Cross-Boundary Water Resource Management in a Non Cooperative Context: The Case of Eastern Himalaya

Dr. Dieter Reinhardt, Dr. Anja Senz (both University Duisburg-Essen/Germany): The Chinese as well as Indian government are giving high priority to increase the use of their river resources twofold: rapid growth of hydro power production and interlinking rivers to channel more water in water deficit areas. Northeast India as well as Chinese provinces like Yunnan are regions which focus much on these kind of water policies, but intensive local protests against specific dams and hydro power plant constructions are taking place, too. The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused by climate change will reduce the water volume of streams like the Brahmaputra, flowing through Southern Tibet, Northeast India and Bangladesh and will change the whole ecosystem in Eastern Himalaya in the coming decades. In comparison to other cross border river management systems like Indus a cooperation between China and India does not exist. India is blaming China for assisting militant groups in Northeast Indian states and there are unsolved border disputes between India and China. India has built a 4.000 km long fence around Bangladesh in order to prevent illegal trade and migration. There are no networks between environmental NGOs of Northwest India, Yunnan and Bangladesh although there are sharing similar experiences with bad designed river management; but at least a few academic networks in the region do exist, which could be a starting point for future cooperation. The paper is dealing with two questions regarding multi-level decision-analysis structures: a) What are the reasons preventing an effective cross-border river management of the Brahmaputra; b) under which conditions (in terms of actors, interest and procedures) cooperation between the three riparian countries could be enabled, so that a cross-boundary water governance system could be established?