Research On Triggering Route Of Transboundary Water Conflicts Based On Qualitative Comparative Analysis

In recent years,disputes arising from the shared water resources development and utilization among countries in transboundary basins have been increasing,affecting the overall security situation in transboundary basins and bringing many unstable factors to national development and regional cooperation.Under the promotion of the "Belt and Road" cooperation initiative,China needs to actively develop cooperative partnerships with neighboring countries.Transboundary water issues have already become an important obstacle to good interaction and mutual benefit among countries along the routes.Therefore,China urgently needs to prevent water disputes with neighboring countries from turning into more serious water conflicts.The core question explored in this paper is what is the complex causal mechanism induced by transboundary water conflicts? Strive to lead to the combination of key inducing factors and conditional paths of transboundary water conflicts,and propose a more powerful causal explanation mechanism to achieve the realistic goal of blocking transboundary water conflicts.Based on the analysis that the existing classical theories of transboundary water conflict,such as "scarcity-conflict" and "asymmetry-conflict",cannot effectively explain the reality of transboundary water conflict,this study puts forward the "relationship-conflict theory".In addition,the complex combined effects of five inductive factors in the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts in this theoretical paradigm are explored,namely,scarcity of water resources,asymmetry of national capacity,differences in geographic location,uneven redistribution of water resources and water mechanism capacity of basin countries.Through the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fs QCA)of 24 transboundary water conflict cases,taking the outbreak of transboundary water conflict as the outcome variable of this study,and determining the per capita water resources,national capacity,upstream and downstream geographic location,the number of large dams,and the recognized water agreement in the transboundary basin as the condition variables of this study.Finally,five parallel and equivalent conditional path combinations are obtained which lead to the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts.The results of this paper show that there are five inducing factors for scarcity of water resources,asymmetry of national capacity in transboundary basins,differences in geographic location,uneven redistribution of water resources,and water mechanism capacity of transboundary basin countries are not the key inducing factors leading to the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts,and found that only the mutual combination of these inducing factors can lead to the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts.In this paper,the condition combinations of five factors that induce transboundary water conflicts are as follows:(1)The scarcity of water resources must be combined with the asymmetry of national capabilities in transboundary basins and the strong capacity of national water mechanisms in the basins to cause the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts.Other inducing paths leading to the outbreak of transboundary water conflicts are:(2)The combined effect of the three predisposing factors of asymmetry of national capacity,uneven redistribution of water resources,and strong capacity of the national water mechanism of the basin;(3)The combined effect of not scarce water resources,the geographical location of the basin countries downstream,and the uneven redistribution of water resources;(4)The combined effect of not scarce water resources,the geographical location of the basin country downstream,and the weak capacity of the basin country’s water mechanism;(5)The combined effect of water scarcity,asymmetry of national capabilities,and the geographical location of the basin countries downstream.Therefore,only in the combination of various inducing factors can transboundary water conflict be triggered,which also verifies the explanatory power and rationality of "relation-conflict theory" proposed in this paper.According to the hypothesis of "relation-conflict theory" and the research conclusion,this paper believes that the inducing path leading to the outbreak of transboundary water conflict can be consistent with the problem of transboundary water conflict in China.As is known to all,China is a country with many transboundary rivers,and water disputes with neighboring countries will more or less occur due to the issue of sharing rivers.How to prevent water disputes among countries in the basin from developing into transboundary water conflicts is a practical issue that needs to be solved urgently between China and neighboring countries.Therefore,the combination of the five inducing paths for transboundary water conflicts obtained in this article has important reference significance for solving the problem of transboundary water conflicts between China and neighboring countries.We can start from four aspects: effectively strengthening transboundary river basin water cooperation,rationally developing and utilizing transboundary water resources,striving to improve the governance capacity of water institutions in transboundary countries,and actively exerting the coordination role of third parties to effectively prevent and resolve water conflicts.Properly handle transboundary water political relations with neighboring countries in the southwest,northwest and other transboundary basins.This is not only conducive to maintaining China’s political security and peripheral stability,creating an international environment of peaceful cooperation,mutual benefit and win-win results,but also serving the implementation of my country’s overall national security concept.