BAR Event Intensity Scale and Basins at Risk

A well known way to categorise the degree of cooperation/competition in a transboundary basin is assigning a level on the BAR event intensity scale. The BAR project was a contribution from UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme and the final product; a database grading all events over the period of 1948-99 was produced by some of the leading academics in the area of transboundary water conflict Aaron Wolf, Shira Yoffe and Mark Giordano. In addition to this, they used the information they compiled to predict the basins at greatest risk of dispute in the near future (5-10 years). I allured to this study in my previous post and thought it required some further investigation.

In creating this intricate database, it involved the compilation and assessment of biophysical, socioeconomic and geopolitical data utilising GIS to determine indicators for future tensions. With all this data and varied sources, the BAR event intensity scale was produced (Table 1).

Table 1. BAR event intensity scale (Source: UNESCO)

The findings from such analysis highlighted the lack of extremes (extreme conflict and extreme cooperation) (Figure 1), that most interactions were cooperative and most mild in intensity, and that the major water related issues are over quantity and infrastructure.

Figure 1. Number events by BAR scale (Source: UNESCO)

Though the data certainly seems to indicate patterns of which this article stresses, I would question a few aspects of their findings and the way they categorise their BAR event intensity. Firstly, they emphasise the lack of conflict in their findings, however though there hasn't been forms of extreme conflict >25% of their events were conflictual of some sort, so it exists, and this number could be even higher if one was to update the dataset for 2015 in the face of Africa's increasing population boom, continuing struggle over resources and impacts of increased climate variability. Another aspect I'd critique is regarding an International Water Treaty as the second highest form of cooperation. As is well known, and demonstrated in some of my previous posts, this does not necessarily mean there is strong widespread cooperation within the basin. In addition to this, as allured to in my previous post, their predictions of basins which are likely to produce conflict in the next 5-10 years (aka 5-10 years ago) have not been entirely accurate, exemplified in the case of the Okavango. 

While frameworks to differentiate between levels of conflict and cooperation such as this one can sometimes be useful, they are based on a number of assumptions that in a lot of cases do not encapsulate the heterogeneity of transboundary river basins.