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Treaties and Their Related Agreements

The treaties contained in this document were compiled as part of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) project at Oregon State University in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The documents included are treaties or other international agreements relating to international freshwater resources, where the concern is water as a scarce or consumable resource, a quantity to be managed, or an ecosystem to be improved or maintained. Treaties concerning navigation rights and tariffs, division of fishing rights, and delineation of rivers as borders or other territorial concerns are not included, unless freshwater as a resource is also mentioned in the document, or physical changes are being made to the river system that might impact the hydrology of the river system (e.g., dredging of river bed to improve navigation, straightening of river course).

For ease of reference, the treaties are first categorized by continent, and then by international basin, as delineated in the TFDD Geographical Information System. The treaties listed under each international basin either refer directly to that international basin, or a sub-basin thereof. In cases of multiple spellings or names for the same river system of an international basin, a "/" separates the names (e.g., Douro/Duero). Where the basin represents the confluence of set of major rivers, a "-" is used to separate the names of the different river systems (e.g., Ganges-Brahmaputra- Meghna). The area of each basin and its riparian countries' territorial share was calculated using a GIS at 1km spatial resolution (Wolf et al. 1999). The area values have been rounded and, as a result, the numbers for areas within each basin do not necessarily add up to the total area for that basin. The percentage areas were calculated based on raw data, and therefore do not reflect the rounding of the areas. An asterisk (*) following a TFDD basin's name indicates notes in Appendix A regarding caveats associated with the derivation of the area values.

The following is a description of the columns in the treaty listings:

Treaty Basin

Identifies the basin or sub-basins specifically mentioned in the document. If a document applies to all basins shared between the signatories, but no river or basin is mentioned specifically, the treaty basin is listed as "frontier or shared waters." For frontier or shared waters, a treaty is listed under all the TFDD basins shared between those signatories. A document may therefore appear listed under multiple basins.

Date

The date usually indicates the date on which the document was signed. If such information was unavailable, the next choice was the date of entry into force, followed by the date of ratification. For agreements consisting of a series of letters or notes written on different dates, the latest date was used. Dates are represented in a month/day/year format.

Signatories

This field lists the signatories to the agreement.

Treaty or Agreement Name

The full formal name of the document or best approximation thereof. The place of signature is often included as part of the agreement name. Agreement titles, regardless of the language of the source document, are listed in English. Not all titles are official English translations.

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