This master’s thesis focuses on the issue of water scarcity, which is now, in the 21st century already globally widespread and affects almost all regions of the world. This environmental issue is placed within the framework of the modern security paradigm, which the Copenhagen School has divided into five security dimensions as part of its theoretical research, with an emphasis on teaching the implications of the problem for the environmental dimension of security. From this point of view the most evident effects of water scarcity are triggered among countries in international river basins, where the perception of the issue as an existential threat sets in motion a securitization process that is reinforced in practice through the use of securitization mechanisms – from the linguistic, institutional to the structural. These mechanisms are defined as hydro-hegemon’s instruments of confronting the environmental issue, which define both, conflictual and cooperative relations in the river basin. In this regard, conflict tensions prevail over cooperative implications within the context of the environmental security. Yet these tensions have never escalated to armed conflict stemming exclusively from water resources.
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