Europe - UNEP

Dam area in Miranda do Douro (Portugal). Photo credit: Byj2000, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
with Italy over the River Roya in the 1930s where
France questioned Italy’s right to develop the
Roya in light of a France-Italy Treaty in which Italy
had agreed not to interfere with the waters of the
Roya in a way that would affect France.
More recently, during the 1990s, Portugal
expressed concern over Spain’s plans to divert a
number of shared transboundary waters—the
Minho, Douro, Tagus, and Guadiana—for
hydropower generation (IWED, 2005); a concern
that was aggravated by serious droughts within
the Iberian Peninsula during the early 1990s.
Portugal claimed that implementation of the
1993 Spanish water plan would result in a 13-
17% decrease in water flow. Portugal
maintained that such a decrease would have led
to various problems including increased
polluted wastewater, which was discharged
directly into the Douro, as well as negative
impacts on Portuguese hydropower production.
However, positive steps to build hydropolitical
resilience within Luso-Spanish waters were taken
in 1998 with the adoption of the Albufeira
Convention and joint Commission between
Spain and Portugal concerning the protection
and sustainable use of their shared waters. 2
Another example of a transboundary water
dispute occurred in the Varda River basin where
shared water resources have been the source of
conflict between Greece and Macedonia for
many decades. Intensive irrigation, development
of dams, and increased pollution resulted in
significant degradation of water quality in this
river basin. As recently as 2002, the Greek
government protested about the absence of
notification of Macedonia’s plans to revitalize
Lion’s head fountain, Paris, France. Photo credit: Jane McCauley
Thomas.
2
Agreement on the Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable
Use of the Waters of the Spanish-Portuguese Hydrographic Basins,
Albufeira, 30 Nov. 1998 (entered into force 17 January 2000).
2009 United Nations Treaty Series.
38 — Hydropolitical Vulnerability and Resilience along International Waters: Europe