Reflections from South Africa on a possible benefit-sharing approach for transboundary waters

The concept of benefit‐sharing is emerging with great intensity in the international discourse on transboundary water resource management.This paper seeks to record a thought process involving nine distinct differences between what can be called a 'traditional' water resources management paradigm, and a possible new benefit‐sharing approach.

This document is noted as being particularly relevant for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, because of the large number of transboundary rivers along with the regional developmental challenges that need clear new thinking around benefit‐sharing. The author notes that traditional water resources management has prevented water from being the potential driver of economic growth and regional integration in the region and beyond.  

The paper concludes with a number of advantages and disadvantages of 'traditional' water resource management. These include:

• the advantage of the traditional paradigm is that it is simple in set up with a high degree of state‐control, while the disadvantage is that it is inflexible and forces sub‐optimal solutions to be generated by virtue of the smaller scale of optimisation in play
• the advantage of the proposed benefit‐sharing approach is that it generates a larger basket of benefits that can be potentially shared by all players, especially within a hydro‐political complex. The disadvantage is that institutional arrangements are complex especially between the larger numbers of government ministries involved