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By Alex de Sherbinin A major report on the status and future threats to the world’s 286 transboundary river basins has been released by a consortium of institutions led by the UNEP-DHI Center for Water and Environment and including the Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN). The report, funded by the Global Environmental Facility’s Transboundary Waters Assessment Program, covers transboundary river basins that comprise more than 40 percent of the earth’s population and land area in 151 countries. Transboundary river basins cross international borders and are shared by two or more countries, which often makes managing them more challenging. CIESIN’s contribution to the project was to author a socioeconomic chapter, for which we calculated three indicators: economic dependence on water resources, societal well-being levels, and the risk of climate-related hazards (see map figure). The first indicator measures the proportion of economic activity—as measured by agricultural and industrial activity—within the basin compared to outside the basin, for the countries that share the basin, with higher proportions indicating higher dependence on the water resources of that basin. The second indicator includes a suite of standard development indicators: infant mortality rates, access to water and sanitation, literacy rates and economic inequality (gini coefficients). The third indicator is a measure of economic assets exposed to floods and the variation in inter-annual river flow. The socioeconomics chapter had the following main findings: The table below summarizes the basins with the highest risk for the three factors. Of the 20 basins listed at least once, all but five are located in Africa. 
Some of the key findings from the report include: The assessment serves a number of purposes. This includes identification of river basins at risk from a variety of issues, encouraging knowledge exchange and increasing awareness of the importance of the transboundary waters and their current state. More information on transboundary river basins can be found at http://twap-rivers.org/. The website includes links to the Final Technical Report, Summary for Policy Makers, and Interactive Results Portal with global maps of assessment results and indicator metadata sheets. Alex de Sherbinin heads the Science Applications Division of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network and serves as deputy manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center.
Risks for the world’s Transboundary River Basins are projected to increase in the next 15–30 years, particularly in four hotspot regions: the Middle East, Central Asia, the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin, and the Orange and Limpopo basins in Southern Africa.
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