IWRA Proceedings

Abstract

The sustainable management of water resources is essential for achieving development goals, poverty alleviation, protection of ecosystems and social and political stability in the region. Water management in transboundary basins is a potential source of conflict increasing in the last decades. In the past 50 years, in the world, there have been 37 serious disputes involving violence in relation to water in transboundary basins (United Nations, 2004). International agreements on water courses need to be more specific, an agreement for better cooperation involves identifying clear allocations, but flexible and water-quality standards, taking into account both hydrological events, changes in watershed dynamics, social participation and international law as the political agenda in the region and the countries involved. In South America more than 60% of the territory belongs to transboundary basins where unresolved international conflicts related to water are installed in part of the southern cone region of the Americas (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru) some dating back several decades and others are emerging in this century. These conflicts coupled with the strong increase in demand on limited freshwater resources and the increase in the variability of supply due to climate change scenario projected a potential international crisis and insecurity in our region. In water management on transboundary basins, interests come to play sensitive issues and there must be found equitable solutions in both political and social development approaches and practices and encourage closer cooperation for mutual benefit of the peoples on both sides of the border. Under the situation that Perú and Chili are already transferring water from the upper basin of the Mauri river to the Pacific coast and there are proposals and pressures to extract and transfer more water to Peru, the watershed of the Mauri River has been chosen for the discussion of this paper. The case is a matter of three countries: Bolivia, Peru and Chile, where the situation is even more complicated because of the natural contamination with boron and arsenic that suffer the river. Under the present extraction it is added that there are points of contamination that affects also the wetlands. Moreover, this water is used in many traditional irrigation systems through the Desaguadero river from which the Mauri river is the most important effluent. The present paper describes the problem of the Mauri river and the approach that is taken to arrive into a solution that can be reasonable for all the parts in the dispute.

Keywords:  Transboundary, Treaties, River