Opportunities for International Water Governance:the Guadiana Basin Experience

The Albufeira Convention of 1998 signed between Portugal and Spain imposes on both States’ Administration the need to produce, compile and organize data bases, ensuring a permanent cooperation which must also be open and participative for all stakeholders and populations, regarding all decision making on the Portuguese-Spanish water resources. This challenge is particularly difficult to address, due to lack of information in many situations, and also to the increased complexity of the planning process required by the implementation of the Water Framework Directive. In the context of the implementation of this Directive in Europe, there is an interesting space for comparison with the principles advocated in both the Helsinki Conventions (Helsinki 1992) and the UN Convention (New York, 1997), and the principles of the Water Framework Directive, in terms of international water governance. In particular, how does international water law and international legal frameworks promote water governance and support national decision-making? This paper will discuss how the principles of ‘Good Water Governance’ can be implemented in the Guadiana river basin, under the Albufeira Convention and the European Directive, and this process can also benefit from the ongoing UNESCO HELP Program, which has been in place in this basin since 2004.