Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts: Enabling Conditions for Negotiating Contingent Resolutions

By Lawrence Susskind

‘Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts’ seeks to understand transboundary water governance as complex systems with contingent conditions and possibilities. To address those conditions and leverage the possibilities it introduces the concept of enabling conditions as a pragmatic way to identify and act on the emergent possibilities to resolve transboundary water issues.

Based on this theoretical frame, the book applies ideas and tools from complexity science, contingency and enabling conditions to account for events in the formulation of treaties/agreements between disputing riparian states in river basins across the world (Indus, Jordan, Nile, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Colorado, Danube, Senegal and Zayandehrud). It also includes a section on scholars’ reflections on the relevance and weakness of the theoretical framework.

The book goes beyond the conventional use of the terms ‘complexity’, ‘contingency’ and ‘enabling conditions’ and anchors them in their theoretical foundations. The argument distinguishes itself from the conventional meaning and usage of the terms of necessary and sufficient conditions in causal explanations. The book’s focus is to identify conditions that set the stage to move from the world of seemingly infinite possibilities to actionable reality. Three enabling conditions – active recognition of interdependence, mutual value creation through negotiation and adaptive governance through learning – are identified and explored for their meaning and function in specific transboundary water disputes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Dec 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781783088713

Lawrence Susskind

LAWRENCE SUSSKIND is Ford Foundation Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Consensus Building Institute. He has served on the faculty at MIT for over 40 years. He is also Vice-Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, which he helped to found in 1982 with Fisher and Ury, and where he co-chairs the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, the Negotiation Pedagogy Project and teaches advanced negotiation courses. He is the author of Good For You, Great For Me. He offers a range of executive training programs every year and has served as a guest lecturer at more than two-dozen universities around the world. Larry is the author or co-author of 16 books, many of which are published in multiple language.

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Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts

Anthem Water Diplomacy Series

More effective resolution of our increasingly complex, boundary-crossing water problems demands integration of scientific knowledge of water in both natural and human systems along with the politics of real-world problem solving. Water professionals struggle to translate ideas that emerge from science and technology into the messy context of the real world. We need to find more effective ways to bridge the divide between theory and practice and resolving complex water management problems when natural, societal and political elements cross multiple sectors and interact in unpredictable ways. The Anthem Water Diplomacy Series is a step in that direction. Contributions in this series will diagnose water management problems, identify intervention points and possible policy changes, and propose sustainable solutions that are sensitive to diverse viewpoints as well as conflicting values, ambiguities and uncertainties.

Series Editor

Shafiqul Islam—Tufts University, USA

Editorial Board

Yaneer Bar-Yam—New England Complex Systems Institute, USA

Qingyun Duan—Beijing Normal University, China

Peter Gleick—Pacific Institute, USA

Jerson Kelman—Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Greg Koch—Global Water Stewardship, The Coca Cola Company, USA

Dennis Lettenmaier—University of Washington, USA

Patricia Mulroy—Southern Nevada Water Authority, USA

Ainun Nishat—BRAC University, Bangladesh

Stuart Orr—WWF International, Switzerland

Salman Salman—Fellow, International Water Resources Association (IWRA), France

Poh-Ling Tan—Griffith Law School, Australia

Vaughan Turekian—American Association for the Advancement of Science, USA

Anthony Turton—University of Free State, South Africa

Sergei Vinogradov—University of Dundee, UK

Patricia Wouters—University of Dundee, UK

Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts

Enabling Conditions for Negotiating Contingent Resolutions

Edited by

Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018

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© 2018 Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam editorial matter and selection;

individual chapters © individual contributors

Cover Design: Amanda C. Repella

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-869-0 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-869-9 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Lawrence Susskind

Prologue

Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam

Epilogue

Shafiqul Islam and Enamul Choudhury

Notes on Contributors

Index

Illustrations

Figures

4.1Overview map of the Danube River

4.2Overview of OECD Water Governance Principles

5.1The Brahmaputra sub-basin in South Asia

5.2Physiographic zones of the Brahmaputra sub-basin

5.3Relative hydrographs of the Brahmaputra sub-basin

5.4Land use and land cover in the Brahmaputra sub-basin

5.5Average annual suspended sediment load of some important tributaries of the Brahmaputra River

5.6Jurisdiction map of Brahmaputra Board

5.7Organizational structure of the OGLOBS

6.1The Ganges Basin

7.1The Nile River Basin

8.1The Colorado River Basin

10.1The transboundary nature of the Zayandehrud basin

Tables

4.1Countries sharing Danube with percentage coverage in the basin

5.1Mean monthly rainfall across five stations within the Brahmaputra sub-basin

5.2Summary reach information including length, area and land use for the Brahmaputra sub-basin

5.3Relative positions of the river basins of India in terms of per capita availability in 2011

5.4Present and projected water availability and demand in the Brahmaputra sub-basin including Bangladesh

10.1General characteristics of the Zayandehrud River

10.2Water problem categories and the solution approaches

10.3Supply and uses of the Zayandehrud River since four decades (in mcm)

10.4The Zayandehrud water budget (in mcm)

10.5Urban and industrial water uses of Zayandehrud

10.6The Nine-Point Act vs enabling conditions

Boxes

4.1Complexity and water security characteristics of the Danube River Basin

4.2Key agreements and treaties on Danube

FOREWORD

Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam bring an entirely new perspective to the study of transboundary water conflict. It is not possible, they argue, to identify the common causes of conflict between countries or parts of countries that must share water resources. Whatever commonalities appear to exist, and whatever general theories seem to hold, are likely to be swamped by the underlying dynamics in each situation. The key features of the underlying context—what they call enabling conditions—are crucial to understanding what’s happening in each water conflict. Whatever cause-effect model or general explanation analysts think they have found, regardless of how many conflicts they study, complexity science suggests that every transboundary water conflict is, in fact, emergent. That is, it will continuously evolve as the unique underlying features in each case interact and fold back on each other in dynamic and unpredictable ways.

So whatever might have caused a dispute—countries seeking to assert their sovereignty, rapid urbanization demanding a redistribution of potable water, construction of new energy infrastructure, changing environmental conditions affecting agricultural production and so on—the presenting features in each conflict and the opportunities to intervene will keep evolving. The ebb and flow of political, economic, ecological and other forces are almost impossible to forecast with confidence. Therefore, those who seek to intervene have no choice but to proceed on a contingent basis. That is, they must generate a wide range of scenarios describing what might happen as underlying conditions interact with proximate causes and effects in surprising ways, and they must be inventive with regard to the efforts they formulate to intervene in the hope of resolving a dispute, or moving it in a less contentious direction. There cannot possibly be a best method of resolving transboundary water disputes that is likely to work in all situations, or even promise to provide a good starting point. The stakeholders and decision makers in each situation have to share their concerns, collect information together, consult with scientists and engineers to formulate possible courses of action, perhaps undertake experiments and certainly arrange for close monitoring of changing conditions if they want to have any hope of achieving their interests. They will have to build institutional capacity sufficient to cope with a wide array of possibilities and patterns. There is no way of doing this that will work across all seven continents. There is probably not even a way of proceeding that will work repeatedly on the same continent. Underlying or enabling conditions are just too powerful to ignore. All we can say for sure is that they create a demand for adaptive intervention. The more experiences are shared around the world, however, the greater the chances the parties in each conflict will be able to think of something to try.

Islam and Choudhury have tapped a series of authors who have looked closely at the ways in which enabling conditions have shaped the emergence of transboundary water conflicts in the Danube basin, the Brahmaputra basin, the Ganges basin, along the Nile and the Colorado Rivers, in the Zayandehrud basin in Iran, the Uruguay River and in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin in the Southeastern United States. Their case studies and reflections on the impact of enabling conditions in each instance lead not to a general model of how to manage transboundary water disputes, but rather to insights that can be used to inform conflict management efforts everywhere. The book is filled with ideas that ought to inform the personal theories of dispute-handling practice of water managers all over the world.

In this volume, the writing team makes a compelling case against the search for a general theory of transboundary water management. Instead, they show how complexity science and contingent analysis help us to think and act in context-specific terms. From my own standpoint, since I don’t believe that outsiders can fully appreciate the ways that underlying or enabling conditions shape water conflicts (no matter how expert they are), there is no choice but to bring the actual stakeholders and parties together in each situation (with the help of a professional facilitator) to sort through their options, and help them build new institutional relationships that are needed to support experimentation and adaptation.

Lawrence Susskind

Ford Professor of Urban and

Environmental Planning, MIT

PROLOGUE

Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam

In the 1950s Lilienthal initiated a conversation for the Indus River and Johnston went to the Jordan River. They wanted to address transboundary water management (TWM) issues in South Asia and in the Middle East respectively. In 1960, the Indus Treaty was signed, but it took several decades to sign the 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty. What are the similarities and differences for these two TWM cases? What can we learn from the historical evolution as well as the presence (and absence) of conditions to effectively address similar TWM problems?

The question of how to govern and manage transboundary water for human consumption, irrigation, hydropower, urban and industrial development, sociocultural needs and sustainability of ecosystems continues to be an issue of concern, conflict and cooperation. Academic literature and policy practice suggest interactions of many natural, societal and political elements (hereafter, elements will be used to mean variables, processes, actors and institutions within a TWM system) shape the nature and evolution of TWM dynamics. Challenges and opportunities associated with understanding, explaining and managing the TWM issues are many. Context, complexity and contingency are terms that are now in frequent use in addressing TWM issues; yet, these terms are often vaguely defined and used in a colloquial sense. There are multiple schools of thought and scholarship; however, there appears to be a void of actionable ideas on what to do and how.

With the rise to prominence of TWM challenges on the global stage, concerns over water security and regional stability have become inextricably associated with many national and international agendas and initiatives supported by a wealth of academic literature and policy practice. Despite its increasing sophistication, most of this literature remains wedded to implicit assumptions about values (e.g., that cooperation is desirable and is more cost effective than conflicts; yet, no formal agreements exist to most shared transboundary basins) and that engaging an array of methods, tools, governance structures and institutions will yield a universal cure. These assumptions are rarely challenged and the search for a general theory (e.g., a general theory of TWM cooperation) continues. When faced with failure, it has become commonplace to assert that context matters, but less has been done to show why, when and how it matters.

Given the current conversations, addressing TWM challenges will require a different form of thinking and acting, particularly in terms of recognizing the interdependencies and distinctive needs of the contexts and stakeholders to find practical and sustainable resolutions of TWM problems. The object of this book is to understand, explain and resolve TWM issues using ideas and tools of complexity science and contingency theory as they apply to TWM issues in specific contexts.

One may ask, why do we need the notion of complexity and contingency for (re)framing TWM issues? What is the current framing of TWM problems? What makes TWM issues complex? Are all TWM problems complex?

Current Framing of TWM Issues

Over three hundred surface water basins and six hundred aquifers cross international boundaries. Many more watersheds cross subnational jurisdictions. Changing demography, socioeconomic conditions and climate continues to create competing and often conflicting needs and demands for water in these basins. Broadly speaking, duality of notion—conflict is bad and cooperation is good—dominates the conversation around TWM issues. Different views, issues and approaches related to TWM issues actually are a collection of frameworks, theories, models and tools from a number of disciplines, including hydrology, ecology, engineering, economics, political science, international relations and policy science. A cursory look at the growing body of literature on TWM issues reveals incredible diversity in terms of ontological and epistemological assumptions, foundational concepts, levels of analysis, research methods and so on. Clearly, there are important differences among the approaches followed by different groups; however, many of these approaches acknowledge the complexity of the problem and contingent nature of action.

Although conflict and cooperation are commonly accepted as intuitive categories in TWM discourse, such a categorization usually oversimplifies interactions and variations of natural and societal relations over time and the changing political contexts. It can also obscure multiple dimensions of interactions and related complexity. Such a representation of conflict (bad) and cooperation (good) assumes a simple causality-based reasoning. This is because the robustness of causal reasoning hinges on the identification of all necessary and sufficient conditions for a given cause-effect relationship. Yet, in the conventional application of causal reasoning to address TWM issues, although the necessary conditions are often agreed (implied), the specification of sufficient conditions usually remains vague. Even with a single sufficient condition, for example, creation of new water to augment finite supply and enhance cooperation, the range of causal factors may include many—to name a few—from the consideration of virtual water to desalination to water harvesting to water conservation to reducing power asymmetry in water access and allocation. Despite a significant record of success of causal reasoning to explain the regularity of many natural phenomena, the applicability and success of causality-based reasoning remains contentious in the societal as well as coupled natural and societal domain.

Reframing of TWM Issues

The logic and promise of the conventional notion of causality have served well to understand and explain simple and complicated systems. For complex systems, the power and promise of the conventional approach to specify the causal conditions of complex issues no longer holds, not even in the relatively conducive domain of natural variables and processes. For example, questions like what causes floods or what causes water shortage cannot provide generalizable answers based on conventional meaning of causality. Bringing in human agency (particularly the nature of intentional and value-based actions in politics and culture) in the mix of TWM makes the identification of necessary and sufficient conditions highly contentious and contingent. We hasten to add that not all TWM systems are complex. For simple and complicated problems, the conventional meaning of causality is relevant, because for these systems, cause-effect relationships are identifiable from past observations or epistemic agreements on prevailing theories. For complex TWM systems, on the other hand, it is nearly impossible to identify all the necessary and sufficient conditions in advance. For these complex systems, conventional meaning of causality falls short because there are emergent and contingent conditions at play.

We make a distinction between causes and conditions within the context of complexity. We argue that causes differ in meaning from enablement; with a cause, an effect is necessary, whereas with enablement effects are not necessary but possible, that is, contingent. Many effects are possible that may or may not happen because of contextual and evolving interactions. And such interactions for complex systems cannot be prescribed a priori. It is only retrospectively that we observe emergent properties of a complex system—as an effect of certain conditions and interactions—that were not predictable. The challenge for practical action is to identify the emergent patterns in a complex situation and relate them to the use or creation of enabling conditions to address the challenges inherent in complex TWM systems.

Structure of the Book

This book goes beyond the colloquial use of complexity and contingency to identify the nature of the TWM problems and their resolution using tools and methods from complexity science and contingency theory. Here, we propose an analytical framework using the notion of complexity, contingency and enabling conditions. This book examines seven case studies (Indus, Jordan, Nile, Danube, Colorado, Brahmaputra and Ganges) and five reflective pieces to illustrate reframing of TWM issues.

The book is organized in three parts. Part I—first three chapters—attempts to reframe the theory and practice of TWM using complexity science and contingency theory to resolve TWM issues. Part II—next five chapters—highlights the applicability, strengths and shortcomings of the proposed framework using TWM issues from five transboundary rivers from across the world. This part examines the nature of complexity and contingency for these five river basins: Brahmaputra (Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay), Colorado (Wheeler), Danube (Syed), Ganges (Swain) and Nile (Salman). We provided the contributing authors a broad template of three enabling conditions and asked them if they could find any one, two or all of the enabling conditions to be present (or absent) in and relevant for the specific river basin of their choice. We also asked each author to address the concept of complexity and contingency within the context of their chosen river basin. It is refreshing to note that each chapter provides its own observations, analysis and arguments, independent of the theoretical arguments and framework presented in Part I. Part II also provides an independent and critical assessment of whether the numbers and narratives from chosen river basins support (or refute) the framework outlined in the first three chapters.

Part III—chapters nine through thirteen—provides reflections from emerging scholars from the TWM domain through their critical examination of the proposed framework. These reflective pieces provided the contributing authors an opportunity to be both critical and creative in terms of critiquing the notion of enabling conditions, finding new enabling conditions and addressing different meanings of complexity and contingency. Each author has admirably taken on the task and enlarged the scope of our inquiry—from reflecting on the role and nature of a third party (Hanasz), exploring the complexity and possibilities of law as an instrument (Campbell-Ferrari and Wilson), understanding the complexity of the boundaries and institutional networks spanning intra- and international TWM (Verdini), exploring the constraining and enabling function of legislation (Harandi) and a critiquing the framework based on power relations (Mirumachi).

In Chapter 1 (Complexity and Contingency: Understanding Transboundary Water Issues), Shafiqul Islam and Enamul Choudhury argue that complexity of TWM problems are shaped by interactions of many natural, societal and political elements. For complex TWM problems, conventional notion of causality needs to be disambiguated from certainty, reducibility and predictability. And one needs to look for emergent patterns. It further highlights that complexity science is not a panacea; one simply cannot swap complexity science for reductionist or positivist science. However, for certain type of problems, ideas and tools from complexity science may be more appropriate. What type of problem calls for the application of what type of knowledge from complexity science and in what situation are the type of questions explored in this chapter.

We make a distinction among three types of systems: simple, complicated and complex. For simple systems, cause-effect relationships are well-understood and prediction is possible with high certainty and best management practices are usually effective. For complicated systems, cause-effect relationships are not straightforward; prediction is difficult but possible with reasonable uncertainty; a range of possible solutions are possible for a given management intervention and analysis and intervention require experts with contextual knowledge. For complex systems, cause-effect relationships are ambiguous and almost never prospective; prediction is not possible with any reasonable degree of certainty; nonlinearity and feedback are inherent and emergent properties dominate system behavior and response. A key difference between predictable systems (simple and complicated systems) and complex systems is rooted in the notion and framing of causality and the conditions of emergence. Understanding the relationships and differences among complexity, causality, contingency and conditions is critical to resolving complex TWM issues.

Given the complexity of TWM and its contingent manifestations as conveyed in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 (The Meaning and Logic of Enablement to Explain Complexity and Contingent Actions), Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam show that the prevalent narrative in TWM attempts to specify the conditions under which transboundary water conflict arises or cooperation is attempted. In this chapter, Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam argue that despite the repeated calls and efforts to develop a comprehensive approach to solve TWM problems, the search for causal mechanisms is yet to yield any reliable theory. Among the different modes of cooperation, direct and mediated negotiations have shown success and resilience in initiating, affecting and sustaining institutional interactions among riparians. This chapter argues that the reason for such successful outcomes is contingent and due to the presence of enabling conditions, and not due to any easily identifiable and replicable causal laws or mechanisms of cooperation.

The chapter introduces the concept of enabling condition by drawing from the philosophical literature and illustrating its use in practical reasoning. The aim is to establish enabling conditions as constitutive elements to understand and explain complexity of coupled natural and human (CNH) systems in general, and TWM issues in particular. An enabling condition is a contextually relevant condition that is not a causal condition by itself. However, like a catalyst, its presence allows for present and emergent causal mechanisms to become activated and generate effects. The chapter argues that these contextual and contingent conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions per se, but without enabling conditions, necessary and sufficient conditions usually fail to explain the emergence of new patterns. Simply looking for antecedent conditions or predictive outcomes as necessary and sufficient conditions will not provide explanations that account for the differences in facts and values or agents and structure. The chapter suggests that the notion of enabling conditions can bridge these divides and pave a way for contingent explanation. The logic of enabling conditions is neither a more sophisticated formulation of causal explanation nor a customized version of causality for complex systems. However, for complex systems, it serves an important function in causal explanation, although by itself enablement is not a causal condition. The premise and promise of enabling conditions rest on knowing and acting within a problem context using practical reason.

In Chapter 3 ("Bridging Complexity and Contingency: Role of Three Enabling Conditions to Resolve Water Conflicts in the Indus and Jordan Basins), Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam argue that for a TWM system, types and intensity of interactions among system elements give rise to different contingent scenarios. In such situations, conventional causal reasoning based on specifying the effects of exogenous or antecedent factors that cause cooperation—a reasoning commonly used in TWM literature—loses its primacy. The contingency argument, in contrast to searching for causal conditions, looks for cooperation and institutional mechanisms in terms of the facilitative conditions and actions that explore and utilize opportunities and constraints in a given context. It is these set of conditions that are termed as enabling in the TWM context. This chapter introduces three enabling conditions that constitute a pattern of interactions in the negotiated resolution of conflicts in the Indus River between India and Pakistan and the Jordan River between Israel and Jordan. In advancing the argument, the chapter also makes the point that the resilience of these three enabling conditions rests on operationalizing the values of equity and sustainability in context-specific ways. These three enabling conditions are: (i) active recognition of interdependence; (ii) mutual value creation; and (iii) adaptive regime of governance. In illustrating the efficacy of these three enabling conditions in the resolution of transboundary water disputes, the chapter goes on to apply their contextual meaning in terms of the documented process of negotiation in the cases of Indus and Jordan.

The chapter suggests these three enabling conditions as a focal set of minimum conditions to initiate, design and implement a resilient negotiated process to resolve TWM issues. The solution space for complex TWM problems—involving interdependent variables, processes, actors and institutions—cannot be pre-stated. Consequently, the goal is not to search for and satisfy the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for securing reliable predictive outcomes, but to look for and identify the situational conditions for effective intervention within an emergent pattern of interactions. The identification and implementation of intervention with changing situational conditions and issue configurations is a craft. Effectiveness of this craft is dependent on learning by doing while keeping in mind the capacity and constraints imposed by the system and context.

Part II of the books begins with Chapter 4 (The Resolve to Cooperate on Danube: Enabling Conditions for Transboundary Water Cooperation). Here, Tahira Syed addresses the evolution of transboundary cooperation on the Danube. She points out that the history of cooperation and conflict on Danube River is not only rich but also embedded with key events that shaped the nature of negotiation processes that led to the formation of the modern-day governing structures. The focus of the chapter is on the complex arrangement of protecting and using the river by the riparian countries through a complex institutional process that binds the stakeholders in active recognition of interdependence, mutual value creation and adaptive management. As Syed notes, The conditions are recognized as enabling because they: (i) are process oriented, that is, not an end by themselves but a means to the goal of achieving cooperation; and (ii) can be articulated in ways in which different groups of stakeholders—politicians, water managers, water users and so on—can understand and relate to their mutual needs and constraints. Thus, the success of managing the river illustrates the relevance of the three enabling conditions in practice. In documenting the contextual meaning of the enabling conditions, Syed notes the contingencies of history, like the rise of Hilter, the Cold War and the European Union, in the gradual emergence of the 1994 Danube River Protection Convention and its present-day implementation. She narrates that the problems of sharing transboundary waters are not only nonlinear and political, but also subject to perceptions and intentions of different actors that are reflected in their governance choices.

A regional and integrated approach to water basin management through the establishment of a basin-wide unified monitoring network constitutes the modern-day governance regime of the Danube. The regime rests on an understanding of the complex nature of human–ecosystem interactions and the principles of equity and sustainability in negotiating water quality, navigability, flood control, drought prevention, water transfers, hydropower production and quantity of water use. The approach also provides for the application of the principles to be adjusted to different contexts, particularly keeping pace with the advancement of scientific knowledge for negotiation among manifold stakeholders, while creating the political authority to act. Thus, we find mechanisms to engage and involve not only the Danube countries that are EU members but also the non-EU member countries as well as civil society and the private sector. As a result, implementing the convention includes Transnational Monitoring Network that allows the Water Framework Directive (WFD) within the Danube basin to vary from country to country. For example, we find the enabling condition of adaptive governance in the 1997 Danube Pollution Reduction Program and the 2003 Strategy for Public Participation, which incorporates the economic benefit analysis based not only on the traditional investment and operating costs model, but also through adopting new approaches, such as the calculation of opportunity costs between various uses of the resources and of including the costs of the damage caused to the environment.

In Chapter 5 (Governance of the Brahmaputra Sub-basin: Exploring the Enabling Conditions), Nilanjan Ghosh and Jayanta Bandyopadhyay take on the complexity of governing the Brahmaputra sub-basin and the role of enabling conditions in the governance process. They focus on intranational transboundary issues and the implication of its governance on international transboundary issues. At the heart of their analysis is the paradox of ample water, ample poverty. To understand this paradox, they depict the sub-basin as a coupled complex system—where ecological and hydrological attributes of the natural system interact with the demographic, cultural, economic and political attributes of the social system. They point out that knowledge of this complexity and its contingent manifestation, particularly in terms of the ecosystem–livelihood linkages, is currently absent in the governance design and decision making.

The provisioning of this knowledge and its use in the governance decision calls for not only the integration of contextual scientific knowledge of sediment flow, land use, environmental impact assessment, climate change, political economy and cultural perceptions, but also the use of new methodology for economic valuation, new modes of political participation and the design and operation of river basin organization. They write that a new conceptual relation between water availability and economic growth would work better, where water-driven ecological processes of floods, land erosion and changing course of the river impose limitations on and cause damages to economic activities based on traditional concepts. As an example of putting the knowledge of complexity in practice, they cite the enabling condition of a well-enforced licensing system for hydropower projects, as practiced in Switzerland and the United States, can be a good mechanism to ensure implementation of all essential mitigation measures to safeguard the environment and people from possible harm. The change in framing the problem based on the complex dynamics of the sub-basin leads to a radical shift from considering flooding to be the key policy problem to viewing planned water transfer as the key threat to the ecological balance. The implication of such transfer on downstream users has transboundary implications that also need a negotiated framework for resolution.

Even though the formal design of the governance mechanism (the Brahmaputra Board) points to the three enabling conditions (integrated multidisciplinary basin planning (recognition of interdependency); investigation, planning and design, appraisal, clearance, monitoring and implementation of works in consultation with states (mutual gain); and the promotion of sustainable water resources management and integrated flood management, flood forecasting (adaptive governance), Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay find the current approach to governance (using the Brahmaputra Board) inadequate, as its design and operation rest on the presumption of linear interaction and conventional politics and economic analysis. Their reasoning of inadequacy rests on the absence of taking the transboundary nature of the sub-basin into consideration. With India and China being non-signatories to the UN Convention, there is no legal convention that binds the major actors in the Brahmaputra sub-basin to take into consideration downstream concerns. To address the inadequacy, they propose the design of a new institution—Organisation for Governance of the Lower Brahmaputra Sub-basin (OGLOBS)—based on a holistic approach to address the complex dynamics of the basin. The difference from the current approach is that the governance process is to be built from negotiated agreement among the three nations of the lower Brahmaputra sub-basin, that is, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India.

In Chapter 6 (The Ganges River Water Sharing Agreement between Bangladesh and India: In Search of New Mechanisms to Meet New Challenges), Ashok Swain narrates the transboundary complexity of the Ganges in terms of the independence of its hydrology and the political and economic needs of the populations and regimes of the riparian countries. He extends the meaning of transboundary to include both material and spiritual values. Despite the facts of complexity, a zero-sum approach has been the characteristic feature of transboundary use of the Ganges. However, the fact of lean flow of the Ganges in the dry season is a hydrological occurrence that adversely affects all. Thus, Swain notes that to meet the present and future needs of their population, both India and Bangladesh are likely to be interested in drawing maximum amount possible from the dry-season flow of the river, and these resource grabbing" ventures may cause bilateral dispute. He points out that the cost of the absence of effective basin-wide cooperation has been huge as a large number of planned water storage and water diversion projects in Bangladesh, India and Nepal have not been able to be implemented. The inability to manage its shared water efficiently leads to regular droughts and floods in the basin. Therefore, solving problems requires a basin-wide approach arrived at through negotiation and exploring creative options.

Suspicion and distrust of India’s control of the Ganges have ebbed and flowed with the nature of political relation among the ruling regimes of the riparian countries. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, various rounds of high-level official talks, formation of the Joint River Commission and visits of the heads of the states followed but without bringing a permanent solution to this issue. This points to the insufficiency of interdependency alone to affect satisfactory outcome, without the active recognition of mutual needs in place, and its follow through with enabling conditions two and three. For example, the 1996 Ganges Agreement rested on the idea of mutual gains based on the average flow of the river between 1949 and 1988; yet the real flow at Farakka in the 1990s was much less than that. Thus, the formal agreement, based on a linear projection of flow, failed to solve the water needs of India and Bangladesh. Not taking the complex hydrology into account and having contingency provisions to adjust the amount based on agreed-upon needs thwarted mutual gains. However, the agreement enabled the emergence of extending cooperation in other areas of disagreement, that is, border demarcation, trade and transit. Swain ends with the thought that the countries need to continue the process of arriving at a basin-wide cooperation, which will not only form important platforms for continued development of the shared river system but also be a more appropriate mechanism to meet challenges posed by climate change–induced water supply uncertainties.

In Chapter 7 (Agreement on Declaration of Principles on the GERD: Interdependence or Leveling the Nile Basin Playing Field?), Salman M. A. Salman provides an excellent chronology and critical analysis of the evolution of the Nile Basin agreements over the past century beginning with the 1902 Treaty between Ethiopia and the United Kingdom. It also shows the implications of the 1929 and 1959 treaties that partitioned the Nile waters among Egypt and Sudan keeping Ethiopia and all other upper riparians out of the agreement. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of how the lack of the first enabling condition—active recognition of interdependence—has created significant hurdles to arrive at any sustainable resolution regarding the access, allocation and use of the Nile water through four different phases over the past century. It also discusses the evolution of the Nile Basin Initiative, areas of differences in the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement and the consequences of such differences including the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). It highlights the agreement on the Declaration of Principles (DoP) on the GERD as a landmark event and ponders whether the DoP is the beginning of a new era of interdependence among the Nile riparians or if it is just the result of the leveling of the Nile River playing field.

Chapter 8 (Reflections on the Colorado River) by Kevin Wheeler synthesizes the evolution of the management of Colorado River involving a complex set of agreements both on a federal level among the seven basin states of the United States and within an international context between the United States and Mexico. It is important to recognize how drivers, conditions and complexity of intra- and international agreements were distinctly different and have evolved over time and shaped the dynamics of cooperation and resolution of conflicts over time within different institutional structures. This case analysis demonstrates that resolutions of TWM problems can emerge without the formalization of international laws as well as without a preexisting institutional regime, by way of pursuing negotiated solutions to problems as they arise and proactively addressing foreseen challenges through active dialogue. It is refreshing to see that the enabling conditions of negotiation which makes this possible are not a fixed set of actions but emerge by continuously addressing issues and contingencies that arise in changing circumstances and uses of the river.

This adaptive and contingent nature of negotiation that is sensitive to changing contextual conditions and open to exploration of creative options is a key lesson that is likely to be transferrable to other transboundary water basins. For example, although extensive reformulation of the existing Law of the River has been rejected by representatives of both the Upper and Lower Basin States, the need to create flexibility with the existing framework has been widely recognized. In doing so, negotiators have sought to balance competing values, both economic and intrinsic, to achieve this goal. Reforming water allocations through the surplus and shortage accounting demonstrates incremental steps to hold discussions over competing values and needs as well as explore more creative options for the basin states. At the international level, the adaptive mechanism of Minutes of the 1944 Treaty have allowed exchanges of interests, as demonstrated in Minute 319 and Minute 323 through Mexico’s willingness to share in the risks of shortages in exchange for the possibility of receiving benefits of surpluses. As Wheeler aptly points out interdependencies have always been known and monitoring and adaptation methods have advanced throughout time, but the willingness and ability to develop creative solutions that can navigate these interdependencies have not always existed, making this third element a critical condition to resolve TWM problems.

Part III provides several reflection pieces. In his reflective piece in Chapter 9 (Building a Shared Understanding in Water Management), Bruno Verdini takes a closer look at the evolution of the Colorado River Treaty using the notion of searching for a roadmap to build shared understanding to address complex TWM problems that have plagued the United States and Mexico for decades. Based on his extensive first-hand experience about both sides—including his recent book on this topic—he suggests to start a roadmap simultaneously from both top-down and bottom-up directions. He emphasizes that a roadmap alone will not solve all the problems; however, it will make the choice of routes, mode of transportation and passengers participating in the journey easier. It will also help the decision making—as he puts it, make the right turns at the right time—easier and effective. His reflections on the first two enabling conditions within the context of this TWM problem provides transferrable insight about the scope and extent of whether (and how)