Explore the Water Diplomacy Handbook

Chapters by Role · Working Together

Water diplomacy is not just about technical expertise. It is a collaborative process that requires engagement across different stakeholder groups. The Working Together pathway focuses on four broad communities that play distinct but interconnected roles in water diplomacy. These are not rigid or homogeneous groups; you may recognize yourself in more than one. Pick the community that best fits your primary role in a particular process; each section shows what to read for working within your community and across to the other three.

Knowledge Community

The knowledge community serves water diplomacy processes by providing decision support through expert advice, research, and analysis. Its members include scientists (natural, social, and political), engineers, economists, lawyers, strategic consultants, analysts, and technologists. The community itself tends to be fractured along tight disciplinary lines.

Decision-Making Community

The decision-making community is characterised by their capacity to influence the direction and outcomes of a process and the authority they hold to negotiate and make decisions. Appointed ministers, deputised negotiators, elected representatives, judges, and bureaucrats may be found in this group, alongside well-connected individuals in informal Track 1.5 and Track 2 diplomacy.

Resource Community

The resource community comprises individuals and organisations capable of mobilising financial, technical, or logistical support to advance water diplomacy processes and their outcomes. This group includes international organisations, financial institutions, private investors, regional financing bodies, NGOs, think tanks, and technical assistance providers, often serving as third parties to a negotiated process.

Impacted Community

The impacted community is distinct because the outcomes of a water diplomacy process, both positive and negative, will directly and materially change some aspect of their lives. Achieving the best possible outcomes requires this community to understand the risks and opportunities presented by each option, advocate effectively for their needs, form coalitions, and adequately prepare to adapt to proposed changes.

Chapters by Factor · What Matters and Why

A second pathway through the handbook, organised around ten factors and conditions that may influence water diplomacy processes and outcomes and the reasons they may be consequential in a particular case. Each factor opens with Chapter 3’s own framing, followed by the chapters that engage with it most directly. Use this pathway alongside the role-based one above; the handbook’s editors note that many readers will find value in exploring both in parallel.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Flexibility and adaptability matter when it comes to building and sustaining relationships over water. Acts of flexibility, such as adjusting allocations, postponing domestic development milestones, or making infrastructure available to neighbours in response to emergent needs, recognise the uncertainty within hydrological systems and express a recognition of shared vulnerability and hope for collective prosperity. Amidst contention over other matters, these acts seed the enabling conditions for lasting relationships.

• Ch. 37 · Enabling Conditions: Enabling conditions that make flexibility possible.
• Ch. 38 · Türkiye and the Euphrates-Tigris Basin: Türkiye’s perspective on the deferred Ilısu Dam filling.
• Ch. 52 · Obstacles in Middle Eastern Transboundary Watercourses: The Iraqi perspective on the same Ilısu Dam case.
• Ch. 15 · The Role of Distrust: Frames the Ilısu case in a context of persistent political distrust.
• Ch. 41 · The Jordan River Basin: A Jordanian view on seasonal storage and release arrangements with Israel.
• Ch. 43 · The Colorado River Basin: How the IBWC adapted treaty implementation after Mexico’s 2010 earthquake.

Process Design and Management

The specific ways in which parties engage, communicate, negotiate, and make decisions influence the likelihood of reaching agreements and their durability. Process matters. The dialogue forum and format must be carefully selected, negotiators well-prepared, process spoilers identified, communication channels kept open, and stakeholders meaningfully engaged. Attention to these details does not guarantee success, but inattention virtually guarantees failure.

• Ch. 13 · Managing Water Diplomacy Processes: Overview of why process design and management matter.
• Ch. 51 · Ground Rules for Negotiators: Ground rules negotiators can set for themselves and their teams.
• Ch. 52 · Middle Eastern Transboundary Watercourses: Anticipating and mitigating process spoilers.
• Ch. 53 · Hydrodiplomacy: Post-Independence Namibia: The value of keeping open technical communication channels.
• Ch. 39 · Afghanistan and Iran Water Negotiations: When to expand the scope, and the risks of mistaken sequencing.
• Ch. 54 · The Evolving Landscape of Diplomacy: Youth voices, marginalized groups, and digital public diplomacy.
• Ch. 44 · The Silala Dispute: How process failures around engagement and media derailed agreement.
• Ch. 31 · The UN Watercourses Convention: The Silala dispute in the broader context of the Convention.

Heritage and Shared Narratives

Heritage and shared narrative matter to water diplomacy by grounding cooperation in shared values, histories, and identities that transcend political boundaries. Heritage creates opportunities for mutual recognition and collaborative action while presenting complex challenges when diverse heritage claims compete or development imperatives threaten cultural connections. Water diplomacy requires a view of heritage that connects the past pragmatically with the needs of the present.

• Ch. 46 · Urmia Lake Restoration: Reframing heritage through intergenerational justice.
• Ch. 50 · The Al-Ghab Plain in Syria: Plural heritage as a foundation for community-scale diplomacy.
• Ch. 40 · The Salween River Basin: Civil society networks, river cultures, and ecological justice in the Salween basin.
• Ch. 45 · Safeguarding the Sundarbans: Mutual heritage reinvigorating India-Bangladesh engagement.

Divergent Worldviews and Framing

Worldview matters in water diplomacy because it shapes how stakeholders perceive water challenges, define problems, and envision the future. The diverse ways water is perceived, from an object made of hydrogen and oxygen to a sovereign resource, a shared commons, an economic commodity, or a sacred entity, fundamentally influence whether shared waters are seen as a source of conflict, a possible source of mutual benefit, or a shared responsibility. Conflicting worldviews cannot be addressed by appealing to objectivity or science alone.

• Ch. 42 · The Sava River Basin: Shared vision and legal frameworks enabling post-conflict cooperation.
• Ch. 48 · The Great Basin Groundwater Grab: Utilitarian vs. ecological-cultural worldviews of groundwater.
• Ch. 47 · Indigenous Nations, Water, and Conflict: Indigenous worldviews contrasted with settler perspectives.
• Ch. 7 · Water as a Source of Cooperation: Institutional capacity and the pace of basin-level change.
• Ch. 49 · Sukhomajri Water Management: When interventions lag behind a system’s shift from simple to complex.
• Ch. 6 · Water as a Source of Conflict: How governance and social factors shape water-conflict pathways.
• Ch. 8 · Scales of Water Diplomacy: How problem framing affects collaboration across scales.
• Ch. 9 · Water Diplomacy Paths: Considering diverse actors, themes, and drivers.
• Ch. 12 · Mapping the Problem Space: Objective vs. subjective worldviews of water.
• Ch. 20 · Joint Fact-Finding: When supposedly objective science becomes politicised.
• Ch. 37 · Enabling Conditions: Causal versus enabling-conditions worldviews.

Scales

Water diplomacy occurs at multiple interconnected scales: transnational, subnational, and community. Actions at one level often have unanticipated consequences at another. A failure to coordinate governance across scales can exacerbate disputes and hinder cooperation; conversely, local initiatives may struggle to gain support without alignment with broader policies.

• Ch. 45 · The Sundarbans: Scale mismatches between India and Bangladesh in a shared ecosystem.
• Ch. 41 · The Jordan River Basin: National agreements overlooking local needs.
• Ch. 6 · Water as a Source of Conflict: Geographical scales of water conflict.
• Ch. 7 · Water as a Source of Cooperation: Macro, meso, and micro scales of cooperation.
• Ch. 9 · Water Diplomacy Paths: Subnational, national, and regional scales.
• Ch. 17 · Knowledge Transmission: Multi-level knowledge transmission.

Uncertainty

Scientific, political, and social uncertainties shape negotiation outcomes. Water availability, climatic variability, and hydrological data are often incomplete or contested, creating opportunities for strategic ambiguity or leading to distrust between parties. Effective water diplomacy requires negotiating under uncertainty rather than waiting for perfect information.

• Ch. 48 · The Great Basin Groundwater Grab: Uncertainty about aquifer depletion fuelling legal disputes.
• Ch. 44 · The Silala Dispute: Uncertainty over historical water flows as a point of contention.
• Ch. 5 · A Hydrology Primer: Uncertainty in runoff monitoring.
• Ch. 14 · Scientific Uncertainties: The role of scientific uncertainty in negotiations.
• Ch. 18 · Disinformation: Distinguishing uncertainty from ambiguity.
• Ch. 20 · Joint Fact-Finding: Uncertainty in problem definition.

Metrics

Quantitative indicators, including water scarcity indices, economic valuations, and treaty compliance measures, play a central role in negotiations. But metrics often fail to capture the lived experiences of affected communities and can be used to frame water issues in ways that privilege certain interests over others. They can oversimplify complex realities and distort decision-making by focusing on what is measurable rather than what is meaningful.

• Ch. 49 · Sukhomajri: Early success metrics failing to account for long-term sustainability.
• Ch. 45 · The Sundarbans / Ganges Treaty: Formal compliance targets missing on-the-ground realities.
• Ch. 22 · Mutual Gains Negotiation: Metrics for measuring negotiation success.
• Ch. 31 · The UN Watercourses Convention: Subjectivity in defining compliance.

Trust and Legitimacy

Trust and legitimacy are critical to durable cooperation, but the handbook also cautions that distrust is not simply an obstacle. Chapter 15 shows that distrust can sometimes push parties to clarify expectations, codify commitments, and design enforceable arrangements. Even so, historical grievances, misinformation, opaque processes, and lack of confidence in data or institutions can make agreements difficult to implement.

• Ch. 47 · Indigenous Nations, Water, and Conflict: Distrust of formal governance structures rooted in historical exclusion.
• Ch. 21 · Modeling: Modeling as a trust-building tool in transboundary negotiations.
• Ch. 35 · Regional Perspectives: Water diplomacy as a vehicle for confidence-building measures.

Power and Asymmetry

Water diplomacy does not take place on a level playing field. Some actors hold more political, economic, or hydrological power than others, and these imbalances shape how water is allocated, who gets a seat at the table, and which solutions are considered viable. Weaker parties often struggle to have their concerns acknowledged; dominant actors may define water issues in ways that reinforce their control.

• Ch. 38 · The Euphrates-Tigris Basin: Upstream-downstream power dynamics in the Euphrates-Tigris basin.
• Ch. 48 · The Great Basin Groundwater Grab: Urban-rural divides and contested groundwater allocation.
• Ch. 11 · Actors in Water Diplomacy: Power dynamics between actors.
• Ch. 29 · Capacity Development: Reducing information and experience asymmetry.

Technology and Infrastructure

Infrastructure and technology both enable and constrain water diplomacy. Large-scale dams, desalination plants, and water transfers shift power dynamics, while forecasting, remote sensing, and modeling tools create new possibilities for exploring mutually beneficial options. Infrastructure investments can also be used strategically to alter negotiation leverage; some agreements fail to anticipate how technological shifts will impact future governance.

• Ch. 41 · The Jordan River Basin: How desalination changed Israel-Jordan water negotiations.
• Ch. 49 · Sukhomajri: Community-scale infrastructure transforming governance dynamics.
• Ch. 16 · Creating and Distributing Benefits: Infrastructure and technology benefits.
• Ch. 21 · Modeling: Modeling at the intersection of technology and diplomacy.