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

‘Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts’ seeks to understand transboundary water issues 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 the 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 with scholars’ reflections on the relevance and weakness of the theoretical framework.

Enamul Choudhury is a professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Wright State University, USA. His teaching areas include courses in the master of public administration program and political science.

Shafiqul Islam is professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of water diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA. Director of the Water Diplomacy Program, Islam works on availability, access and allocation of water within the context of climate challenges, health and diplomacy.