By 2035, new shared-river agreements will increasingly name data-sharing as a core duty

Prediction: by 2035, a larger share of newly signed agreements on rivers and lakes shared between countries will include explicit duties to share data, such as flows, water quality and dam operations, than agreements signed today.

Reasoning: disputes over water are often disputes over information: who released how much, when. Sharing data is a confidence-building measure, a step that lowers suspicion by making each side's behaviour visible. Cheap sensors and satellite observation make it harder to treat basic water data as a secret.

Confidence: moderate, around 55 percent. Agreements are slow to negotiate and politically sensitive, and data-sharing clauses may be weak or poorly enforced.

What would prove us wrong: if the share of new agreements with such duties does not rise, or if the clauses exist but are routinely ignored.

How to check: review the text of agreements signed in each period, and count the share that require regular data exchange with named formats and timelines.