Water is required to ensure food security, feed livestock, and industrial production and to conserve the environment. Human population has always been dependent on the rivers for survival. Management of rivers has been attempted by humans since the ancient times as the civilizations developed in the vicinity of the rivers. As the world’s population grows, the demand for water mounts and pressure on finite water resources intensifies. But the importance of population is major factor to consider. However, the brutal challenge of climate change resulting in changes in rainfall regimes, threatening surface as well as groundwater, contributes to making water resource scarcity a reality. Changes in hydrological cycle will certainly alter the precipitation and evapo-transpiration patterns, resulting in significant changes in the discharge regime of rivers. Moreover, it may lead to greater unreliability of dry season flows that possess potentially serious risks to water and energy supplies in the lean season. Therefore, before planning and management of any long-term water resources, the assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrological resources is of prime importance. The two main policy responses to climate change are mitigation and adaptation which is necessary to deal with the impacts of climate change. Adaptation measures may be planned in advance or put in place spontaneously in response to a local pressure. Incidences of waterrelated disasters are showing an upward trend due to climate change impacts thereby increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. These issues intensify the phenomenon of erosion, land-water degradation, and pollution which demand for river restoration and training, as rivers are the essential element for sediment transport from surface land to oceans. The complexity of implementing the Integrated Land and Water Resources Management (ILWRM) increases manifold when the river crosses political border, thus making it a transboundary in nature which are not regulated by ratified international laws. Hence the need for transboundary international water law is overwhelming, constant, and immediate. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.