Transboundary Water Management and the Climate Change Debate

Climate change has an impact on the ability of transboundary water management institutions to deliver on their respective mandates. The starting point for this book is that actors within transboundary water management institutions develop responses to the climate change debate, as distinct from the physical phenomenon of climate change. Actors respond to this debate broadly in three distinct ways – adapt, resist (as in avoiding the issue) and subvert (as in using the debate to fulfil their own agenda).

The book charts approaches which have been taken over the past two decades to promote more effective water management institutions, covering issues of conflict, cooperation, power and law. A new framework for a better understanding of the interaction between transboundary water management institutional resilience and global change is developed through analysis of the way these institutions respond to the climate change debate. This framework is applied to six river case studies from Africa, Asia and the Middle East (Ganges-Brahmaputra, Jordan, Mekong, Niger, Nile, Orange-Senqu) from which learning conclusions and policy recommendations are developed.

Anton Earle is Director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) Africa Regional Centre based in Pretoria, South Africa. 

Ana Elisa Cascão is a Programme Manager at SIWI’s Capacity Building services and Co-director of SIWI’s international training programmes on Transboundary Water Management for Lake Victoria, the Middle East and the Tigris-Euphrates.  

Stina Hansson is performing research on transboundary water management and water services provision at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden and at SIWI. 

Anders Jägerskog is Counsellor for Regional Water issues in the MENA region at the Embassy of Sweden in Amman, Jordan and Associate Professor of Peace and Development at Gothenburg University. The views expressed by Jägerskog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) or the Swedish Government. Dr. Jägerskog was formerly Head of the Transboundary Water Management Unit at SIWI where he also served as the Programme Manager of the UNDP Shared Waters Partnership (SWP). UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in more than 170 countries and territories, UNDP offers global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. 

Ashok Swain is a Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research and at the Department of Earth Sciences of Uppsala University, Sweden. 

Joakim Öjendal is a Professor of Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden.