Data exchange in transboundary waters is fundamental to advance cooperative water management. Nonetheless, the degree to which data are shared is not well understood. To gauge this degree, an assessment framework was developed and applied in 25 international river basins. The framework captures the degree to which a set of data parameters is exchanged among countries. A reasonable proportion of surveyed basins exchange some data, but the breadth of such exchange is often limited, and not regular. This paper highlights where data exchange can be improved and provides guidance on how indicators used in global assessment frameworks can motivate this improvement.

During apartheid, South Africa formalized legal pluralism as territorial and institutional segregation that legitimized the white minority’s grab of most land, water and mineral resources. In the homelands on the remaining 13% of the country, allied tribal chiefs controlled second-class customary land and water rights. Under the democratic dispensation, the new Constitution (1996) and National Water Act (1998) aim at redressing this racial discrimination. However, these goals have not been achieved. Building on literature, field research and ongoing policy and legal debates, this paper traces causes for this failure and examines whether and how a different interpretation of statutory law can decolonize past legal pluralism. A main cause of this failure is the continued power by white large-scale water users and their consultants and lawyers. Monopolizing technical and legal knowledge, they fiercely defend apartheid era’s Existing Lawful Uses by 1998 and relatively easily obtain administrative licences for post-1998 water uptake, while claiming excessive monetary values of entitlements to water resources that the state, with tax payers, as custodian holds. In contrast, black water users’ pre-1998 Existing Lawful Uses have not been defined as yet and burdensome licences processes for new water uptake are inaccessible to the many smaller-scale black water users. The paper concludes that, in former homelands, the legal status of living customary water tenure should be elevated and protected. Inclusive facilitated processes can further clarify the “sharing in” of water resources flowing over or under the communities’ territories inside the boundaries of former homelands, also to enable gradual alignment with constitutional rights. However, in “sharing out” these water resources with powerful third parties, including foreign investors, customary water tenure should be fully protected. As a core minimum of highest priority water resource rights across the country, the current Basic Human Needs Reserve should include all water-related constitutional rights, so also water for sufficient food, and be implemented.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of data exchange in transboundary waters’ management, there is growing evidence that data exchange is falling short in practice. A possible explanation may be that data exchange occurs where and when it is needed. Needs for data exchange in shared waters, nonetheless, have not been systematically assessed. This paper evaluates data exchange needs in a set of transboundary basins and compares such needs with evidenced levels of data exchange. Our findings indicate that it may be possible to accelerate data exchange by identifying and promoting the exchange of data that respond to palpable need and serve practical use.

Sub-Saharan Africa is facing an expected doubling of human population and tripling of food demand over the next quarter century, posing a range of severe environmental, political, and socio-economic challenges. In some cases, key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in direct conflict, raising difficult policy and funding decisions, particularly in relation to trade-offs between food production, social inequality, and ecosystem health. In this study, we used a horizon-scanning approach to identify 100 practical or research-focused questions that, if answered, would have the greatest positive impact on addressing these trade-offs and ensuring future productivity and resilience of food-production systems across sub-Saharan Africa. Through direct canvassing of opinions, we obtained 1339 questions from 331 experts based in 55 countries. We then used online voting and participatory workshops to produce a final list of 100 questions divided into 12 thematic sections spanning topics from gender inequality to technological adoption and climate change. Using data on the background of respondents, we show that perspectives and priorities can vary, but they are largely consistent across different professional and geographical contexts. We hope these questions provide a template for establishing new research directions and prioritising funding decisions in sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper analyses groundwater governance within a transfrontier conservation landscape. Given the current heightened interest in groundwater development, it is imperative that more thought be given to how groundwater resources can best be managed in different contexts for multiple uses and users. Transfrontier conservation areas are areas of vast biological diversity whose functioning and ecosystem integrity depends on the availability of water to sustain ecosystems and subsequently derive economic benefit. Further, climate vulnerable rural communities depend on and form an important part of this landscape. The work highlighted in this paper is based on a study conducted in parts of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA), the largest TFCA in the world. Climate induced challenges such as droughts and general poor land use planning have resulted in threats to long term sustainability of freshwater ecosystems and increased incidences of human-wildlife conflicts over limited water resources. Effective groundwater governance can potentially provide pathways for alleviating these challenges. Building on the theoretical fundamentals of polycentric governance, this paper analyses the case of the KAZA TFCA in which multiple levels of governance exist. The paper discusses how to achieve coordination and accountability within a shared landscape to foster sustainable use and management of groundwater. Groundwater within a TFCA context has the potential to alleviate human-wildlife conflict over freshwater, support groundwater dependant ecosystems and sustain smallholder agriculture for the rural communities. Understanding this role of groundwater adds to the framing of freshwater governance and conservation efforts within a TFCA and the identification and development of platforms for the integrated management of groundwater. Bringing together freshwater and conservation institutions in a multi-country context towards integrated water resource management is an initial and novel attempt which forms the foundation for achieving optimal governance approaches in the commons.