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Water Stress in Global Transboundary River Basins: Significance of Upstream Water Use on Downstream StressGrowing population and water demand have increased pressure on water resources in various parts of the globe, including many transboundary river basins. While the impacts of upstream water use on downstream water availability have been analyzed in many of these international river basins, this has not been systematically done at the global scale using coherent and comparable datasets. In this study, we aim to assess the change in downstream water stress due to upstream water use in the world's transboundary river basins. Water stress was first calculated considering only local water use of each sub-basin based on country-basin mesh, then compared with the situation when upstream water use was subtracted from downstream water availability. Wefound that water stress was generally already high when considering only local water use, affecting 0.95-1.44 billion people or 33%-51% of the population in transboundary river basins. After accounting for upstream water use, stress level increased by at least 1 percentage-point for 30-65 sub-basins, affecting 0.29-1.13 billion people. Altogether 288 out of 298 middle-stream and downstream sub-basin areas experienced some change in stress level. Further, we assessed whether there is a link between increased water stress due to upstream water use and the number of conflictive and cooperative events in the transboundary river basins, as captured by two prominent databases. No direct relationship was found. This supports the argument that conflicts and cooperation events originate from a combination of different drivers, among which upstream-induced water stress may play a role. Our findings contribute to better understanding of upstream-downstream dynamics in water stress to help address water allocation problems.
Document ID
20160000955
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Munia, H.
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Guillaume, J. H. A.
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Mirumachi, N.
(London Univ. United Kingdom)
Porkka,M.
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Wada, Yoshihide
(NASA Goddard Inst. for Space Studies New York, NY, United States)
Kummu, M.
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Date Acquired
January 19, 2016
Publication Date
January 8, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: Environmental Research Letters
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Volume: 11
Issue: 1
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN29238
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
Water
River basins
Upstreams

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