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Pursuits of adaptiveness in the shared rivers of Monsoon Asia

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics volume 10, pages 355–375 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

How water should be managed in Monsoon Asia is emerging as one of the core earth system governance challenges. In this article, we explore the politics around pursuits of adaptiveness in water management, emphasizing the major transboundary river basins draining the south and eastern Himalayas. We look at two main functions: storing, diverting and sharing water for periods of scarcity; protecting people and places from destructive floods. We find that the pursuit of adaptiveness will take place partly outside the range of human experience in a context of large differences in exposure and vulnerabilities, disparate interests and unequal power. Anticipatory policies and actions to adapt and improve adaptive capacity to the transboundary impacts of changes in water-use, land-use and climate on water resources and services are still in their infancy; but several problem-framing discourses are emerging that have longer-term implications for water governance. It is not yet clear how these competing policy-frames will evolve in Asia. Much will depend on how systems of water governance develop. Public scrutiny of how governments in Asia plan to adapt to climate change in the water sector—on how risks of not enough and too much water are dealt with—will need to continue to help sort out those projects and strategies which are driven primarily by political benefits from those which actually contribute to building adaptive capacities and maintaining social-ecological resilience.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Notes

  1. Adaptiveness describes how well the activities undertaken by (or on behalf of) a social group in response to actual or anticipated environmental changes have, or are likely to, benefit that group in a changed environment.

  2. The Cauvery is one of the most important rivers of south India. It originates in the Kodagu district of the Western Ghats in the state of Karnataka and flows generally south and east through Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and across the southern Deccan plateau before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

Abbreviations

BDP:

Basin Development Plan

GWT:

Ganges Water Treaty

IWT:

Indus Water Treaty

MRC:

Mekong River Commission

NRLP:

National River Linking Project

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by: Asia–Pacific Network for Global Environmental Change Research (Grant ARCP2008-15NMY-Nikitina); Echel Eau and the International Fund for Agricultural Development under a grant under the Challenge Program on Water and Food (PN50 or M-POWER Project); and the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 226571. Thanks to Rajesh Daniel, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this special issue Frank Biermann and Ruben Zondervan for their constructive feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit for Social and Environmental Research, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand

    Louis Lebel & Ram C. Bastakoti

  2. Kunming Institute of Botany, Kunming, Yunnan, China

    Jianchu Xu

  3. World Agroforestry Centre, Beijing, China

    Jianchu Xu

  4. Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Pathumthani, Thailand

    Ram C. Bastakoti

  5. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Amrita Lamba

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  1. Louis Lebel
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Correspondence to Louis Lebel.

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Lebel, L., Xu, J., Bastakoti, R.C. et al. Pursuits of adaptiveness in the shared rivers of Monsoon Asia. Int Environ Agreements 10, 355–375 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-010-9141-7

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Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Water governance
  • Monsoon Asia
  • Transboundary rivers

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