Abstract
Countries sharing the Brahmaputra River have for decades deliberated on formulating and implementing cooperative strategies to develop the potential of the basin. Yet, little progress has been made so far at the government-togovernment track 1 level in achieving regional cooperation due to the diverse national interests of the riparian countries. This has led to tension and friction among co-riparian nations and mistrust at political level. Drawing from the Brahmaputra Dialogue, this paper aims to highlight the merit of multi-track and multilateral dialogue processes for building trust and confidence between the riparian countries - paving a way towards transboundary cooperation. The paper concludes that given the geo-politics and the national interests of each riparian nation, negotiation for a treaty for cooperation through track 1 diplomacy, in the Brahmaputra River Basin (BRB), is a non-starter. Multi-track and multilateral dialogues can provide a platform to pursue positive interactions and can be viewed as an extension to existing state-diplomacy in BRB, to bring about sustainable change in the basin management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1027-1041 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Water Policy |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2018 |
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support to the Brahmaputra Dialogue Project by the South Asia Water Initiative (Grant no. 7178069) and the Asia Foundation, India (Grant no. 20009.540.001). The authors would like to extend their appreciation for provision of the necessary organizational support and for allowing them access to the Brahmaputra Dialogue workshops. We would also like to thank Juna Probha Devi (PhD Scholar, IIT Guwahati) for creating the Brahmaputra basin map. Lastly, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| South Asia Water Initiative | 7178069 |
| Asia Foundation | 20009.540.001 |
UN SDGs
This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals
Keywords
- Brahmaputra River Basin
- Dialogue process
- Multi-track
- Multilateral
- South Asia
- Transboundary
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