This dissertation focuses on transboundary river water disputes and collaboration in the Arab world, and the role of the League of Arab States (LAS)—more commonly referred to as the Arab League—in these interactions to improve our understanding of how to work with a key, but opaque regional organization (RO) to encourage cooperative approaches to managing scarce freshwater sources in one of the world's most volatile and arid regions. It is the first academic paper to focus exclusively on river basins that transverse through Arab states; the first mixed-methods approach to studying transboundary river water conflicts and cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa; and the first medium sample size study of international river water disagreements and collaboration.
According to worldwide studies of transboundary river water conflict for the past 50 years, there have been only 37 violent interactions between two countries over river water, and astoundingly, all but seven of those have been between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. (Wolf 1998; Wolf et al. 2006) The research questions are based on this key finding, exploring why there have not been the same number or level of negative interactions between Arab states given that they share some of the river basins as they do with Israel; if Arab states have been more successful at working together through the LAS to cooperate over international river water issues; and if Arabs have used the LAS to sometimes intensify transboundary river water conflicts given their historically-antagonistic relationships with key non-Arab riparian neighbors. I examine the LAS's involvement in these transactions by focusing on three key organizational roles: the LAS as a regulator, as a forum for information exchange and technical assistance, and as a pooler-provider of member state resources.
The research approach is based on case studies of ten river basins that traverse through Arab countries, using quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis of event data, as well as questionnaire-style interviews of LAS officials and United Nations (UN) and US diplomats who have worked with the LAS. Event data are isolated from a global data set, new data is created for 2009-14, and all data is coded to indicate the level of conflict or cooperation of an international interaction, the issue area of the event, and which of the three key institutional roles the LAS played in an event, if any. The main overall finding is that LAS tends to be involved in conflictive interstate interactions, usually when a downstream Arab country is concerned that an upstream non-Arab country's large river development project will reduce its water quantity, and the downstream Arab country looks to the LAS to help voice its complaints about the project to the international community. This project concludes that despite organizational shortfalls, the LAS is a key RO for CAR researchers and practitioners, international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to work with to try to facilitate positive interstate interactions regarding the management of international river waters. I offer recommendations about how to better facilitate information exchange and institutional knowledge to promote inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful utilization of shared river water sources in Arab river basins; and through an examination of RO involvement in other river basins and transboundary natural resource issues in different regions, offer lessons for and from the Arab world to promote international cooperation.