Civilization has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water.
Paolo Lugari
WWF is particularly calling on governments to promote and accelerate:
Without active measures to promote collaboration, growing water scarcity and degradation are likely to increase interstate conflicts in rivers like the Jordan, Tigris & Euprates, Indus, Ganga & Brahmaputra, Mekong, Nile & Okavango.
International norms regulating the rights and duties of basin and aquifer countries create a legal framework for transboundary cooperation on the management, use, and protection of water resources.
They foster dialogue and global security that are necessary to maintain ecosystems services and facilitate access to sufficient food supplies, to alternatives for sustainable energy production, to safe and affordable water, and to adequate sanitation, in furtherance of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
Those actions, if taken by governments, will provide states with minimum legal standards to support coordination and cooperation towards the sustainable, cooperative and equitable management of transboundary river basins.