Table 1. Basic features of the case studies.

South Africa Uzbekistan
Hydrogeophysical features
Climate Arid/semi-arid Arid/semi-arid
Possible impact of climate change
(Christensen et al. 2007, Cruz et al. 2007)		 Rising temperature
Decreasing precipitation		 Rising temperature
Decreasing precipitation
Hydrogeophysical features of rivers Orange-Senqu: water formed in mountains of neighbouring Lesotho, then flowing through a semi-arid plain, dominated by (irrigated) agriculture and large-scale farming Amu Darya: water formed on glaciers of neighbouring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, then flowing through a semi-arid plain, dominated by irrigated agriculture and farming
Actual renewable water resources per capita in 2005 (FAO 2010) 1106 m3/inhabitant/year
i.e., “water stressed” and close to the limit of “water scarce”  (< 1000 m3)		 1904 m3/inhabitant/year
i.e., relatively sufficient (but no environmental flows)
Water use
Total water withdrawal per capita (1998–2002) (FAO 2010) 279 m3/inhabitant/year 2270 m3/inhabitant/year
Total water withdrawal as a percentage of total renewable water resources (1998–2002) (FAO 2010) 25% 108%†
Pressure on renewable water resources (values > 25% are considered to be high pressure) (FAO 2010) Moderate Extremely high
Water withdrawal by agricultural sector (1998–2002) (FAO 2010) 63% 93%
Transformation and governance indices
Worldwide Governance Indicators:
Voice and accountability (percentile rank 0–100)‡
Political stability (percentile rank 0–100)
Government effectiveness (percentile rank 0–100)
Rule of law (percentile rank 0–100)
(World Bank 2009)		 Average or good
67.8
41.6
75.4
56.0		 Poor
1.9
18.2
27.0
10.0
Corruption Perception Index 2009
(Transparency International 2009)		 4.7/10
(rank 55 out of 180)		 1.7/10
(rank 174 out of 180)
Political and economic transformation (status index)
Way towards democracy and market economy (management index) (Bertelsmann Foundation 2008)		 18/125
10/125
transformation in progress		 111/125
117/125
transformation blocked

† A rate > 100% is possible since Uzbekistan re-uses part of its agricultural drainage water and because upstream countries eventually do not use the full amount of water allocated to them by international treaties.
‡ The percentile rank indicates the rank of a country among all countries in the world (0 corresponds to lowest, 100 to highest rank).