An examination of the South Asia Water Initiative and associated donor-led processes in the transboundary water governance of the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed

Abstract

Because of the complex nature of transboundary water governance, and the inherent unpredictability of complex adaptive systems, this thesis argues that international actors alone are unable to directly bring about positive water interaction between riparian states.

This thesis analyses a major World Bank-led program of transboundary water governance, and provides a critique of the recent trend in international development to address transboundary water conflicts in developing countries through foreign-led interventions. This thesis examines the perspectives and needs of stakeholders affected by the South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI) to evaluate the effect that this, and other donor-led processes, may have on the quality of transboundary water interaction between riparian states. These in-basin views have remained absent from, or secondary to, international assessments and approaches to addressing water conflict and cooperation.

The portion of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna mega-basin that is shared between Nepal, Bhutan, northern India, and Bangladesh is one of the poorest, most densely populated, ecologically vulnerable, and socially and politically unstable in the world. It is possible that water will be a stress multiplier in socio-political conflict in this problemshed. Reducing the potential for transboundary water conflict by increasing cooperation between riparian states has been of particular interest to policymakers, aid donors, and scholars of conflict for more than a decade. The World Bank began to intervene in the transboundary water governance in South Asia in the mid-2000s, and SAWI is its most ambitious of its initiatives in this regard.

Yet, in more than a decade of existence, neither SAWI nor other international initiatives, such as those of the Australian and UK governments, have been able to improve transboundary water interactions between India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. An analysis of more than 30 semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts from within the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed reveals several weaknesses in the approach of these interventions in improving transboundary water interactions. The methods of Track II dialogue and benefit sharing favoured by the World Bank are found to have very limited effect on increasing transboundary water cooperation. In addition, stakeholders identified a number of contextual factors that make the goal of increased transboundary water cooperation particularly challenging in this region: addressing transboundary water issues is not a top priority for the riparian states; there is significant resentment about India’s hydro-hegemony; and international actors in general do not have substantial support of the elites in the region. But the analysis suggests some ways forward for increasing water cooperation and decreasing water conflict in this, as well as other, problemsheds.

This thesis argues that there is no one single approach or actor that can definitively improve transboundary water interaction. As such, international organisation and foreign aid donors should not expect to have significant or immediate effects on transboundary water cooperation, but there may nonetheless be a role, albeit highly circumscribed, for them in slowly ‘chipping away’ (in the words of one regional analyst) at the complex and cumbersome problem of water conflicts through the approaches identified as desirable by the stakeholders within the problemshed. Show more