Australian Water Partnership (AWP) and ICIMOD release reports on basinwide management of the Ganges

Posted 21 Mar 2024

2 min read

A 2019 MoU between AWP and International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) calls for analyzing challenges and opportunities for basin wide management across: Indus, the Brahmaputra, and the Ganges.

Specification	Description
Challenges	Myriad complexities: Sheer size of the basin presents a barrier to cohesive governance, compounded by the complexities of gender, poverty, social inequity, Climate change, etc. Fragmented governance: Lack of multilateral agreement enabling basinwide collaboration while bilateral agreements are focused on infrastructure projects and short-term goals. Substantial data gaps: This gap is more prominent for experiences of different genders, indigenous communities, underprivileged, etc.
Opportunities	Climate change represents a unifying catalyst for collaboration across the basin. Existing bilateral agreements contain references to, or acknowledgement of, basin-scale issues and solutions. For example, Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Development (of 2011) between India and Bangladesh has references to basin-scale issues such as climate change, and energy.
Recommendations	Delinking of key issues in the basin from the basin-wide political system. Expand existing bilateral agreements to stimulate multilateral cooperation. Support the expansion of research and data collection and sharing. Strengthen the capacity of community groups to enhance local collaboration.