ABSTRACT The Water Reserve Unit (WRU) proposes a new category of securitized, resource-backed reserve assets that integrate verified freshwater reserves into the global financial architecture.Unlike speculative digital assets, WRU represents a regulated and institutionally verified instrument designed to enhance global financial stability through linkage to real, measurable resources. The framework unites economic, legal, and technological dimensions — including distributed-ledger verification, sustainable-development principles, and international governance mechanisms — to enable transparent, compliant, and auditable issuance of water-backed value units.Technological transparency is achieved through distributed-ledger proof-of-reserve mechanisms ensuring real-time verification, accountability, and cross-border interoperability. Legally, the concept builds upon the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 64/292 (2010), which recognizes the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, and aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), embedding this right within a financial-institutional framework. By translating normative principles of international water law — such as those articulated in the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses — into measurable reserve instruments, WRU operationalizes the linkage between resource security and financial stability. Methodologically, the WRU framework is grounded in institutional economics (Commons, North), ecological macroeconomics, and sustainability finance, integrating valuation of natural capital with modern digital auditability. It provides a conceptual and technological foundation for recognizing water as a reserve-eligible asset, comparable in function to gold or Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), yet intrinsically tied to the planet’s most vital resource. Thus, WRU is not a cryptocurrency or utility token but a sovereignly regulated, resource-anchored financial standard — a new class of sustainability-linked reserve assets that integrate environmental resilience, economic equity, and technological trust within the evolving global financial system.
The traditional approach to managing conflict risks in transboundary river basins stresses better design of cooperative institutions such as treaties, basin commissions, and processes for data sharing, monitoring, and joint management activities. These efforts seek to enhance cooperative engagement, increase adaptive capacity, and build capabilities for conflict resolution. This chapter discusses important “blind spots” in this perspective. One such blind spot is related to the new political economy of water, which involves complex and decentralized financing mechanisms that move authority away from national governments and basin-collaboration settings. A second blind spot emerges from various forms of climate-driven water conflict that tend to be invisible to prevailing institutional arrangements, such as allocation conflicts between farmers and cities or other tensions over competing uses at the subnational level in transnational basins. Finally, inadequate attention has been paid to forms of conflict that emerge from efforts to adapt to climate change, which often bear important and contentious distributive consequences. To address these emergent risks, a revised “formula” for managing conflict in transboundary basins will require more holistic approaches to monitoring and assessment, broader forms of stakeholder engagement and dialog, and a strengthened commitment to rights-based approaches.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to spur further exploration of blockchain technologies for environmental peacebuilding, specifically through water management. Although the environmental peacebuilding field acknowledges the potentially transformative nature of frontier technologies, most existing studies do not address how such technologies can contribute to peacebuilding through improved natural resource governance. Using a theory synthesis research design, this conceptual paper connects these studies to discuss how blockchain technologies in water management may contribute to environmental peacebuilding through the efficient and transparent management of natural resources. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a conceptual approach and a theory synthesis research design to present potential mechanisms through which blockchain technology can potentially contribute to environmental peacebuilding. Findings The authors discuss the limitations in the literature on environmental peacebuilding, blockchain and water management, concluding that the third generation of studies should focus on the role of frontier technologies. This approach should especially address the negative consequences of technology for peacebuilding objectives. The authors argue that blockchain applications in water management can potentially contribute to environmental peacebuilding objectives in three ways: (i) creating a mechanism for confidence-building in low-trust contexts through automated and transparent water transactions, (ii) facilitating postconflict economic development through attracting capital and increasing the efficiency of water management and (iii) improving governance through greater transparency and local participation in natural resource management. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to conceptually explore the use of blockchain technology for water management in the context of environmental peacebuilding. The insights from this study can guide policymakers of conflict sides that focus on resolving issues such as lack of governance and low state agency.
This research has been conducted within the framework of the joint project ‘Integrated Watershed Management in Central Asia – Implementing an Educational and Research Concept for Capacity Building in Kyrgyzstan’, driven by German and Kyrgyz universities and financed by the German Volkswagen Foundation. After gaining its independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan was confronted with arising social and economic difficulties. The newly formed Kyrgyz government was not able to provide the population with a functioning drinking water supply system (WSS) and all its connected proper services. Nowadays, many villages in Kyrgyzstan lack adequate WSSs for drinking as well as irrigation water. The present thesis is focused on problems in the accessibility to clean drinking water in rural areas of Central Kyrgyzstan. On the example of the village of Kara-Suu in the central Naryn oblast, the today's structures of the WSSs are examined. Kara-Suu was chosen as a more or less typical soviet-style Kyrgyz village in order to find some answers to the defined main research question: What are the problems in the management of drinking WSS in rural areas of Kyrgyzstan? Most data has been gathered during field research by using the following methods: An overview of the research area was gained by direct and indirect, respectively participating and non-participating observation, on- site inspection, mapping of the water supply system in a GIS, semi-structured expert interviews with various stakeholders and representatives of different authorities, and standardized interviews on the basis of a questionnaire with villagers of Kara-Suu. The study in Kara-Suu showed that after getting independent in 1991, ownership and operation of the rural drinking WSS were decentralized and handed over to the administration of the village and villagers themselves. However, the administration as well as the villagers has little knowledge about management, operation and maintenance of a local drinking WSS, which has originally been planned and managed by the prior existing soviet collective farms. The deterioration of the freshwater WSS in Kara-Suu expresses itself in the fact that much of the water supply infrastructure (e.g. pumps, pipelines, public standpipes) is technically outdated, poorly maintained and out of function due to the discontinuation of funding from the government as well as the unwillingness or inability of the local community and people to self-management. Based on the investigations in Kara-Suu, it can be concluded that the problem of inadequate access to water and its partially poor quality are rather rooted in the poor management and low awareness of local people, than in the physical availability of enough fresh water for domestic use and consumption. The main conclusions of this research are as follows: 1) Only the investment of money cannot improve the situation in the WSS in rural areas; 2) It is necessary to change the attitude of the water user towards water as an economic good; 3) To raise awareness, responsibility and capacity of people to manage the WSS properly; 4) Not only to build a WSS, but also to establish the legal and social institutions that would help to create the needed conditions for a sustainable development and management of the rural water infrastructure.
Tumur Gunchinmaa, Dilrabo Hamdamova, Barbara van Koppen
The division of Central Asia into several independent states, and the transition from the centrally planned economy to a market economy in the majority of those states, affected all sectors and all social levels in the region. One such example is irrigation. Centrally planned and financed from Moscow, on-farm irrigation systems were managed by collective farms. The process of decentralization through the dismantling of collective farms led to a restructuring of services and infrastructure throughout Central Asia. Water users associations (WUAs) have been established to transfer on-farm irrigation management to farmers throughout the region, including Uzbekistan. Many women in Uzbekistan actively participate in farming activities, so their role in the on-farm irrigation restructuring process is important. Yet, the findings from this study suggest that participation of women is very limited in WUAs as very few women are registered as land owners. Because of high levels of migration by men to other countries, farm activities are mostly carried out by women. Despite this, women’s decision-making power within their farms is limited.