Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

Water is becoming increasingly scarce all over the world. All indicators of water availability show that per capita supplies will continue to decline in the years ahead. A conservative recent estimate projects that 1.8 billion people will live in regions or countries with “absolute water scarcity” by 2025: that is, they will not have enough water to maintain their current level of per capita food production and also meet burgeoning urban demands, even at high levels of irrigation efficiency (Seckler, Molden, and Barker 1999). An additional 350 million will live in regions with “severe water scarcity,” “where the potential water resources are sufficient to meet reasonable water needs by 2025, but (only if the country) embarks on massive water development projects, at enormous cost and possibly severe environmental damage, to achieve this objective” (ibid., 1). There will also be additional, sometimes severe, localized water scarcities, even within countries that, in aggregate, have abundant water (for example, Sri Lanka: see Amarasinghe, Mutuwatta, and Sakthivadal 1999). Water scarcity will not go away.

It is encouraging that past predictions of future water use have been consistently too high. Linear projections of the past into the future have consistently underestimated the potential for changes in technology, social organization, and incentives that have made it possible to reduce per capita water use without negatively affecting welfare. This tendency offers opportunities for policy makers, since it can direct their action to those changes that can facilitate such benign responses to increasing water scarcity.

Nevertheless, rising water scarcity poses serious challenges. This paper develops a simple framework for analyzing the political implications of diverse strategies for managing water scarcity from attempts to augment supplies to managing demand by changing water users’ incentives. All responses provide opportunities for cooperation and creativity; all contain pitfalls and potential for conflict.

This paper reviews the achievements of Middle East environmental diplomacy under the multilateral track and lays out a feasible program to build on these achievements. It argues that negotiations should be informed by three lessons from the history of international water diplomacy. These are:

1) unequal partners may unequally share the costs and benefits of cooperation;

2) third-party mediation is most successful if accompanied by “carrot and stick” policies; and

3) cooperation should proceed as a series of modest steps, rather than as a grand regional plan.

The paper analyzes three issues in urgent need of multicountry cooperation. These are:

1) food for water trades to enhance food and water security in the region;

2) a transition to integrated pest management to halt the pollution of groundwater from agricultural runoff; and

3) the treatment and reuse of urban wastewater for health and water conservation.

In addition, the countries of the region should, jointly and individually, invest in environmental training and outreach. The conclusion contains an itemized list of short-to-intermediate term recommendations for environmental diplomacy.

This paper examines how the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has operated to expand the integration project and has done so by serving as a forum for transnational political action by domestic and supranational policy actors. In particular, I study this integrative dynamic through the evolution of environmental protection policy in the European Union (EU). The purpose of this analysis is to reveal how the Court’s construction of supranational norms operates to fuel the integration process, and often in opposition to national government preferences. The data presented in this analysis pertains to Article 234 (ex Article 177) of the European Community (EC) Treaty. By studying this process, I am able to reveal not only the role of the Court in creating European environmental laws, but the integral role that both national judges and private litigants (individuals and interest groups) play in deepening integration. This study focuses specifically on the environment policy sector, yet provides a general framework for examining the case law in subsequent policy areas, with the purpose of providing a more nuanced understanding of European integration.

This paper contributes to a growing body that strives to create a more nuanced understanding of both European integration and the larger processes of international policy-making (for example, Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 1998; Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1997). In particular, this study demonstrates how the ECJ operates to expand the integration project by serving as a forum for transnational political action by domestic and supranational policy actors. I study this integrative dynamic through the evolution of environmental protection in the European Union. My purpose is two-fold. First, I examine the evolution of the Court’s Article 234 case law in this policy sector, focusing on outcomes. In particular, I evaluate whether the policy preferences of national governments have significantly impacted the Court’s decisions. Second, I examine the extent to which the tensions embodied in EU environmental policy have facilitated a dynamic relationship between the Court, private litigants (including interest groups) and national courts, leading to the expansion of supranational policy competence. Specifically, I am interested in determining the extent to which the policy process operates outside the reach of national government control.

This paper examines the concept of maritime confidence building and suggests potential uses in the Middle East. It establishes that thinking and application of confidence building generally, but maritime confidence building specifically has traditionally focused on measures. It has ignored the activities and steps that are taken to improve cooperation. This ‘Transition View’ provides a framework to consider the maritime confidence building in the past and lessons for the future.

The author considers the history of confidence building and the success maritime agencies and organizations have had worldwide with such efforts by examining regional arrangements and activities. The paper then draws upon the lessons of these experiences and the characteristics that make maritime CB a particularly useful tool. From this perspective the author is able to draw a number of possibilities for application in the Middle East. They involve interaction of personnel, undertaking joint activities, information sharing, and areas for future cooperation.

This paper addresses the problem of undocumented immigration to the United States from Mexico, and current and proposed policies designed to control these undocumented flows. I summarize current U.S. policy toward undocumented Mexican immigration, which has been an expensive failure. I then take up three competing policy proposals: one pending in the U.S. Senate (S.1814 and S.1815) to expand the H-2A guest-worker program; one to construct a strict enforcement regime; and one based on linking U.S.–Mexican free trade to a free flow of labor. For each alternative, I predict likely outcomes and distributional consequences for seven types of actors (U.S. workers, U.S. consumers, U.S. employers, other U.S. citizens, undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and other Mexicans). I conclude that a binational approach to immigration control (a North American Common Market) is the most promising option, and I discuss its political feasibility.

The European Union (EU) has recently re-launched its ambitions for a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which might even lead to a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). This paper explains the functioning of these mechanisms for outsiders and assesses the EU’s potential for success in these domains by placing them in their proper historical context, which extends back to the creation of "European Political Cooperation" in 1970. It argues that despite a number of obstacles there are still strong reasons to believe that the EU will be able to develop more effective cooperation in these areas, based on 1) the EU’s common foreign/security policy interests; 2) recent changes in the decision-making mechanisms of the CFSP/ESDI; 3) the common European resources that are now devoted to this area; and 4) the EU’s performance record in foreign/security policy cooperation, which is not limited to its problems in the Balkans. While generally optimistic, the paper concludes on a note of caution about these developments, noting the challenges involved in developing this new capacity while also managing other crucial problems of integration, such as the single European currency and enlargement to the East.

The North Korean economic decline in the 1990s reveals a complex food and energy shortage problem. Inadequate energy supplies are an immediate cause of this agricultural collapse, and the energy shortage must be resolved in order to reach a sustainable recovery.

Hayes, Von Hippel and Williams explore the origins and impacts of the rural energy shortage, and suggest that international cooperation is necessary to resolve North Korea’s energy and food crises.

Discussion of Middle East arms control has centered on weapons of mass destruction and confidence building measures, ignoring the possibility of a conventional arms control arrangement. Although the potential for such an agreement may be distant, the author argues that the changing environment in the Middle East requires that this issue be given new consideration. The exploration of conventional arms control also may focus Washington’s attention on what such an agreement should include, thus enabling policymakers to avoid wasting time and political capitol when the prospects for such an agreement emerge. The author explores the requirements for such an agreement and outlines them in an illustrative framework.

Any arms control package must address five requirements. The first is to maintain the ability of states to defend themselves, either through their own efforts or in combination with others. It must decrease the feasibility of a state taking offensive action, particularly without warning. It must be directed at preventing precipitation of conflict through miscalculation. It must limit the ability of any state to assert regional hegemony. Finally, it should moderate, if not reverse, the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of military arsenals of regional states.

Given these guidelines, the author creates an illustrative framework agreement based on four categories. The first is Limitations and Reductions, which specifies the maximum and minimum level of equipment and the rate of arms reduction. The second section, Deployment Limitations, outlines the requirements for the demilitarization of disputed territories of the Golan Heights and the West Bank. The Verification and Monitoring section of the Framework specifies which groups and organizations have the authority to inspect the reduction process and calls for the creation of a Treaty Monitoring Center to oversee it. Finally, the Associated Measures outlines the transparency requirements of each party’s military.

In this policy paper, two leading authorities on the topic--one Japanese and one American--take a look at the rise of regional multilateralism in Asia. Akiko Fukushima’s monograph provides a rich historical background on Japan’s periodic flirtation with multilateralism, including the disappointments during the inter- war and immediate post-war period. Dr. Fukushima traces renewed interest in multilateralism to a thaw in relations with Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and outlines in rich detail the range of initiatives in which the Japanese have not only participated, but played a central role. Her analysis points to an emerging liberal consensus that multilateralism, while beneficial, needs to be seen as augmenting the core, bilateral relationship with the United States. Moreover, she traces the complex thinking about the appropriate scope for multilateral initiatives and notes that there is no natural or easy membership that makes sense for Japan. However, the inclusion of the US as a player in any initiative, whether tripartite or wider seems to be a consistent theme. The reasons for this center on concern that multilateralism not be perceived as an alternative to the core alliance relationship, but also as a way of providing assurances to regional parties that Japan’s leadership will not become intrusive or threatening.

Ralph Cossa’s paper focuses on five multilateral institutions that have emerged in the 1990s: the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Four-Party Talks, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), and the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD). Cossa concurs with Fukushima that the end of the Cold War and decline of the Soviet Union provided other actors, principally the US, with incentives to support multilateral security institutions in the region. Previously, the Soviet Union had proposed multilateralism in an attempt to weaken the United States’ strong bilateral ties in East Asia. Cossa explains some of the limits to multilateralism in the region, as well as linkages between track I and track II dialogues. For example, the ARF is limited by an agreement to “move at a pace comfortable to all participants.” However, this creates opportunities for track II institutions such as the NEACD and CSCAP to discuss issues that may be too sensitive for government representatives in an official setting. Furthermore, some countries in the region are apparently reluctant to participate in multilateral dialogues when there is fear of becoming a target of ridicule from others in the group. This may explain the establishment of issue-specific institutions such as the Four-Party Talks and KEDO.

The review here suggests the conclusion that multilateralism may be entering a period of pause or perhaps even slowdown. The initial enthusiasm for multilateral initiatives has not altogether dissipated, but there is a greater sense of limits on what they might accomplish. Focused multilateral dialogues at both the track one and track two levels can in themselves constitute important exercises in confidence building and socialization. However, they cannot overcome more fundamental conflicts of interest and perception, and it is misleading to think that they can. Moreover, there is clearly an evolutionary process in train; the system is not likely to sustain as many initiatives as now exist, and we already have examples of efforts which have flourished and later fallen by the wayside. We may now be entering a period of consolidation when the plethora of existing initiatives demands some rethinking. We hope that these papers contribute to that effort.

As immigration and integration become subject to heightened public debate and policy attention, Germany and the United States must rethink the policy process in order to promote policy consistency and awareness of its international repercussions. Recent German and U.S. debates and policy changes point to the need for agencies to monitor developments and suggest policy options, and administrative structures that permit some flexibility in administering immigration and integration policies.

This paper (1) summarizes Germany's postwar migration history, (2) reviews the major proposals for changes in Germany's immigration and integration policies before the 1998 elections, (3) summarizes the SPD-Green proposal and its likely impacts, (4) highlights unfinished immigration and integration issues, and (5) compares Germany's immigration debates with similar U.S. debates.