As markets and regulatory tasks become increasingly global, forms of private international regulatory co-operation are emerging along with – or sometimes as a replacement for – inter-governmental co-operation. In a number of settings, traditional forms of public intervention are facing enormous, sometimes insurmountable difficulties in coping with certain policy problems. The weaknesses of public regulation emerge more specifically at the transnational level where difficulties to co-ordinate, inconsistencies between standard setting and enforcement, divergences between administrative and judicial enforcement and within the latter among domestic courts make inter-state regulatory co-operation an insufficient response. This case study analyses how the development of transnational private regulation responds to the needs of globalisation, while raising a number of challenges.

There are 261 transboundary river basins in the world, representing 45% of the earth’s land area. Nineteen basins cross five countries or more, including the Mekong, the Nile, the Niger and the Rhine. The Danube, for example, flows adjacent to, or through 18 countries. In Europe alone, 20 countries rely on neighbouring countries for more than 10% of their water resources and five European countries draw 75% of their water resources from upstream countries. This case study focuses on modes of international regulatory co-ordination in water governance, specifically in managing river basins that cross national boundaries for non-navigational purposes.