“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water”, writes Prof. Eckstein (2017) while commenting upon ILC’s draft articles of the “Law of Transboundary Aquifers”, but it fails to highlight the geographical context of those wells. Water, a crucial resource that has been normatively trifurcated as i) Weapon, ii) Casualty and iii) Trigger by Prof. Gleick (2019) and other academicians, presents a massive challenge in the applicability of legal frameworks for transboundary governance of water (whether surface or ground). The nature of the Watercourse Convention of 1997 varies massively from the Law of Transboundary Aquifers, 2008, as it is a guiding framework to enhance bilateral or multilateral treaties about water that does not constitute a part of international watercourses and its related aquifer. It is a considerable step towards holistic governance of one of the most crucial global common resources. However, it loses its effective applicability to “too much flexibility, Eurocentric scope and a language entrenched in neutrality (Godara et al., 2024). The principle of sovereignty in the Law of Transboundary Aquifers reflects the state’s reluctance to accept the principle of equity regarding transboundary aquifers’ governance rather than based on geography. Nonetheless, the idea of sovereign control did not appear in the Watercourse Convention 1997. As per the Watercourse Convention, an aquifer which forms a geological relationship with surface water of a transboundary nature shall be governed beyond the scope of sovereign control. Such a categorisation complicates and creates a scope for conflicting dual application in the face of inevitable hydrologic and technological reality where visibly defined aquifers do not exist or cannot be identified due to technological limitation. Through doctrinal framework analysis of both legal frameworks, this chapter highlights a structural and ideational incompatibility rather than proposed or enhanced synchronisation. The burden of such incompatibility is geographically uneven, with more impacts registered in Global South on databases such as Water Conflict Chronology and Environmental Justice Atlas. While paper also introduces theory of Hydro Hegemony, which explains hydropolitical maneuvering by watercourse states which have negatively hampered the aim of water governance frameworks and their geopolitical consequences (different for ally and adversary). It is too early to foretell if water will become a basis for future wars without precedents. However, that must not block the pursuit of exploring answers to its structural and ideational shortcomings.