, along with other factors such as the spatial location of riparians on the river, to explore the question of why some riparians on international rivers have been able to successfully negotiate treaties and others have not. The findings lend support to both economic and political economy explanations of cooperative action on international rivers. International rivers with riparians with countervailing economic and political power are far more likely to have negotiated treaties than other river types. Riparian states on international rivers sharing a 'western civilization' were much more likely to have concluded treaties than riparian states on rivers in other civilizations. Somewhat surprisingly, rivers that cross 'civilization boundaries' appear no less likely to have treaties than international rivers than run entirely through riparian states that share a single civilization. Adjacent upstream/downstream or 'side-by-side' riparians were less likely to have concluded treaties than 'country pairs' with other spatial relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]