MOUNTAINS: SOURCES OF WATER, SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE ADVANCES IN GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH VOLUME 31 Editor-in-Chief Martin Beniston, University of Geneva, Switzerland Editorial Advisory Board B. Allen-Diaz, Department ESPM-Ecosystem Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. R.S. Bradley, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, U.S.A. W. Cramer, Department of Global Change and Natural Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. H.F. Diaz, Climate Diagnostics Center, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA, Boulder, CO, U.S.A. S. Erkman, Institute for Communication and Analysis of Science and Technology – ICAST, Geneva, Switzerland. R. García Herrera, Facultad de Físicas, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain M. Lal, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. U. Luterbacher, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. I. Noble, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting and Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. L. Tessier, Institut Mediterranéen d’Ecologie et Paléoécologie, Marseille, France. F. Toth, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria. M.M. Verstraete, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy. The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge Edited by Ellen Wiegandt Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch, Sion, Switzerland A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4020-6747-1 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-6748-8 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2008 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. PREFACE The idea for Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge began with the constitution of the Association Montagne 2002, whose mission was to celebrate the International Year of Mountains in the alpine canton of Valais, Switzerland. The year 2002 was the occasion for diverse activities ranging from exchanges with Bhutan and the construction of a traditional hanging bridge, to a contest for schoolchildren and roving photography exhibits. An international scientific colloquium was also organized at the University Institute Kurt Bösch. Committee members of the Association Montagne subsequently agreed that the presentations should be gathered into a book. The topic seemed particularly appropri- ate for the Martin Beniston-edited series, “Advances in Global Change Research,” which regularly publishes the results of the annual Wengen Workshops on Global Climate Change Research as well as of other conferences. This volume was a collective effort. The dedication of the Associa- tion Montagne committee members was unflagging. The commitment to the overall project of State Councilor Jean-Jacques Rey-Bellet and of Gabrielle Nanchen, then President of the Fondation pour le développement durable des regions de montagne, was particularly noteworthy and is gratefully acknowledged here. We appreciate the support of numerous financial sponsors of the Association Montagne 2002 and its International Year of Mountains activities, who made the conference and the book possible. Martin Beniston deserves thanks for including the volume in his series. A book is ultimately the fruit of its authors and the reviewers who help refine arguments and clarify style. All contributors to this volume have been exemplary in revising manuscripts, responding to queries, and making corrections. They are especially thanked for their patience as this book followed its long route from conference to publication, helped in its final stages by research assistants from the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, Michael Flynn and Gauri Khanna. v CONTENTS Preface ...............................................................................................v General Concepts and Processes; Mountain Specificities 1. Framing the Study of Mountain Water Resources: An Introduction ............................................................................3 Ellen Wiegandt 2. “Water Towers”—A Global View of the Hydrological Importance of Mountains ...........................................................15 Daniel Viviroli and Rolf Weingartner 3. The History of Irrigation and Water Control in China’s Erhai Catchment: Mitigation and Adaptation to Environmental Change...........................................................21 Darren Crook, Mark Elvin, Richard Jones, Shen Ji, Gez Foster, and John Dearing 4. Scarcity, Equity, and Transparency: General Principles for Successfully Governing the Water Commons......................43 Paul Trawick 5. From Principles to Action: Incentives to Enforce Common Property Water Management......................................63 Ellen Wiegandt Multiple Uses and Competition for Mountain Water 6. Hydroelectric Resources Between State and Market in the Alpine Countries...............................................................83 Franco Romerio vii viii Contents Box: Example of Water Rights: Concessions in the Valais, Switzerland ........................................................102 Eric Wuilloud 7. Crans-Montana: Water Resources Management in an Alpine Tourist Resort ......................................................103 Christophe Clivaz and Emmanuel Reynard Water Conflicts and Conflict Resolution Mechanisms 8. Water Value, Water Management, and Water Conflict: A Systematic Approach............................................................123 Franklin M. Fisher 9. Evolutionary Explanations of Syrian–Turkish Water Conflict .........................................................................149 Serdar ù. Güner 10. Water Use and Risk: The Use of Prospect Theory to Guide Public Policy Decision-Making.................................161 Raymond Dacey Indigenous Knowledge; Technical Solutions 11. Disasters, Development, and Glacial Lake Control in Twentieth-Century Peru .......................................................181 Mark Carey 12. Wetlands and Indigenous Knowledge in the Highlands of Western Ethiopia..................................................................197 Alan Dixon 13. A New Ancient Water Mill: Remembering Former Techniques...................................................................211 Michel Dubas Contents ix 14. Water-Related Natural Disasters: Strategies to Deal with Debris Flows: The Case of Tschengls, Italy.....................221 Walter Gostner, Gian Reto Bezzola, Markus Schatzmann, and Hans-Erwin Minor 15. Flood Volume Estimation and Flood Mitigation: Adige River Basin ....................................................................243 Salvatore Manfreda and Mauro Fiorentino 16. Hydrological Assessment for Selected Karstic Springs in the Mountain Regions of Bulgaria ..........................265 Tatiana Orehova and Elena Kirilova Bojilova Policy Implications for Efficient and Equitable Water Use 17. Water and Mountains, Upstream and Downstream: Analyzing Unequal Relations...................................................283 Urs Luterbacher and Dushen Mamatkanov 18. Creating a Policy Environment for Sustainable Water Use ................................................................................305 Katrina Schoengold and David Zilberman Bibliography..................................................................................327 Index ..............................................................................................381 GENERAL CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES; MOUNTAIN SPECIFICITIES FRAMING THE STUDY OF MOUNTAIN WATER RESOURCES: AN INTRODUCTION Ellen Wiegandt Institut universitaire Kurt Bösch Sion, Switzerland [email protected] 1. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES A crucial vulnerability the international community will face in the near future is access to fresh water in sufficient quantity and of adequate quality to meet the needs of a growing global population. As a result, mountains, which have always held a privileged relationship with water as the sources of the world’s greatest rivers and the homes of huge glacier reserves, will come under increasing pressure. Already, these “water towers of the world” are threatened by major global forces. Climate change is predicted to modify the quantities of water available and shift its seasonality. Even greater challenges will come from the dynamics of human behavior. Population growth is one obvious threat to sufficient water supply, but equally impor- tant are changing norms and evolving activities. Historically dominant activities like agriculture and herding now compete with industry, leisure, domestic, and energy sectors for mountain water. These new uses are overlaid by various social constructs like pricing schemes, regulations, and property rights that shape production and consumption patterns by deter- mining who gets how much water and when. Appropriate solutions for water use management contribute to efficient and equitable