User:Transboundary/sandbox

Transboundariness is a concept, a measure and an approach first introduced in 2017 by Rosario Sanchez (Sanchez & Eckstein 2017), and it is defined as a measure of the strategic value of an aquifer that happens to be located at the border between countries.

The relevance of this approach is that the physical features of the aquifers become just additional variables among the broad spectrum of considerations of the transboundary nature of an aquifer:

- social (population);

- economic (groundwater productivity);

- political (as transboundary);

- available research or data;

- water quality and quantity;

- other issues governing the agenda (security, trade, immigration and so on).

The discussion changes from the traditional question of “is the aquifer transboundary?” to “how transboundary is the aquifer?”.

The socio-economic and political contexts effectively overwhelm the aquifer´s physical features adding its corresponding geostrategic value –its transboundariness.

The criteria proposed by this approach attempt to encapsulate and measure all potential variables that play a role in defining the transboundary nature of an aquifer and its multidimensional boundaries.