Building bridges through dialogue for the Brahmaputra River Basin

Management of the freshwater resources has been a global challenge, especially for transboundary river waters (TBW). Management of such communal goods or common resources becomes difficult as the interests of the diverse stakeholders involved will always vary. The assumption that the basin actors will share a common understanding and sympathy towards the issues associated with the basin, cannot be held as true. Only rarely there will be common characteristics present among the knowledge and information shared with the stakeholders regarding the crisis associated with TBW basins. In fact, the various case studies conducted on this discourse show that different regions along the boundary will have diverse level of interplay in the political dimension as well as during the stage of actual resource management (Adams, Brockington, Dyson, & Vira, 2003). The final consequence of water sharing amongst the riparian nations and the level of management success will rely on the dynamics of the level of influence that are at play at the national, regional, and international positions in the region. Therefore, the management of TBW that cut across national, political, social, economic, and sectoral boundaries is regarded as one of the supreme security challenges of the decade (Wouters & Ziganshina, 2011). This is because as rivers cross borders, their flows are diverted, dammed, or stored by national governments for multiple purposes.