Transboundary ecosystem governance and climate resilience in Southern Africa: integrating peacebuilding approaches in shared river basin management
Résumé
Background Southern Africa’s transboundary river basins face unprecedented pressures from climate change, population growth, and competing water demands, necessitating integrated governance approaches that simultaneously address ecological sustainability, climate resilience, and conflict prevention. Transboundary water governance, climate adaptation, and peacebuilding are typically addressed separately in policy and practice, creating implementation gaps that undermine regional water security. Methods A systematic literature review was conducted covering 200 peer-reviewed publications (2012–2024) drawn from Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and grey literature. Six major transboundary river basins were examined: Zambezi, Limpopo, Orange-Senqu, Okavango, Incomati, and Maputo. Results Analysis reveals that successful transboundary governance integrates three critical dimensions: (1) adaptive institutional frameworks enabling flexibility while maintaining legitimacy; (2) multi-level governance structures connecting basin-scale coordination with local implementation; and (3) explicit mechanisms for conflict prevention and cooperative benefit-sharing. River basin organisations (RBOs) such as OKACOM, LIMCOM, and ORASECOM demonstrate varying effectiveness, with adaptive governance capacity strongly correlated with stakeholder participation, third-party facilitation, and ecosystem-based approaches. Climate resilience strategies remain inadequately mainstreamed in most transboundary agreements despite projected temperature increases of 3–4 °C and increased drought frequency. Conclusion Effective transboundary ecosystem governance in Southern Africa requires explicit integration of peacebuilding principles, including trust-building mechanisms, equitable benefit-sharing, joint monitoring systems, and adaptive treaty provisions. Recommendations include harmonising climate projections across basin states, establishing joint early warning systems, and creating dedicated funding mechanisms for transboundary climate adaptation.
Citer ce document
Accès au document
Texte intégral en lecture en ligne, réservé aux abonnés SPHAERO et aux membres de l'institution. Se connecter
Voir l'article sur le site de la revueAuteur(s)
Statistiques
Consultations : 1
Téléchargements : 0