Activities - Phase I

Creating a data base of civil society organizations/individuals working on water management of Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh and India

The objective of this activity is to make a comprehensive list of organizations and individuals working on the issue of Brahmaputra River. These include activists, researchers, media professionals and individuals. These people\organizations and individuals will be mapped using power analysis tool to understand their respective powers in influencing decisions.

Specific Outputs:Classification of different groups based on power, influence, interest and understanding will help as follows:

• Power: Relevant power in influencing negotiation process for co-management of Brahmaputra River
• Support: To what extent they will be supportive?
• Influence: The level of influence they hold and interest they have in co-management of Brahmaputra River?
• Need: To what extent a partnership or alliance is needed with them to promote the joint agenda?

The objective of this activity is to have a short scoping desk study (not more than 6000 words) that would give us an understanding of the knowledge base from both side of the river (Bangladesh and India). The desk study will use the published and unpublished sources for understanding the need of co-management of Brahmaputra River. This mapping will help in triggering a debate as this would be presented in the combined dialogue meetings. Specific output of this activity is a written report that would give us a latest and up to date account of the major issues and knowledge on Brahmaputra River. This could be a publishable document (for referred journal) that can bring the agenda of co-management of the river up in the intellectual\policy circuit and can help in creating an opinion. This report is mainly directed towards the policy makers, water professionals, researchers and NGO workers.

Having country specific meetings for dialogue with specific areas of interest such as water, food, climate change etc

The objective of country level meetings (2 in number – 1 in Bangladesh and 1 in India) is to create enabling environment and discuss and deliberate on issues which is in the interest of the co management of the Brahmaputra River. These meetings follow the concept of multi-lateral cooperation. Multi-lateral cooperation has the potential of coming up with basin-wide approaches for dispute resolution, where all the riparian states organize a committee for the organization of the use of the waterway. While national water policies of the both countries emphasize the importance of basin-wide management approach, the planning and management of water resources have often been geared towards national interests, with very little acknowledgements of regional interdependency. The individual country meetings will prepare a ground for the issue of regional interdependency and co-management.

The country specific meetings will be organized by IIT Guwahati and IWFM BUET. The meeting will be attended by major stakeholders such as researchers, academicians, students working on the river issue, water professionals, Representatives from NGOs and CSOs and representatives from the media etc. A maximum 25 participants will be invited for each of the two country level meetings. Each of these meetings would be for one and half days where in first day will be spent in understanding the issue while second day will be spent in outlining the priority areas for future engagements.

Specific output of these meetings is two specific reports of the meetings while the outcome is a consensus on the need for co-management of the Brahmaputra River. These broad consensuses would create an enabling environment amongst key stakeholders from both sides of the border.

To have joint dialogue of Bangladeshi and Indian Water professionals working on Brahmaputra River and discuss probable platform for future interactions

The joint meeting may come out with a shared vision of the co-riparian states on equitable sharing of benefits that can be best achieved through basin-wide management of water resources. Lessons may be drawn from the prevailing basin-wide management of trans-boundary Rivers such as Rhine, Mekong, Danube, and Nile. These meeting will help creating the space for discussion. The joint meeting will be held in Dhaka where in 10 participants (mix group of researchers, students, academicians, media and CSO\NGO representative) will be invited from India while 15 participants will be from Bangladesh (total 25 participants). This meeting will be for one and half days where in first day will be spent in understanding the nature of knowledge base from both Bangladeshi and Indian side and the gaps exist there in. The second day will focus on developing a shared vision for co-management of the Brahmaputra River and planning future engagements to scale up. We understand that the resources are limited and this is a pilot intervention and hence the future engagement will be based on the outcomes of these dialogues.

The specific output of this activity will be a combined report of all three meetings that spells out major bottlenecks in co-management of the River for future advocacy. These reports will also show that future engagement and advocacy is needed through a vision for the co-management of the Brahmaputra River. While the major objective of these meetings is to create an enabling environment and let the dialogue process be on, an output may be a vision document that helps in taking this issue further. These reports will be a reference point to understand the need for such dialogues process to be on.

Documenting experiences in blogs of The Asia Foundation / SaciWATERs and through newspaper articles, based on short field visits in the Brahmaputra basins

An important component of this project is to use the local, national and internet medium for propagating the need for co-management of the Brahmaputra River. The purpose is to create an environment wherein the issue of co-management is part of the dialogue process. Internet is a good media which is democratic and is accessible by everyone and from both sides of the border.

Specific outcomes: Two joint human interest articles from the Indian and Bangladeshi side, highlighting the need for better and coordinated management of the river. These articles will be published as newspaper articles\blogs\internet magazines. The articles will be jointly published with IIT-G, IWFM, BUET, and SaciWATERs as co-authors.