Segurança Ambiental dos Recursos Hídricos Internacionais: conflito e cooperação na Bacia do Zambeze

Since the dawn of the twentieth century a series of new security challenges have emerged, many of them related with environmental issues. Water resources have been majorly damaged. For instance, some researches point out that freshwater is becoming scarcer, especially due the increasing levels of population and economic growth in the south. In this context, this work intends to analyze the environmental security situation of international water resources in the region of Zambezi water basin, located in Southern Africa. In order to do that, first it was carried on a critical review of the state-of-the-art literature on the matter. The objective was to summarize the main theoretical approaches on environmental security and identify the most important risk factors and threats to water systems shared by two or more countries. Afterwards, it was conduced an analysis on the case of Zambezi watershed in order to comprehend how the main security actors interact considering the regional dynamics of conflict and cooperation over water resources. Besides the bibliographical review, this paper also researched a series of primary sources, including official documents and data made available by national and international institutions as well as by governmental bodies. Finally, it concludes that regional integration in general and, specifically, the joint implementation of projects are important factors contributing for the strengthening of security. Moreover, incorporating multiple security agents in the institutionalized cooperation mechanisms is a very important step to achieve a more comprehensive environmental security in international water basins.