Distance Learning Module 9 - Market Mechanisms for Water Sharing
- Downstream nations almost always have wide floodplains and rich deltas into the seas where civilizations began thousands of years ago and major development has occurred there over long periods of time.
- Downstream countries, because they are more developed, tend to have greater skill with engineering than upstream nations with more limited development.
- Upstream nations are the headwaters in mountains where development has lagged behind.
- Water delivered from an upstream nation to a downstream nation is a vital, valuable commodity.
- Potential exists for financial rewards for water deliveries downstream (the current term is PES – payments for ecosystem services).
- A strong case can be made that some slight or nominal fee for good fresh water delivered downstream would be a fair trade as a PES.
- Market mechanisms need to be developed further to enable such payments to become routine.
- Downstream countries can trade engineering skills for access to water delivered.
- Downstream countries can help upstream countries monitor or measure upstream flow, jointly build dams and irrigation flow structures, and help construct levee systems.
- Upstream countries need to learn to request help from downstream, more developed countries.
- Upstream and downstream countries need to help form international water sharing agencies and host regular meetings of watershed stakeholders.
- Upstream and downstream countries need to develop water-educational mechanisms that can train their populations on good water practices and understandings that will help nations achieve stable futures.
- Potential exists for offers of engineering water works designed by foreign engineers and built in Afghanistan in return for guaranteed deliveries of water.
- Provision can be made of high technology and remote sensing data with up-to-date hydrologic interpretations in return for access to shared field water data.
- Linkage of dam building and irrigation projects in Afghanistan with overall resource-corridor growth based upon the newly developed, extractive industries plans would work well.
- New linkages of additional university education programs on water can be established as distance learning modules (DLMs) on Transboundary Water are created and served from UNO, together with transboundary water conferences, both of which would enable higher-level capacity building.
- Help can be given for establishment of multiple accredited university programs on surface and ground-water programs with newly trained water faculty doubling as government water advisors.