The Iberian Peninsula’s shared rivers harmonization of use: a Portuguese perspective

Abstract: The “Convention on Co-operation for Protection and Sustainable Use of Portuguese-Spanish River Basins, ” effective since January 2000, corresponds to a new and expected phase on bilateral water resources issues, applying to a basin-wide ecosystem protection of all shared rivers and aiming at risk prevention improvement on those basins. After a brief analysis of shared water resources and uses and of the current and foreseen Portuguese water resources planning, legal, and institutional contexts, an identification is made of water problems to be solved in common or bilaterally and some of the downstream impacts. Thereafter, a brief description of the Convention provisions is presented, relat-ing it to International Law and to European Union (EU) water policy, namely to the Water Framework Directive. The compatibility of both active documents is analyzed, as well as the needs for institutional capacity building and for monitoring their application, with special emphasis on the Portuguese case, taking into account the two countries ’ differing institutional water organization, water planning devel-opment stages and methodologies, and the public participation tradition on decision-making pro-cesses. Special emphasis is given to the relevance of the Convention’s institutional boards to the com-mon implementation process