NO. 164 | August 2020

PEACEWORKS

Water Conflict Pathways and 

Peacebuilding Strategies

By David Michel
NO. 164 | August 2020

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of

the United States Institute of Peace. An online edition of this and related reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional information on the subject.

© 2020 by the United States Institute of Peace

United States Institute of Peace

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Washington, DC 20037

Phone: 202.457.1700

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Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 164. First published 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-810-4

ECONOMICS & 

ENVIRONMENT

ABOUT THE REPORT

This report explores water-related conflict pathways and articulates potential peacebuilding strategies to mitigate conflict risks. The report is grounded in a survey of the 

academic literature on natural resources conflict, case studies of three major basins, 

and participant interviews and documentary analyses of water diplomacy processes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Michel is a senior researcher with the Stockholm International Peace Research 

Institute. He previously served as a senior manager at the Stockholm International 

Water Institute. He has over twenty years of experience working with governments, 

civil society, and the private sector to build cooperative solutions to policy challenges 

posed by global environmental change.

Cover photo: A woman walks along a dry lake bed near the Rawal Dam in Pakistan on 

June 22, 2018. (Photo by B. K. Bangash/AP)
USIP.ORG 1

Contents

3 Water Insecurity and Conflict Risks

7 Water Conflict Pathways

10 Case Study: The Indus River Basin

14 Case Study: Mali

18 Case Study: Myanmar

22 Water Governance and Water Diplomacy

26 Peacebuilding Strategies for Water Resources Conflicts
2 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Summary

Growing populations and economies, unsustainable management practices, and 

mounting environmental pressures are exerting increasing strains on the world’s 

vital freshwater resources. Resulting shortfalls between rising demands and 

shifting supplies could engender or exacerbate water conflicts among countries 

or communities attempting to ensure their share.

History furnishes little evidence of outright water wars, but violent international 

water-related confrontations do occur and frictions over water can contribute to 

fueling civil conflicts within states. A range of indirect factors including political institutions, economic conditions, and societal values and perceptions affect the relationship between water insecurity and conflict risks. Inequitable allocation of the 

costs and benefits of water development and inadequate access to decision-making procedures around shared waters can loom larger in generating conflict than 

the unequal allocation of or inadequate access to the physical resource itself.

Studies examining the actors, drivers, and contexts engaged in different types of 

water conflicts may help to develop early warning indicators for emerging risks and 

contribute to crafting tailored conflict reduction approaches and targeted peacebuilding strategies. Many of the world’s shared waters most vulnerable to potential 

water conflicts are marred by a dearth of effective governance mechanisms and 

distrust and dissension among water users that frustrate sustainable cooperation.

Water diplomacy, formal and informal engagements undertaken by state and 

nonstate actors not party to the water conflict, can constructively shape the context and collective decision-making frameworks for collaborative water resources 

management. By working to enhance the conflict parties’ water governance 

resources and capacities, promote cooperative decision-making processes 

and inclusive policy institutions, and facilitate peaceful dispute resolution, water 

diplomacy can contribute to building the environmental and societal resilience to 

sustainably manage future water resource challenges.
USIP.ORG 3

Modern society depends on adequate water supplies for agriculture and industry, to 

generate power, ensure public health, and maintain essential ecosystems. Yet growing 

populations, soaring demand, unsustainable management practices, and mounting environmental challenges are imposing increasing burdens on the world’s critical freshwater 

resources. Global climate change threatens to intensify these strains, upsetting precipitation patterns and altering river flows in every inhabited basin on the planet. Resulting 

shortfalls between rising demands and shifting supplies could foster or worsen water 

conflicts among countries or communities attempting to secure their share.

Many regions now face unremitting water stress as rivers, lakes, and groundwater 

aquifers bump against the limits of their renewable capacity. In several major river systems, yearly water withdrawals nearly equal or even exceed long-term flow balances 

and ecosystem needs.1

 In many major aquifers, withdrawals surpass natural rates of 

replenishment, progressively exhausting groundwater reserves.2 Considering both 

surface and groundwater together, one global assessment found that 2.9 billion people currently live in areas facing severe water scarcity (where total net water withdrawals outstrip renewable supplies) for at least four months of the year. For half a billion 

people, net demand exceeds supply all year round.3

Modeste Traore, a 56-year old fisherman, propels his fishing boat along Lake Wegnia, in the Sahel region of Koulikoro, Mali, on November 23, 2019. 

(Photo by Arouna Sissoko/Reuters)

Water politics, like all 

politics, in the classic 

formulation of Harold 

Lasswell, is a question 

of who gets what, 

when, and how. And 

like all politics, conflict 

can arise around each 

and every element of 

the equation. 

Water Insecurity and Conflict Risks
4 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Figure 1. Water Conflict Pathways

Environmental factors, political institutions, economic conditions, and societal values and perceptions affect water 

insecurity and conflict risks.

ENVIRONMENTAL 

PRESSURES ON 

SHARED WATER 

SUPPLIES

Drought and diminished 

rainfall have shifted the 

range and the growing 

conditions for crops and 

grasses across much 

of the Sahel, pushing 

semi-nomadic herders 

seeking pasture for 

livestock grazing on to 

the lands of farmers. 

Local farmer-herder confrontations periodically 

escalate into violent 

intercommunal clashes 

that can threaten

broader instability.

GROWING/

CHANGING USER 

DEMANDS

Petroleum exploitation 

in Nigeria’s coastal 

Niger River Delta has 

dramatically degraded 

the region’s water quality, 

poisoning streams and 

groundwater, fisheries 

and fields. Ethnic rebel 

groups regularly cite the 

Delta’s contamination 

among the grievances 

motivating their attacks on 

international oil company 

operations and violence 

against the state.

WATER SERVICE 

PROVISION

In 1999, Bolivia privatized the municipal water 

company in Cochabamba. Fearing expropriation 

of communal water 

systems, residents and 

farmers launched a wave 

of strikes and blockades 

that saw the government 

declare a “state of siege” 

before ultimately returning the utility to public 

management.

WATER

AND BORDER

DISPUTES

In 2010, Nicaragua 

landed soldiers and construction crews on the 

opposite banks of the 

San Juan River in a military incursion to dredge 

the channel, asserting 

that infrastructure works 

by Costa Rica had modified the watercourse and 

changed the border.

WATER AS

A TOOL OR

TARGET OF WAR

Government forces in 

Syria purposely destroyed water plants and 

pumping stations in the 

besieged city of Aleppo. 

In Iraq, ISIS seized control of dams in Fallujah, 

Haditha, and elsewhere, 

using them to flood or 

cut off water supplies 

to Shiite and government-held areas.

WATER DISASTERS

Calamitous flooding 

devastated Thailand in 

2011. Led by opposing 

political parties, the 

national and Bangkok city 

governments operated 

drainage systems under 

their control to protect 

favored constituencies 

while inundating political 

rivals. Popular discontent 

erupted, including violent 

riots and illegal breaching 

of flood gates.

RESOURCE

EXPROPRIATION/

ACCESS TO 

DECISION 

MAKING

Maoist rebels in India rally to the slogan “Water, 

forest, land, respect and 

rights” (Jal, jungal zameen izzat aur adhikar) 

against development 

policies that have 

dispossessed and displaced indigenous and 

rural poor communities 

from communal lands 

and water supplies.

CONSTRUCTION/

OPERATION OF 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

ON A SHARED 

WATERWAY

Since the 1970s, Turkey 

has developed massive 

infrastructure programs in 

the Tigris-Euphrates Basin. Blaming Turkish dams 

for decreasing water 

supplies, Syria supported the PKK insurgency 

against Ankara to counter 

Turkey’s alleged manipulations of Euphrates river 

flow, precipitating serial 

military crises over the 

ensuing decades. 
USIP.ORG 5

Humans impact freshwater systems not only by the 

resources they remove from them but by the pollutants 

they release into them. Water pollution has deteriorated in almost all the rivers of Africa, Asia, and Latin 

America since the 1990s.4 Worsening water quality in 

turn effectively lessens available water quantities, rendering some sources too degraded for certain uses.

Strains on world water resources are rising. In the 

coming decades, global population will grow from 7.7 

billion people to 9.7 billion in 2050. The global economy, according to OECD projections, will more than 

double. World water needs will largely climb in tandem 

with population and economic growth. Global models 

calculate freshwater withdrawals will jump anywhere 

from 20 percent to 33 percent from 2010 levels by 

2050, propelled by surging demands from manufacturing, power production, and domestic use.5

Climate change threatens to compound water resource 

challenges, affecting both demand and supply. On the 

demand side, global warming will increase water claims 

for industrial cooling and household use. All else being 

equal, rising temperatures would reduce potential crop 

yields and crop water productivity, boosting irrigation 

demands. Estimates of the incremental water needed 

to meet growing agricultural needs in a warming world 

vary from an additional 40 percent to 100 percent more 

than what would be required absent climate impacts.6

On the supply side, global warming will accelerate 

Earth’s hydrologic cycle, disrupting fundamental hydro-meteorological mechanisms. Elemental patterns and 

processes such as the timing and amount of rain and 

snowfall and the onset of the monsoon may shift or falter. Long-term alterations in the volume, timing, location, 

and form of precipitation (whether it falls as rain or as 

snow) could scramble the seasonal availability or shuffle 

the geographic distribution of crucial water supplies for 

communities and ecosystems around the world. In addition to exerting chronic pressures on water resources, 

climate change is expected to elevate the probability of 

more acute water-related disasters. Annual flood disasters around the world roughly quadrupled from 1980 to 

2014. Drought episodes doubled over the same period. 

Climate models project extreme storms, floods, and 

droughts will become more frequent and severe.7

All told, by 2050 the combined effects of socioeconomic pressures and climate change could plunge as 

many as 1.3 billion more people into conditions where 

water needs will consistently exceed the available 

surface water supplies.8 Such figures portend potentially wrenching collisions between growing water needs 

and available water supplies. Some 42 percent of the 

global labor force work in heavily water-dependent 

sectors, such as agriculture, mining, and fisheries.9

Rising water insecurity endangers these livelihoods 

and the economies and communities they support. 

Droughts cut crop yields and curb energy production. 

Floods destroy capital and infrastructure. Beyond the 

economic losses, the human toll is harrowing: unsafe 

and insufficient water supplies account for 9 percent of 

the global disease burden and more than 6 percent of 

all deaths worldwide.10 Without effective policy changes 

to adapt to global warming, by 2050, water scarcity 

impacts could depress economic output by 7 to 12 

percent throughout much of Africa and Asia, and by up 

to 14 percent across the Middle East.11

Fortunately, policymakers increasingly recognize the 

potential threats posed by water insecurity. The World 

Economic Forum ranks water crises among the most 

likely and most impactful global risks of the coming decades. European Union policymakers, the US intelligence 

community, and the UN Security Council have all stated 

that water challenges could contribute to destabilizing 

key countries, aggravate social disruptions in fragile 

states, and endanger global peace and prosperity.12

No modern states have ever declared war over 

water. Nations dependent on shared water sources 

have collaborated far more frequently than they have 
6 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

clashed. Some hostile neighbors have continued to 

cooperate over water even as their armies sparred. 

Nevertheless, global surveys have counted forty-four 

hostile, militarized international actions over water, 

from riots to border skirmishes to larger battles, in the 

sixty years from 1948 to 2008.13 Large-scale studies 

covering hundreds of transboundary basins through 

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have concluded 

that countries sharing a river experience notably higher 

levels of international conflict, particularly where upstream-downstream configurations in the basin create 

power differentials between riparians.14

Nor is interstate warfare the only threat to security and 

stability posed by rising pressures on common waters. 

Many potentially combustible water disputes involve 

subnational and nonstate actors, such as insurgencies 

and separatist groups. Tensions surrounding water resources availability, access, and development—especially when channelled or aggravated by ethnic, religious, 

or other socioeconomic or cultural differences—can stir 

antagonisms that may animate civil strife or intercommunal rifts.15 Internal conflicts can be as destructive as 

international ones, and are far more common. Civil wars 

have killed more people than interstate conflict every 

year since the 1970s.16 Further, internal conflicts often 

provoke humanitarian crises, destabilizing communities, 

displacing refugees, embroiling neighboring countries, 

and drawing in outside interventions.

Recent research seeking to discern relationships between water stress and violent conflict has delivered 

mixed results. Some statistical studies conclude that 

water scarcity can increase the likelihood of international hostilities between riparian states without reaching 

the level of outright warfare. Other studies indicate that 

water scarcity and extreme variations in rainfall raise the 

risk of civil conflict within states. Still other evaluations report weak or no correlation between shifting water availability and collective violence. Even the most exacting 

of these quantitative analyses, however, confront data 

challenges and methodological questions that make it 

difficult to draw more general conclusions.17

Few analysts argue that water stress or environmental 

change directly cause conflict in a deterministic stimulus-response relationship—that is, in which resource 

scarcity inevitably leads to violence. Rather, a range 

of indirect factors, such as when and where water 

stresses occur relative to demand, the importance 

of water-dependent sectors in the economy, and the 

existence and efficacy of coping capacities—including 

technical infrastructure, management mechanisms, 

and financial and material resources—influence the 

nature and extent of impacts on societies.18 Water 

stress impacts in turn interact with contextual elements 

such as power asymmetries between actors, ineffective governance, and economic inequalities to create 

contingent combinations of circumstances that may 

contribute to catalyzing conflict.19

Political institutions, economic conditions, and societal values and perceptions shape how communities 

apprehend and address water resource challenges, 

mediating between water insecurity and conflict risks.20

Importantly, water conflict dynamics frequently revolve 

not around environmental changes and resource pressures but around governance policies and practices. 

Inequitable allocation of the costs and benefits of water 

management and inadequate access to decision-making procedures around shared waters can loom larger 

in generating conflict than unequal allocation of or 

inadequate access to the physical resource itself. 

Inequality, exclusion, and the sense of shared injustice at such marginalization may galvanize collective 

grievances that can mobilize violent actions.21 Water 

politics, like all politics, in the classic formulation of 

Harold Lasswell, is a question of who gets what, when, 

and how.22 And like all politics, conflict can arise around 

each and every element of the equation.
USIP.ORG 7

Water Conflict Pathways

Analysts have begun to sketch out potential pathways 

linking water resource pressures to conflict risks. In 

2014, the US Agency for International Development 

published its toolkit for water and conflict programming, 

identifying a number of socioeconomic, environmental, and political factors that can contribute to tensions 

around shared waters, including infrastructure development, weak governance institutions, and climate 

change impacts.23 Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos and Joan 

Martinez-Alier adopted a political ecology approach, 

defining conflict types according to the uses of water in 

different commodity chains.24 Peter Gleick and Charles 

Iceland classified three conflict triggers—diminished 

water supplies, increased water demand, and extreme 

flooding events—and also explore water as a possible 

weapon or casualty of war.25 A team at the Netherlands 

Environmental Assessment Agency catalogued several 

disparate conflict drivers, including strained and erratic 

water supplies, the use of water as a military tool or 

target, and the effects of water stress on such issues as 

arable land, food prices, and migration.26

This report builds on these studies, characterizing 

conflict pathways by situating the relationships between 

the conflict actors themselves, and between the conflict 

actors and the water resource. Specifying the actors, 

mechanisms, and contexts engaged in different kinds 

of water conflicts can enhance our understanding of 

water security threats. A growing current of research 

suggests that, in certain circumstances, cooperation to 

manage shared water resources can help avoid violent 

conflicts and promote more peaceful relations between 

riparian states, and foster peacebuilding, reconciliation, 

and recovery in conflict-affected societies.27 Analyses 

People visit the confluence of the Mali and N’mai tributaries of the Irrawaddy River, near the site of Myanmar’s controversial Myitsone Dam project, on 

March 22, 2017. (Photo by Minzayar Oo/New York Times)
8 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

identifying the catalysts to different conflict pathways 

may help to develop “early warning” indicators for 

emerging conflict risks and contribute to formulating 

appropriate conflict reduction approaches. Similarly, elucidating how distinct conflict pathways may unfold can 

help illuminate vulnerabilities and pinpoint opportunities 

and entryways for strengthening water governance 

processes and institutions to bolster broader systemic 

resilience to water security risks. Finally, in conflict-affected countries, clarifying different conflict types can 

help craft targeted peacebuilding strategies and prevent 

conflict recurrence in postconflict environments.

The United Nations defines water security as “the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access 

to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for 

sustaining livelihoods, human well-being and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for 

preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.”28Water conflicts may take forms and follow 

pathways implicating any of the constituent components 

of water security—water access, available water quantity 

or quality, livelihoods and development, water-related 

disasters, and political processes. (Figure 1 on page 4 

lists several examples.) Sources of water conflict, then, 

include at least the following:

• Environmental pressures on shared water supplies.

Variations in precipitation patterns, changes in snow 

and ice melt, and saline intrusion into rivers and 

groundwater aquifers may alter or disrupt the quantity, quality, or timing of available water resources, 

potentially engendering or exacerbating competition 

between contending water users.

• Water-related natural disasters. Floods, droughts, 

and water-related catastrophes can cause significant loss of life and livelihoods, economic damage, 

population displacement, and social disruption. 

Where government disaster responses are inadequate or inequitable, the state’s failure to ensure the 

public welfare may spark popular contestation. Large 

multi-country studies suggest that natural calamities 

may play such a role in fueling conflict in communities 

divided along ethnic or political lines. Marginalized 

populations may then blame the government for 

worsening the disaster’s impacts or slowing recovery, rendering them more likely to support political 

violence.29

• Changing user demands. Growing user demands, 

claims from new users, or significant changes in the 

location, timing, or nature of water uses can strain 

available renewable resources, creating tensions between consumers.30

• Construction/operation of infrastructure on a 

shared waterway. Constructing and operating 

infrastructure on shared waterways in the absence 

of a collective agreement can raise conflicts among 

different stakeholders. Water infrastructure such as 

dams, irrigation schemes, and inter-basin transfers 

can alter water flows and affect ecosystems, fisheries, navigation, and disaster risks. Infrastructure’s 

economic, environmental, and social impacts may be 

uncertain or contested, and prospective costs and 

benefits unevenly distributed, generating frictions 

between affected parties.31

• Resource expropriation/access to decision making.

Water rights and governance procedures are often 

poorly defined or subject to arbitrary control by the 

government or economic elites. State authorities 

may undertake infrastructure projects, implement 

management policies, or expropriate water resources without the effective participation of or consultation with relevant stakeholders. Governments 

or other actors may in this way engage in “water 

grabbing,” utilizing their power to appropriate land, 

Given water risks can evolve dynamically over time, oscillating between peaceful coordination and 

contention, conflict resolution, and recurrence. In fact, conflict and cooperation frequently coexist, with 

water users collaborating in some areas even as they quarrel in others.
USIP.ORG 9

water, and associated resources to control their use, 

spawning potential conflicts over resource exclusion 

and access to decision making.32

• Water service provision. Access to adequate safe 

water is a fundamental human need. The abilities of 

civil authorities to ensure water and sanitation services stand as highly visible measures of state “performance legitimacy.” Government incapacity to provide 

these public goods (on acceptable terms) can erode 

the social compact, stirring popular discontent.33

• Water and border disputes. Rivers form over a third 

of the total length of international land boundaries. 

Natural processes such as erosion, however, can 

alter river courses and lakeshores, affecting the 

boundaries they define. Some border delineations 

do provide for periodic adjustments. Some water body shifts, though, have engendered violent 

confrontations.34 With climate pressures and societal 

demands growing, human management will increasingly impact the world’s shared waterways, raising 

the possibility of increased conflict over water-related boundary modifications.

• Water as a tool or target of war. Water sources and 

infrastructure may be seized or targeted in violent conflicts to leverage control of a territory or population.

Multiple water conflict pathways may interweave. For 

example, water infrastructure development may enable 

resource expropriation, exclusionary decision making 

may amplify disaster vulnerabilities, or water disputes 

may ramify into confrontations over arable land, fisheries, forests, or other goods that water sustains. Such 

conflict risks multiply when shared water resources 

spread across jurisdictional borders, where they are 

managed by different institutions under different administrative, legal, and political systems.

Given water risks can evolve dynamically over time, oscillating between peaceful coordination and contention, 

conflict resolution, and recurrence. In fact, conflict and 

cooperation frequently coexist, with water users collaborating in some areas even as they quarrel in others. By 

the same token, water stresses and conflict dynamics 

can also interact. Water insecurity may constitute a threat 

multiplier, helping spark violent conflict; violent conflict, 

in turn, can degrade societal and state capacity, weakening the ability to address water challenges and driving 

a vicious cycle of fragility and insecurity.35

Crucially, management choices around shared resources may engender water “security dilemmas.”36

Measures taken by one community to uphold its own 

water security, such as constructing a dam to increase 

water storage or provide flood protection, may undermine the water security of other communities by altering the availability and control of water resources and 

shifting each community’s exposure to water risks.37

The US intelligence community judges that as water 

resource challenges worsen in the coming decades, 

some states in shared basins might purposely exploit 

control of water supplies through dams and other 

infrastructure as a means of putting pressure on other 

riparians.38 Such veiled coercion of downstream countries by upstream powers could prove as destabilizing 

as overt violence.

A detailed examination of different case studies can 

elucidate the particular dynamics at work in distinct 

conflict types, illuminating the positions and perspectives of the actors engaged while highlighting the 

importance of specific water security contexts and 

identifying intersections between different conflict 

pathways. The case studies in the following sections—

on the Indus River Basin, Mali, and Myanmar—illustrate 

three types of water conflict: construction/operation 

of infrastructure in the case of the Indus River Basin; 

resource expropriation/access to decision making in 

the case of Myanmar; and a combination of environmental pressures on shared water supplies, resource 

expropriation, and water-related disasters in the case 

of Mali—as well as different scales of conflict (interstate, 

intrastate, and intercommunal) and different institutional 

settings and governance structures for peacebuilding 

and water conflict management.
10 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Case Study: The Indus River Basin

The Indus River Basin is one of the most important water 

systems in Asia. Some 276 million people in Pakistan, 

India, China, and Afghanistan reside within the basin’s 

boundaries, generating an economy of $380 billion.39

Crucially, the Indus nourishes the agricultural breadbaskets of the subcontinent. Its basin is one of the most 

intensively cropped and heavily irrigated areas on Earth. 

Agriculture absorbs 93 percent of all water withdrawn 

from the Indus River and the basin’s underground aquifers.40 In Pakistan, where the agricultural sector employs 

38.5 percent of the labor force and produces 18.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Indus Basin 

waters more than 90 percent of the nation’s crops.41 In 

India, where undernourishment remains a major public 

health problem, the basin produces around a third of the 

rice stocks and more than half of the wheat crop disseminated through the government-run Public Distribution 

System, helping to promote national food security.42

The Indus also holds considerable hydropower potential in a region where hundreds of millions of people 

lack electricity. Yet growing populations and expanding 

economies are driving rising water demand throughout 

the Indus Basin even as environmental pressures and 

unsustainable consumption practices stretch supplies.

WORSENING WATER STRESS

Yearly water withdrawals in Pakistan have risen by 20 

percent since the mid-1970s, while total annual withdrawals in India doubled over the same period. As water 

requirements have ballooned, many users have turned 

to wells to supplement or supplant surface water sources. Groundwater now supplies half of all withdrawals in 

the basin.43 However, unsustainable groundwater abstractions are outpacing natural rates of replenishment. 

Taken together, net surface and groundwater withdrawals 

exceed available resources during half the year or more 

over much of the basin.44 Future population and economic 

growth will further strain resources. By 2050, according 

to different demographic and development scenarios, the 

basin will be home to 346–469 million inhabitants and will 

host a regional GDP four to eight times larger than today.45

Rising water demands risk colliding with a warming 

climate. Extreme weather events may grow more 

frequent and intense, presaging greater flooding and 

drought.46 Significantly, the Indus depends on snow and 

ice melt, particularly during the dry months that bracket 

the summer monsoon rains. Glaciers in the upper basin 

function as massive freshwater repositories, seasonally 

accumulating ice and snow at high altitudes, then releasing meltwaters that contribute 80 percent of the river’s 

yearly flow. Global warming is gradually shrinking the 

Himalayan glaciers. Greater glacier melt could initially 

boost river runoff. But as deglaciation continues, meltwaters will subsequently dwindle, diminishing downstream 

water supplies.47 India and Pakistan possess meager 

capacity to buffer prolonged fluctuations in river levels. 

Pakistan’s reservoirs furnish the water storage equivalent of only thirty-four days of Indus inflows.48

Consequently, many analysts foresee worsening water 

stress in the Indus Basin.49 Yet substantial uncertainty 

clouds regional climate projections and their ramifications for water resources.50 Climate impacts will differ 

between the upper and lower basin and between the 

eastern and western watersheds. Different models calculate water availability in the Upper Indus Basin could 

be anywhere from 60 percent higher to 15 percent lower 

by 2100, even as water demands across the basin will 

then be considerably greater.51 In Pakistan, crop production could fall by up to 13 percent, while hydropower 
USIP.ORG 11

PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

INDIA

CHINA

Kabul

Islamabad

New Delhi

IRAN

TURKMENISTAN TAJIKISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

Arabian Sea

Kabul

Islamabad

Jammh

and Kashmir

Jammu

and Kashmir

Kandahar

Quetta

production estimates vary from 22 percent more to 34 

percent less, depending on the climate and water risk 

scenario.52 Such uncertainties confound decision makers’ ability to weigh the implications of alternative policy 

choices across diverse objectives and navigate competing claims among different water users.

THE INDUS WATERS TREATY

In the face of growing challenges, hydro-relations 

between the Indus’s main riparians, India and Pakistan, 

are fraught. The frontier that partitioned British India in 

1947, setting India and Pakistan apart at independence, 

also set them at odds over water. The six main branches 

of the Indus system run westward through India before 

crossing into Pakistan. (A seventh major branch, the 

Kabul River, originates in Afghanistan, entering Pakistan 

from the east.) The new international boundary bisected 

these six primary tributaries, as well as the canal networks irrigating the region’s agriculture. Upstream India 

affirmed its sovereign right to develop rivers running on 

its own territory as it saw fit. Downstream Pakistan, suddenly severed from vital river sources rising beyond its 

borders, feared that Indian water demands could deprive 

it of its historical rights to Indus flows, jeopardizing its 

economy and food security. Persistent tensions between 

the two states drew the World Bank to mediate their dispute, culminating in the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).53

International water treaties typically allocate shared 

rivers quantitatively, apportioning water to the parties 

either by volume or as percentages of the flow. The IWT

instead divides the Indus physically, splitting the fan of six 

major tributaries. To Pakistan it allots full use of the three 

western rivers, the Chenab, Jhelum, and Indus main 

stem (amounting to about 80 percent of the six rivers’ 

average annual flow). India must allow these rivers to 

run freely through its territory except for restricted uses 

related to domestic and agricultural needs and specifically defined purposes of hydropower generation. India 

in turn receives full rights to the three eastern rivers, the 

Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej. When these eastern branches exit 

India, they become available to Pakistan. Critically, the 

CONFLICT TYPE

Construction or operation of infrastructure 

on a shared waterway

CONFLICT SCALE

Interstate, primarily between India

and Pakistan, but also implicating

Afghanistan and China

CONFLICT GOVERNANCE

STRUCTURE

Indus Waters Treaty (ratified in 1960)

INDUS BASIN

Adapted from artwork by Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock

The names, designations, and boundaries on this map do 

not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United 

States Institute of Peace.
12 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

treaty also structured a massive program of infrastructure 

financing (partially funded by India) to assist Pakistan in 

developing canals, storage, and “replacement works” to 

offset the loss of supply from the eastern tributaries.

Though deemed a diplomatic success, the IWT is often 

characterized as a “divorce settlement” and a “riparian iron curtain” rather than a cooperative accord.54 Its 

provisions for information sharing are inadequate and 

their implementation is impaired by pervasive cultures of 

data secrecy.55 Its provisions for cooperative infrastructure works have never been used. Rancor and mistrust 

permeate perceptions of the treaty in both countries. 

Pakistani critics assert that Indian infrastructure on the 

western rivers detrimentally affects flows to Pakistan, 

leading Islamabad to formally challenge several Indian 

developments under the treaty’s dispute mechanisms. 

Yet the IWT requires no systematic aggregate impact 

assessments, so though individual Indian projects may 

obey the treaty’s strictures, many analysts maintain that 

stringing multiple dams on the western tributaries will 

entrain damaging cumulative repercussions downstream. 

Moreover, many in Pakistan worry that each additional 

installation incrementally increases India’s capacity to 

regulate flows downriver, augmenting Delhi’s potential 

ability to strangle Pakistan’s economy. India counters that 

its works on the western rivers consist of “run-of-the-river” structures, meaning they do not have the capacity to 

impound significant volumes of water, and that Pakistan’s 

water woes stem from Pakistani mismanagement. 

Substantial Indian opinion thus condemns recurring 

Pakistani objections to planned Indian projects as cynically obstructing India’s legitimate development aims.56

TRANSBOUNDARY WATER CONFLICT 

AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Born in the bitter legacy of Partition, Indus water governance intertwines with the politics of national security and 

territorial sovereignty. The basin’s three western rivers 

flow through contested Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan and 

India each administer a portion of this majority-Muslim 

former princely state, which is claimed by both. Certain 

Pakistani policymakers and press outlets accuse India of 

using dams in Jammu and Kashmir to manipulate river 

flows destined for Pakistan, either withholding water to 

foster famine, or suddenly releasing it to provoke flooding. 

Militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for 

the 2008 Mumbai attack, have also threatened to bomb 

India’s dams and menace war to recapture Pakistan’s 

rightful water.57 Indeed, former Pakistani president Asif Ali 

Zardari warned in 2009 that failure to resolve the Indus issue “could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism.”58 According to a former chief of staff 

of the army, Pakistan’s military posture will remain “Indiacentric” until the Kashmir and water disputes are settled.59

Indian policymakers and pundits take the opposite view. 

Many advocate conditioning India’s continued compliance 

with the IWT—and leveraging the latent ability to regulate 

the Indus’s flow conferred by its upstream position—to 

compel Islamabad to rein in domestic extremists.60 In retaliation for Pakistani militant attacks, many call for maximizing India’s exploitation of the western rivers under the IWT

and curtailing all remaining flows to Pakistan from the eastern rivers.61 Chairing a review of the treaty in 2016, Indian 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi averred that “blood and 

water can’t flow together.”62 In the longer term, a number 

of analysts consider that water insecurity in Pakistan could 

pose grave strategic dangers to India. Some conjecture 

a water-deficient Pakistan might deploy militant proxies 

to sabotage Indian water infrastructure. Others envisage 

that climate impacts and water shortages, coupled with 

institutional incapacity to meet these trials, could enflame 

civil strife, destabilizing or even debilitating the Pakistani 

state.63 Without naming specific opponents, the new Joint 

Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces identifies climate 

change, environmental disasters, and rising competition 

for natural resources as real conflict risks and potential 

geopolitical threats shaping India’s security environment.64

The wrangling over control of the Indus reverberates 

within India and Pakistan and ramifies beyond their 

borders. In Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, 

many Kashmiris consider that by attributing the western 
USIP.ORG 13

rivers solely to Pakistan, the IWT expropriates water 

and hydropower resources from local control, throttling 

their economic development and thwarting their political autonomy, thereby stoking separatist aspirations 

for Kashmiri independence. In 2002, the state legislature passed a nearly unanimous resolution appealing 

to annul the treaty. Similar recriminations roil Pakistan. 

Downstream Sindh Province charges upstream Punjab 

with withdrawing more than its share of the Indus to 

offset waters conceded to India under the IWT.

65

At the regional level, political turmoil in Afghanistan and 

forbiddingly remote geography in China have so far 

largely prevented those nations from developing their 

Indus resources. But water demands in both countries 

are climbing. Afghanistan, struggling through decades 

of war, holds increasing hydropower and irrigation 

to be strategic objectives of national reconstruction. 

Islamabad frets that prospective Afghan works could 

divert flows from the Kabul River, which provides 16 

percent of Pakistan’s water supplies. Media reports that 

New Delhi is helping Afghanistan erect several dams 

on the Kabul rouse Pakistani apprehensions of encirclement by its Indian adversary.66 Afghan and Pakistani 

analysts alike have identified common benefits and 

mechanisms for cooperation on the Kabul; officials 

have also periodically proffered support. But reciprocal 

recriminations and mutual apprehensions regarding 

lack of knowledge resources, negotiating capacity, and 

preparation have so far foiled progress toward agreement.67 By the same token, some three-quarters of the 

Indus’s annual flow enters India from China, raising 

concerns in India about the impacts of Chinese designs 

upstream. Chinese investments in Pakistani hydropower projects under the Belt and Road Initiative—with 

a number of construction sites situated in contested 

Kashmir and guarded by Chinese security personnel—

similarly discomfit New Delhi.68

EMERGING WATER CHALLENGES AND 

ENDURING WATER NATIONALISM

At the time of its signing in 1960, then World Bank 

President Eugene Black believed the IWT had managed 

to resolve opposing interests that otherwise could have 

pushed India and Pakistan into war over water.69 Some 

observers argue that the accord plays a larger confidence-building role reducing regional tensions between 

nuclear-armed rivals.70 But the IWT offers little response 

to many emerging challenges. The agreement contains 

no provisions concerning the basin’s shared groundwater aquifers, nor does it address environmental protections or water quality beyond hortatory pledges to prevent undue pollution as far as practicable. Negotiated 

when global warming was unsuspected outside a tiny 

scientific circle, the treaty includes no mechanism to 

manage shifts in water availability due to climate change. 

Beyond neglecting particular issues, the IWT also omits 

the river’s other riparians; neither Afghanistan nor China 

are party to the accord.71

Indian and Pakistani policymakers recognize the perils 

of mounting water stress on the Indus. Their declared 

national water policies emphasize the need for more 

effective and integrated water resources management 

and call for cooperation on transboundary waters.72

Yet water policy in both countries remains highly 

“securitized,” framing water governance as a zero-sum 

conflict of existential threats and national survival.73 To 

many analysts, such predominating logics of “water 

nationalism” undermine the prospects for productive 

cooperation.74 Multiple studies examining environmental, socioeconomic, and political criteria have found 

that governance factors—institutional capacity, effective 

management, and hydropolitical tensions—are key 

determinants of vulnerability to disruptive water and climate pressures in transboundary basins. These studies 

judge the Indus Basin countries wanting.75

Water policy in both [India and Pakistan] remains highly “securitized,” framing water governance as 

a zero-sum conflict of existential threats and national survival. To many analysts, such predominating 

logics of “water nationalism” undermine the prospects for productive cooperation.
14 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Case Study: Mali

A land-locked state in West Africa, Mali straddles the 

Sahel, a semiarid ecoclimatic transition zone between 

the Sahara to the north and savanna to the south. 

The northern half of the nation receives less than 200 

mm (7.8 inches) of precipitation a year, offering sparse 

vegetation a growing season of less than fifteen days. 

Rainfall increases progressively to the south, supporting agricultural belts in the country’s center and southwest. The Niger River, Africa’s third-longest waterway, 

arcs through southern Mali, creating a unique interior 

delta that sustains flood recession agriculture and 

important areas of irrigated cultivation and pastoralism. 

Nine identified groundwater aquifers constitute the 

principal source of drinking water.76

Climate change and postcolonial government measures, 

both of which have altered traditional access to water 

and land for the pastoralist Tuareg in the north, have 

contributed to decades of clashes between nomadic 

herders and sedentarist farmers, sparking repeated 

insurgencies and drawing in regional involvement.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 

AND WATER INSECURITY

Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries. Predominantly rural, 58 percent of Mali’s 18.5 million 

people live in the countryside. Half of the population 

subsists below the poverty line. The World Bank has 

estimated that nine in ten urban dwellers nationwide 

have access to basic drinking water services, but only 

two-thirds of rural residents do. Less than half the 

urban population and only one-fifth of rural inhabitants 

use at least basic sanitation services. Water insecurity 

imposes a heavy burden on Mali. Insufficient and irregular rainfall can crimp crop yields, thin livestock herds, 

and sap agricultural livelihoods. The United Nations 

has estimated that annual losses from water scarcity, 

water-related illnesses, water pollution, and waste 

approach 5 percent of Mali’s GDP.77

Mali’s economy depends preponderantly on agriculture. 

The agricultural sector accounts for almost 40 percent of GDP and provides 65 percent of employment, 

according to World Bank estimates. Crop irrigation and 

livestock claim 98 percent of water withdrawn from the 

country’s rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Even so, nearly all of 

Mali’s farmland is watered not by irrigation but by rainfall. 

Dutch experts calculate that rainwater, sometimes called 

“green water,” constitutes 94 percent of Mali’s overall 

“water footprint,” a measure that tallies the total water 

consumed in the country, while surface and groundwater, termed “blue water,” account for just 6 percent.78

Malians’ agricultural livelihoods and welfare depend 

on water availability. Precipitation is highly seasonal, 

with almost all annual rains falling during the June–

September rainy season. Rainfall also fluctuates significantly from year to year, leaving farmers and herders 

reliant on the vagaries of weather to water their fields 

and pasturage. River levels likewise vary correspondingly with precipitation. For example, a 10 percent dip 

in rainfall typically entails a 20 percent drop in river 

discharge; a 30 percent drop in rainfall produces a ruinous 60 percent plunge in river flow.79 Consequently, 

nearly all irrigation water withdrawals occur during 

the rainy season, when river levels are high. Mali has 

moderate reservoir storage in five dams that can be 

used during the dry season, but more than 80 percent 

of this capacity lies behind the Manantali Dam on the 

Senegal River in Mali’s far southwest, whereas almost 

all of Mali’s irrigated agriculture takes place on the 

Niger River.
USIP.ORG 15

Mali (and much of the Sahel region) entered a rapid 

and pronounced drying shift in 1968–69. Average 

annual rainfall tumbled by 16–24 percent in the years 

after 1969, and annual precipitation in the first decade 

of the twenty-first century remained 12 percent below 

the 1920–1969 average. Similarly, the Niger River’s average annual flows have slumped by some 24–33 percent in Mali over the years since the 1960s.80 Climate 

change projections disagree whether rainfall trends 

will increase or decrease over the coming decades 

but concur in expecting appreciable regional warming, 

suggesting higher crop water demands. Several recent 

analyses anticipate that annual average river runoff and 

water availability in Mali’s Niger River Basin could decline by as little as 5 percent or as much as 15 percent 

by the middle of the century, while drought episodes 

are projected to become more frequent and intense.81

TUAREG SEPARATISM: DROUGHT, 

EXPROPRIATION, AND EXCLUSION

The protracted rainfall deficits that began in 1969 particularly affected Mali’s Tuareg communities. Nomadic 

or seminomadic pastoralists, the Tuareg make up about 

10 percent of Mali’s population but predominate across 

much of the sparsely populated north. Severe droughts 

in the early 1970s, which returned and deepened in 

the mid-1980s, decimated Tuareg livestock. Rainfall 

patterns both weakened and shifted hundreds of kilometers to the south, forcing many Tuareg to drive their 

herds farther south in search of pasture, into agricultural lands cultivated by sedentary farmers.82 Countless 

others left the rangelands and migrated to cities or 

across the border into Algeria and Libya, where there 

are also large Tuareg populations.

The deteriorating environmental conditions significantly 

disrupted the Tuaregs’ livelihoods and lifeways, and, 

compounded by governance structures that favored 

sedentary agriculture, pushed them away from nomadic pastoralism and toward farming and urban wage 

labor. The generation of Tuareg who went abroad 

looking for work became known as ishumar (from 

MALI

ALGERIA

MAURITANIA

GUINEA

CÔTE D'IVOIRE

BURKINA FASO

GHANA

NIGER

BENIN

Bamako

Sikasso

Mopti

Gao

Sahara Desert

Manantali

Dam

CONFLICT TYPE

Environmental pressures on shared water 

supplies, resource expropriation/access to 

decision making, water-related disasters

CONFLICT SCALE

Intrastate, between Mali government

and Tuareg separatists; and regional,

engaging neighboring states and the 

international community

CONFLICT GOVERNANCE

STRUCTURE

National peace accords (incompletely

implemented)

MALI

Adapted from artwork by Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock

The names, designations, and boundaries on this map do 

not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United 

States Institute of Peace.
16 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

the French chômeur, “unemployed”).83 Across Mali’s 

Sahelian north, recurring droughts from the 1970s into 

the mid-2000s resulted in declining food security and 

a lasting erosion of wealth and welfare.84

The droughts also fueled long-standing Tuareg grievances against the Malian state. Culturally and linguistically distinct from the rest of Mali’s population, the 

Tuareg chafed under exclusionary rule by the distant 

central government in Bamako. French colonial administration had accorded the Tuareg a modicum of 

relative autonomy (perceived as “colonial privilege” 

by other colonized peoples). After independence in 

1960, however, political power in Mali resided with 

the more southern ethnic groups. From 1960 through 

1990, there were only two Tuareg ministers appointed 

in all the intervening government cabinets, two Tuareg 

officers in the Malian military, and no Tuareg heads of 

national administrative departments. Civil servants and 

technicians assigned to the remote region often simply 

never took up their posts. When catastrophic droughts 

crippled the north, government officials embezzled 

much of the international aid effort, diverting humanitarian assistance funds to build private villas, known as 

“drought castles,” in the capital. 85

Bamako’s postcolonial policies of agricultural modernization and sedentarization, intended to turn “worthless” 

rangeland in the north into productive farmland, further 

marginalized the Tuareg.86 Between 1967 and 1997, Mali 

nearly tripled its cultivated area, mostly by converting 

grazing lands to farm fields.87 Mali also ramped up rice 

cultivation along the floodplains of the Niger, progressively squeezing out the native plants herders relied 

on for fodder during the dry season.88 As decreasing 

rainfall and diminishing river flows shrank the growing 

zones around the Niger, Tuareg herders increasingly 

clashed with sedentary Songhay rice growers over 

rights to the river’s resources. Finally, a series of land 

tenure reforms that imposed formal title on lands 

previously held collectively and allowed the state to 

take over fallow and unregistered land, privileging 

fixed properties and sedentary communities, checked 

herders’ customary access to grazing corridors and 

seasonal pasturelands.89

RECURRENT CYCLES OF REBELLION

The droughts and dislocations of the 1970s and 1980s 

cemented the Tuareg’s sense of alienation and neglect 

at the hands of an indifferent or inimical state, helping 

forge a national movement and support for political 

independence. Ishumar Tuareg who had fled Mali during 

the droughts started planning an uprising, receiving military training and support from the regime of Muammar 

Gadhafi in Libya. Scattered attacks occurred in 1982 and 

1985. Full armed insurgency began in June 1990.90

The Tuareg rebels achieved several quick victories over 

the Malian army, and a preliminary cease-fire, mediated 

by Algeria, was reached in January 1991. The ensuing 

Tamanrasset Accords provided significant autonomy to 

the north and promised to devote almost half of Mali’s 

fourth national investment program to developing the 

region. A National Pact concluded in 1992 codified the 

main elements of the accord.91 But the development 

funding never materialized. The rebel movement fractured into discordant factions. Sedentary communities, 

unrepresented at the peace negotiations, deemed their 

interests disregarded. Fighting resumed, soon breaking 

down along intercommunal lines. The army rounded 

up and executed Tuareg village leaders. Tuareg forces 

attacked farming settlements along the Niger River. 

Songhay farmers, merchants, and military formed a civil 

militia, the Ganda Koy (Masters of the Land), and retaliated against the Tuareg. Finally, weary of the spiraling 

civil war, traditional leaders of the Songhay communities 

joined with Tuareg tribal and religious leaders to initiate 

reconciliatory meetings among all ethnic groups, ultimately brokering a fragile peace in 1996.92

The peace did not last. Renewed rebellion erupted in 

2006–09. This revolt largely arose from Tuareg internal 

rivalries, but it also reflected enduring grievances fired in 

the droughts of the previous generation. Like the earlier 
USIP.ORG 17

rebellion, the government and the insurgents quickly 

reached a peace settlement under Algerian auspices, 

pledging to revive the terms of the 1992 National Pact. 

Again, implementation stalled. The rebel movement 

splintered, the violence escalated, and fighting sputtered on for another three years. Repeated government 

failures to follow through on promised development 

programs, official corruption, and mutable clan politics all 

helped perpetuate a cycle of insecurity and rebellion.93

That cycle still continues. Crisis again gripped Mali from 

2012 as radical Islamist groups took over two-thirds of 

the country and declared the “Republic of Azawad.” The 

rekindled conflict’s complex dynamics meshed Tuareg 

separatism and intra-communal politics with the geopolitics of the Arab Spring, the Libyan Revolution, the spread 

of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the post-9/11 

war on terror. Jihadi factions seized on the beginnings of 

yet another Tuareg uprising, first absorbing, then turning 

on and displacing the Tuareg insurgents. After the 

Malian army unraveled, the government appealed for 

French military assistance. The French Opération Serval 

reconquered the north’s major cities within weeks, and 

was succeeded in 2013 by a UN peacekeeping mission. 

Under the auspices of the international community, the 

Malian government concluded a peace agreement with 

the various Tuareg separatist groups in May 2015.94

Even so, strife in Mali goes on. Islamist attacks and 

intercommunal violence persist. Disaffected herder 

populations often sympathize with an Islamist presence 

that frames pastoralist grievances and anti-government 

resistance in religious discourse. Farmer-herder unrest 

over resource access, never confined only to the Tuareg, 

afflicts swaths of the country, straining traditional management and justice mechanisms.95 The ongoing conflict 

itself, which has destroyed assets and infrastructure, 

reduced access to basic water services, and hampered 

humanitarian aid provision, grinds down societal resilience and capacity to cope with subsequent shocks.96

NATIONAL PEACE AGREEMENTS AND 

PARTICIPATORY RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The long conflicts in Mali have economic and political 

roots. These roots tap water. Key elements of the politics 

and economics underlying the conflicts revolve around the 

contested management of, access to, and uses of water 

and related resources. Each of the negotiated agreements 

that closed the successive Tuareg rebellions affirmed the 

need to tackle these issues to build the peace.

Thus, the 1992 National Pact established a special status 

for northern Mali based on the election of democratic 

regional assemblies, explicitly empowering each assembly to define and promote policy for water management, 

rural development, land tenure, livestock, and ecosystem preservation. Likewise, the 2015 peace agreement 

declared the signatories “determined to deal definitively 

with the basic causes of the [conflict],” acknowledging 

the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s among these 

causes and “recognising the need for governance which 

recognises the geo-historical and socio-cultural specificities of the North, whose history has been marked 

by challenges which have deeply affected the living 

conditions of its populations.” The 2015 accord then renewed the commitment to creating an elected regional 

assembly habilitated to determine policy for economic 

development, territorial management, water and sanitation, environment, agriculture, and livestock.97

Surveyed about their expectations for the 2015 

agreement, northern communities placed the highest 

priorities on job creation, the development of access 

to basic services (water and sanitation, health), and 

support for rural development, food security, and the 

environment, naming these objectives over and above 

establishing local elected governance, strengthening 

the rule of law, or increased road and power infrastructure.98 They are still waiting. The 2015 agreement has 

yet to be substantially implemented.99
18 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Case Study: Myanmar

Myanmar possesses abundant fresh water. According 

to UN Food and Agriculture Organization data, all the 

nation’s agricultural, industrial, and domestic water 

use combined requires less than 3 percent of its 1,168 

km3 annually available renewable supplies. Myanmar’s 

hydrological riches also carry substantial development potential, especially for hydroelectricity. Experts 

estimate the country’s rivers command 100 gigawatts of 

unexploited hydropower.100

After decades of isolation under military rule, Myanmar 

since 2011 has embarked on an ongoing political transition and undertaken significant reforms encouraging 

foreign investment and private sector development to 

capitalize on the country’s ample natural resources and 

spur economic growth.101 But the contested exploitation 

of water resources in territories claimed by multiple 

ethnic groups threatens the country’s sustainable development and political stability.

WATER RESOURCES AND 

ECONOMIC GROWTH

Myanmar has devoted great efforts to developing its 

water resources in recent years. Today, twenty-nine 

hydro stations furnish 58 percent of the nation’s total 

power generation.102 Yet the country’s per capita electricity consumption remains among the world’s lowest. 

Only two-thirds of Myanmar’s inhabitants have access 

to electricity at all, according to World Bank estimates; 

7 percent of the urban population and 40 percent of 

rural residents do not. The government recognizes that 

inadequate and unreliable power supplies could scuttle 

development prospects. Though electricity production 

doubled and installed generating capacity quadrupled 

from 2000 to 2014, by 2009 peak load demands were 

also rising by 15 percent per year on average.103

Importantly, effective hydropower generation capability waxes and wanes throughout the year. Because 

Myanmar’s rivers are monsoon fed, water levels mirror 

seasonal rainfall patterns. Eighty percent of annual 

flows occur during the rainy season, May to October, 

and 20 percent during the dry season, November to 

April.104 Most of the country’s hydropower dams afford 

limited water storage to compensate for fluctuating 

flows, so during the dry season actual power generation falls to a third of the installed capacity. Tellingly, 

economic surveys regularly label lack of dependable 

electricity a substantial constraint on business.105

With national electricity needs projected to triple over the 

next decade, the government aims to quintuple installed 

hydroelectric capacity and extend grid access to 100 percent of the population by 2030.106 Hydropower expansion 

also seeks to attract foreign investment and generate 

revenue by exporting electricity to neighboring markets. 

Even as Myanmar began its democratic opening, energy 

demand was booming in surrounding countries, offering rich opportunities to tap the regional power trade.107

Since 2011, national development plans and reforms to 

investment laws have facilitated foreign participation in 

finance and construction. As of early 2019, the Ministry 

of Electricity and Energy had reportedly inked forty-nine 

hydropower contracts, memoranda of understanding, or 

joint venture agreements with foreign companies.108

RESOURCE EXPROPRIATION AND 

ETHNIC INSURGENCIES

Clouding Myanmar’s hydropower aspirations, a long 

history of conflict over natural resources has pitted the 

central government against restive regions and ethnic 

insurgencies.109 Violent internal struggles have riven 

Myanmar since the 1948 independence of the Union of 
USIP.ORG 19

Burma, when the political exclusion of certain groups 

begat multiple ethno-nationalist movements. The ensuing 

failures of inclusive state formation engendered decades 

of civil war. Dozens of ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) 

established enclaves and local administrative systems of 

varying autonomy. Unable to defeat the separatist groups, 

the state came to tolerate and even accommodate some 

of these areas.110 Within their respective regions, the national government and military (Tatmadaw), state-backed 

militias, and the EAOs alike turned to the unregulated production, taxation, and sale of natural resources—timber, 

gems, jade, illicit drugs—to fund their activities.

When the military regime concluded bilateral cease-fires 

with several EAOs during the period 1989–95, the door 

was opened to a “cease-fire capitalism” of rampant resource exploitation. By dampening hostilities, delineating 

areas of control, and legitimizing the ethnic forces, the 

agreements facilitated a new wave of resource extraction. 

But the cease-fires never led to substantive political dialogue or mutual arrangements for resource management 

or benefit sharing. Numerous EAOs never participated in 

the accords. Resource capture remained a conflict tactic, 

since resources controlled by one side represented 

revenues unavailable to its adversaries. Fighting ultimately returned to many regions, escalating over time and 

spiking in the post-transition period, after 2011.111

Hydropower development in Myanmar lies firmly embedded in this history. By geographic circumstance, nature 

endowed Myanmar’s mountainous ethnic borderlands 

with the lion’s share of the country’s hydroelectric potential. Kachin, Karen, and Shan States alone hold over 

two-thirds of the nation’s technically viable hydropower.112

When the government, dominated by the Bamar majority, 

moved to expand hydropower, it looked to these regions. 

Myanmar’s national policies and institutional structures for 

natural resource and hydropower development, though, 

confer little role to the country’s fourteen state and 

regional governments. The 2008 constitution accords to 

states the rights to regulate only small projects of under 

30 megawatts.113 Without consulting or engaging the local 

MYANMAR 

CHINA

LAOS

THAILAND

INDIA

BHUTAN

BANGLADESH

Bay of Bengal

Myitsone

Dam site

Naypyidaw

Yangon

Myitsone

Dam site

CONFLICT TYPE

Resource expropriation/access to

decision making

CONFLICT SCALE

Intrastate, between government and

multiple armed ethnic groups

CONFLICT GOVERNANCE

STRUCTURE

Ongoing national peace process

MYANMAR

Adapted from artwork by Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock

The names, designations, and boundaries on this map do 

not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United 

States Institute of Peace.
20 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

populations, the military regime signed concessions with 

(predominantly Chinese) companies to develop plants in 

territories often held by EAOs, whether under a cease-fire 

agreement or not. The concession contracts dedicated 

90 percent of the power that the projects would generate 

for export, allotting only 10 percent to Myanmar, a grossly 

lopsided division compared to development agreements 

common elsewhere in Asia.114

Largely denied the projects’ possible benefits, local 

populations also feared they would bear the prospective 

costs. Hydropower dams would likely alter river flows and 

sediment loads, negatively impacting biodiversity, fisheries, and alluvial farming in the floodplains. Since much of 

the country is prone to earthquakes, potential dam failures 

could wreak catastrophic damages.115 Yet the thirty-five hydropower ventures already existing or underway prepared 

only rudimentary environmental impact assessments 

falling short of international standards. No national policies 

guide sustainable hydropower planning, and no cumulative or basin-wide analyses of any projects have been 

performed.116 Only in August 2018 did the government 

introduce the new Myanmar Sustainable Development 

Plan requiring effective and accountable evaluations of 

development projects’ social and environmental impacts. 

Even so, this nominal framework to decentralize, demilitarize, and rationalize comprehensive national development 

planning remains largely aspirational.117

Hydropower soon became a flashpoint in the ongoing 

tensions between the central government and ethnic 

areas. Developing hydropower concessions demands 

considerable tracts of land for dam construction, road 

access and equipment, and for the reservoirs that 

provide water storage to offset seasonally varying river 

flows. To secure the needed land in territories claimed 

by ethnic forces, the government often resorted to land 

seizures, forced population displacements, arbitrary arrests, and militarization of large areas, effectively enacting a dual strategy of “water grabbing/land grabbing” 

for hydropower development.118 Protests have erupted 

around a dozen different dam projects, including calls 

for a moratorium on all hydropower development until 

a comprehensive peace agreement can be reached. 

Armed violence also flared close to many project sites.

MYITSONE DAM

The Myitsone Dam exemplifies hydropower conflicts in 

Myanmar. In 2009, the military regime concluded three 

years of negotiations with China to erect the Myitsone 

Dam in Kachin State on the Irrawaddy River just below 

the confluence of the Mali and N’Mai rivers. China’s 

single-largest hydropower development abroad, the 

Myitsone project would double Myanmar’s hydroelectric 

generating capacity. As the keystone of a seven-dam 

cascade, the reservoir created by Myitsone would submerge forty-seven villages and displace up to eighteen 

thousand people. Though Kachin activists staunchly 

opposed the dam from the outset, the military authorities 

proceeded to bulldoze homes and orchards, resettling 

thousands of residents in “model villages.”119 In March 

2011, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)—the 

EAO whose armed forces had fought the Tatmadaw for 

more than three decades until agreeing to a cease-fire 

in 1994—issued an open letter to the Chinese government warning that the project could ignite civil war if the 

Tatmadaw invaded KIO territory to guard construction 

sites. Soon after, in June 2011, the Tatmadaw clashed 

with the Kachin Independence Army at the recently 

completed Dapein Dam, a smaller installation situated 

on an Irrawaddy tributary downstream from the Myitsone 

site. State-run media depicted the military offensive as 

needed to protect hydropower resources from the KIO. 

The combat killed dozens, ending a seventeen-year 

cease-fire and plunging the region back into war.120

Against this backdrop, elections in November 2010 set the 

stage for a quasi-civilian government to take office in April 

2011. At the same time, broader opposition to Myitsone 

had been spreading to the country as a whole. Many now 

viewed the dam’s impacts on the Irrawaddy as imperiling Myanmar’s cultural heritage and the concession’s 

unequal terms as compromising Burmese sovereignty. In 

September 2011, new president Thein Sein suspended the 
USIP.ORG 21

Myitsone project.121 A government commission formed in 

2016 to review the dam delivered its report in November 

2018, but the results have not been made public. Despite 

Chinese lobbying, construction has not resumed.122

WATER POLICY AND THE PUBLIC SPACE

Myitsone represents only the most prominent of 

Myanmar’s hydropower conflicts. Similar dynamics of 

armed violence, territorial militarization, and human rights 

abuses surround numerous other projects, including the 

Kunlong and Shweli Dams in Shan State and the planned 

Hatgyi Dam on the Salween River in Karen State.123

Water conflict in Myanmar revolves around the intersections between hydropower and political power. 

Who has the legitimate authority to manage water 

resources, in what spaces, for what purposes, to whose 

cost and benefit? Myanmar has struggled to develop 

inclusive, accepted national governance institutions. 

For the inhabitants of the country’s many ethnic areas, 

state mega-dam projects dispossess local populations 

of their customary water resource rights and uses and 

expropriate the benefits in the form of hydropower.

Since the democratic transition started in 2011, the government has resumed a number of bilateral cease-fires 

and initiated the multilateral 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire 

Agreement. Myriad civil society organizations have 

urged participants in the peace talks to agree to new, 

participatory, transparent, and accountable approaches 

for sustainable resource management and benefit sharing.124 Even so, the peace process has yet to directly 

address, much less effectively reform, natural resource 

use and governance in Myanmar. This overarching 

failure continues to fuel local grievances, undermining 

inclusive state building and sustainable peace.125

A protester holds a flyer voicing opposition Myitsone hydropower dam during the last day of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Yangon, Myanmar, 

on January 18, 2020. (Photo by Ann Wang/Reuters)
22 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Water Governance and 

Water Diplomacy

As illustrated in the preceding case studies, water governance is inherently conflictual. By its nature, water 

cannot be managed only for a single purpose in isolation. All water management must assimilate the contending demands and competing interests of multiple 

sectors and stakeholders across different geographic 

scales, time frames, and levels of government.

Major water uses are themselves bound up with the 

management of other vital resources. Water managers 

characterize these interdependencies as composing the 

water-food-energy nexus.126 Water represents an essential input for agriculture, fisheries, and food supply chains. 

It is used extensively in energy generation, for hydroelectricity, and cooling thermal power plants. Likewise, 

growing, preparing, preserving, and distributing food 

requires energy. So does treating and transporting water. 

Agricultural practices—what crops to grow, how, and 

where—substantially affect local water cycles. And many 

common crops can be turned into energy as biofuels. 

Relationships among the water, food, and energy systems 

are complex, and policy aims and choices at different 

points in the water-food-energy nexus may compliment or 

conflict with objectives and impacts at other points.

Recognizing the interdependent and multidimensional character of water governance, policymakers have 

striven to forge the tools to realize more coordinated 

management of water and related resources. These 

policies take various names—integrated water resources management (IWRM), adaptive water management, 

nexus approaches, ecosystem-based strategies—and 

differ in their particulars, but all espouse the common 

objectives of more holistic and sustainable water governance.127 Though individual solutions must be tailored 

to specific places, polities, and policy contexts, certain 

central tenets emerge from these integrated paradigms.

First, policymaking should be participatory and transparent to ensure public legitimacy. To secure the commitment and contribution of relevant actors and navigate 

trade-offs among competing users and demands, authorities should promote stakeholder dialogue and input 

to policy design and implementation. Second, policy 

must be scientifically informed and evidence based to 

be effective. Authorities should produce, share, and use 

timely, consistent, and comparable water data and information to guide, evaluate, and improve resource management. Third, policy must be adaptable and adjustable to meet the complexities of the water-food-energy 

nexus and manage risks such as climate change that 

will evolve in uncertain ways over varying time frames. 

Fourth, authorities should embrace policy learning, 

iteratively assessing policy impacts, incorporating new 

information and experience, and revising implementation accordingly. Most important, policymaking should 

recognize the basin as a hydrological unit and manage 

the ensemble of water uses at functionally appropriate 

scales within integrated basin governance systems. 

Where political or sectoral boundaries nest within or intersect at various scales across the basin, management 

practices should foster cooperation and cross-sectoral 

coordination among users and levels of government.128

Enhancing effective collaboration will be essential to 

achieving global water security. Indeed, goal six of 
USIP.ORG 23

the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals—

“ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”—expressly commits the international community to increase water cooperation, expand 

collaborative institutional arrangements, and implement 

IWRM at all levels.129 To that end, a growing number of 

analysts point to strengthening water diplomacy.

THIRD-PARTY WATER DIPLOMACY

Water diplomacy can be broadly defined as the processes and activities undertaken by state and nonstate 

actors to promote cooperation and to prevent, reduce, 

or peacefully resolve conflicts within or between states 

related to the availability, access to, or management of 

shared water resources.130 Enacting integrated governance approaches raises intrinsically political and often 

contentious questions.131 Rarely will the hydrological 

boundaries of a basin or watershed correspond to the 

practical parameters of what Allen Kneese called the 

“problem-shed” of a given policy challenge.132 Exactly 

how are the policy issues defined? What sectors should 

then be integrated at what scales, which stakeholders 

involved by what processes, what institutions engaged 

and empowered at what levels of government? What 

costs and benefits (for whom) should decision makers 

weigh? When must adaptable policies be revised, what 

risks and uncertainties need to be assessed and which 

accepted? Water diplomacy consists in the dynamic strategies and interactions that parties employ to 

navigate these questions across stakeholders, scales, 

and governance levels.133 Cooperative water diplomacy 

enables the realization of integrated water governance.

Adapted from Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Institutional Diversity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) and Blake D. Ratner et al., “Addressing 

Conflict through Collective Action in Natural Resource Management,” International Journal of the Commons 11 (2017): 884.

Figure 2. Third-Party Water Diplomacy and Collective Water Governance

Engagements

to Support

Governance 

Structures and 

Approaches

Context

Characteristics

of the Water

Resources

Attributes of Water 

Resource Users/

Stakeholders

Governance

Arrangements

Engagements to

Influence the

Action Arena

Engagements to 

Support Water 

Resources

Management

Institutions

Collective

Institutions

Action Arena

Actors

Action 

Resources

Rules in Use

Outcomes

Patterns of

Conflict &

Cooperation

Problem-Shed

Third-Party Water Diplomacy
24 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Even so, many shared waters lack effective cooperation. 

Half of the global population lives within the world’s 310 

transboundary river basins, which are shared by 150 

countries.134 Most of these basins are not covered by collaborative accords. Where international agreements are 

in place, few fully embody integrated management principles. Many don’t include all the basin countries. Many 

want for dispute resolution procedures, mechanisms for 

data exchange, or provisions to address varying river 

flows.135 In other cases, riparians may regard existing 

treaties not only as inadequate but as unfair, enshrining 

historical inequities or uneven power relations between 

participants.136 Global surveys of national water governance systems report that, though many countries have 

drawn up integrated policy frameworks, actual implementation lags, especially in developing states.137

Many of the world’s shared waters most vulnerable to 

rising water stress are marred by a dearth of collaborative mechanisms, deficits of institutional capacity, 

and distrust and dissension among users that frustrate 

sustainable cooperation.138 In such cases, third-party 

actors can play important roles promoting water diplomacy to mitigate existing or emerging water conflicts. 

Third-party involvement may come from neighboring 

governments or other nonriparian states, intergovernmental organizations, development agencies, NGOs, 

or other actors who are neither direct stakeholders in 

the shared water resource nor participants in a given 

water conflict. Third-party engagement may entail 

fostering official diplomacy between state actors, or 

it may take the shape of facilitating different forms 

of unofficial or “multitrack” dialogue or interactions 

between state or nonstate parties.139

Third-party water diplomacy, conflict management, 

and peacebuilding can be described as shaping the 

context and decision framework for the collective 

governance of shared water resources. Water policymaking, whether in a transboundary basin or local 

irrigation association, takes place within a surrounding context defined by several exogenous factors. 

These factors include the characteristics of the water 

resource (scarcity, spatial and temporal distribution, 

rates of renewal); attributes of the resource users or 

stakeholders (socioeconomic characteristics, access 

to and dependence on the resource); and existing 

governance arrangements (societal systems of legal 

and political structures, as well as the particular formal 

and informal institutions, laws, and customary rules 

governing resource access and use).

This overarching context in turn informs the specific decision-making forum or “action arena” for bargaining and 

policymaking around a given issue, and may be defined 

at many levels and scales, from the local to international.140 An action arena consists of actors, resources, and 

rules. Actors may be individuals or collective entities 

such as government ministries or civil society organizations. Resources represent the tangible and intangible 

assets and capabilities that allow actors to exercise 

agency, engage in decision-making processes, and 

influence other actors. These encompass financial and 

material capacities, political and legal authorities, and 

factors such as legitimacy, allies and constituencies, and 

information and cognitive schemata (for example, nexus 

governance paradigms), enabling actors to mobilize 

knowledge and resources. Rules concern the particular 

procedures and “rules-in-use” in a given action arena. 

These include the formal and informal rules, norms, and 

customs that determine what actors and roles have 

standing to participate, how resources may be used, and 

how decisions are reached. In an action arena defined 

by an international treaty, for example, statutory rulesin-use might confer actor standing only to states, and 

stipulate decision making by consensus.

Many of the world’s shared waters most vulnerable to rising water stress are marred by a dearth of 

collaborative mechanisms, deficits of institutional capacity, and distrust and dissension among users that 

frustrate sustainable cooperation.
USIP.ORG 25

Action arenas are dynamic stages. For many water 

conflicts, an established institution or procedure—a 

government agency, court, village council—will constitute the recognized action arena, with attendant actor 

roles and rules-in-use. For many issues, however, no 

clear forum or process for decision making and conflict 

resolution may be readily apparent or agreed upon, requiring actors to adapt existing arrangements or articulate new ones, collectively negotiating the participants 

and parameters creating the action arena.

Typically, multiple different potentially applicable rule 

sets coexist (international laws, national regulations, 

customary routines, cultural norms) and multiple different actors and institutions could claim a role. Different 

actors will appeal to the authority of different rules-inuse, depending on their interests, and argue for the 

inclusion or exclusion of other actors and roles according to their advantage. In practice, the action arena and 

the problem-shed will often prove mutually constitutive. 

How parties define the problem-shed will shape which 

participants and what rules they prefer to form the action 

arena, while which actors and what rules-in-use form 

the action arena will shape how the problem-shed will 

be collectively defined. Problem-sheds are not fixed but 

fluid. Most action arenas are not found but forged.

The outcomes produced in action arenas, cooperative or conflictual, in turn feed back into the context 

and action arenas for water governance. For example, 

should riparian countries sharing a transboundary waterway agree to create a joint river basin organization, 

the mandate, membership, management mechanisms, 

and decision procedures established by the accord 

will shape the context, actors, resources, and rules for 

subsequent policymaking.141

Water diplomacy can act at multiple points to promote 

cooperative collective action. (See figure 2 on page 

23.) Third-party engagements, such as to strengthen 

national resource management structures, support regional organizations, and advance the implementation 

of international conventions and objectives, can help 

institutionalize collaborative governance approaches 

and shape the surrounding contexts in which contending groups enact water conflict and cooperation.142

Third-party diplomacy can also address specific action 

arenas. Through means such as mediating formal 

negotiations and facilitating informal stakeholder 

dialogues, problem-solving workshops, and capacitybuilding trainings, external third parties can encourage 

conflict reduction, enhance actor capabilities, augment 

resources, promote cooperative and inclusive rulesin-use, and help conflicting parties to structure the 

collective problem-shed so as to create and realize 

opportunities for mutual benefits.
26 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Peacebuilding Strategies for 

Water Resources Conflicts

Water diplomacy can play important roles in advancing 

integrated resource governance, collaborative decision 

making, and peaceful dispute resolution.143 In vulnerable and conflict-affected environments, third-party 

engagement can help foster favorable conditions for 

cooperation, facilitate effective processes, and furnish 

resources for collective action. Where water conflicts 

are particularly intractable and interactions between 

contending parties intransigent, unofficial multitrack 

dialogues can provide alternative avenues for communication, confidence building, and policy exploration 

when formal negotiations are ineffectual or impossible.

Third-party water diplomacy can fulfill a number of conflict prevention, conflict reduction, and conflict resolution functions:

• Communication/convening: Interventions can provide opportunities and channels for opening, maintaining, or restoring communication between conflicting actors when other routes are blocked or refused.

• Agenda setting: Interventions can provide a common mechanism enabling participants to identify 

key issues and frame problem-sheds, clarify areas of 

agreement and disagreement, and define deliberation procedures and rules-in-use.

A man waters beet plants in a garden in Gao, Mali, on March 7, 2013. Gao is located along the Niger River, whose water is vital for the success of local 

agriculture. (Photo by Joe Penney /Reuters)
USIP.ORG 27

• Policy exploration and development: Interventions 

can allow parties jointly to assess policy issues and 

options, evaluate experiences from other regions, 

develop shared models and scenarios, and collectively elaborate new policy strategies.

• Policy integration and participation: Interventions 

can offer mechanisms for overcoming policy silos, 

bringing together actors, institutions, and interests 

ordinarily separated by their institutional identities 

and missions. Similarly, interventions can offer avenues for identifying excluded actors and incorporating marginalized stakeholders into policy processes.

• Policy recommendation: Interventions can provide 

external actors a vehicle for communicating policy 

ideas, best practices, norms, and external knowledge resources to disputant parties.

• Public awareness: Interventions can furnish platforms for improving public awareness and understanding regarding the issues, policies, and actors.

• Knowledge building: Interventions can supply a 

forum for information sharing and data exchange 

between actors, and support the generation of 

new research, joint fact-finding, analysis, and policy 

learning to increase the knowledge resources for 

evidence-based decision making.

• Capacity building: Interventions can bolster international, national, and local capacities by strengthening the 

resources, expertise, and networks available among 

actors and institutions to understand issues, advance 

their interests, forge coalitions, and enact solutions.

• Constituency building: Interventions can help build 

political will and constituencies for cooperation by 

facilitating and legitimizing contacts and linkages 

between actors, institutions, and stakeholders both 

within conflicting parties and between them.

• Relationship building: Interventions can help conflicting actors to build trust and mutual understanding of each other’s aims, interests, values, intentions, 

and concerns.144

In practice, these multiple peacebuilding objectives 

interconnect. Knowledge and relationship building 

can facilitate joint policy exploration and development, 

while the experience of collaborative policy development cements relationships and contributes collective 

knowledge resources. Enhanced policy integration 

and participation strengthens capacity and constituency building, while capacity and constituency building 

further enable and legitimize policy integration, participation, and collaborative decision making.

Water diplomacy is not a panacea. Different third-party 

actors, such as governments and NGOs, will bring different resources, capabilities, and relationships to bear 

in engaging the specific parties to any given water conflict. Such potential diversity of support can prove an 

asset. But a multiplicity of uncoordinated external actors can result in inconsistent and fragmented interventions. So too, disputant parties may perceive external 

initiatives as infringing their sovereignty or as partisan 

interference in their affairs. Third-party water diplomacy 

must focus on improving outcomes for the conflict parties, facilitating peaceful interactions, and building actor 

capacities to resolve their own disputes.145

WATER DIPLOMACY, CONFLICT PHASES, 

AND CONFLICT PATHWAYS

Water diplomacy can address all phases of the 

conflict cycle, before, during, and after the outbreak 

of violent confrontation. Third-party initiatives can 

serve preventive diplomacy, conflict resolution, and 

postconflict recovery. Nevertheless, certain types of 

third-party engagement may prove more practicable 

and productive in certain phases.146 In high intensity 

stages, violent conflict has emerged, relations are 

most rancorous, and actors’ perceptions of the issues 

and of each other especially diverge. These phases may be more amenable to third-party initiatives 

supporting communication, relationship building, and 

providing external policy counsel and knowledge, as 

ongoing violence may frustrate more directly collaborative interactions among the conflicting parties. 
28 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

QUESTIONS TO GUIDE THE ASSESSMENT

AND FORMULATION OF THIRD-PARTY

WATER DIPLOMACY ENGAGEMENTS

• What are the natural attributes and usage patterns (bearing in mind the water-food-energy 

nexus) of the shared water resource?

• What are the projected trajectories for future water supplies and demands? What uncertainties 

characterize these projections?

• In what ways and on what time frames might different socio-economic and climate change 

scenarios impact future water resources’ availability, access, uses, and risks?

• What sources of data and information do the conflict parties utilize? To what degree are these 

sources shared or mutually compatible and scientifically sound?

• What are the management mechanisms, customary practices, decision-making processes, 

legal regimes, and institutional structures governing the shared water resources?

• Who are the actors and stakeholders in the water conflict? Are any relevant actors or stakeholders 

marginalized or excluded from the collective negotiating or policymaking process?

• What are the relationships among the different actors and between the actors and the water 

resource? Is the water conflict embedded in larger historical or ongoing political conflicts?

• What conflict pathways characterize the water conflict?

• How do the different actors define the problem-shed framing the water conflict?

• What cultural norms and societal values shape the actors’ perspectives, priorities, and policy 

positions? To what extent do actors share norms and values?

• What resources, capabilities, and relationships can potential third-party actors apply to water 

diplomacy in the conflict?

• How might third-party actors coordinate and sustain their water diplomacy engagements?
USIP.ORG 29

Lower intensity phases of latent conflict, or pre- or 

postconflict phases, may be more suited to practical 

third-party interventions promoting joint agenda setting, capacity building, knowledge development, improving public awareness, and fostering collaborative 

policy development and participatory decision making 

that parties might reject under circumstances of 

greater conflict. The conflict cycle phases constitute 

a continuum, and third-party engagements anywhere 

along the spectrum can help reduce conflict intensity 

and move the parties from higher to lower stages.

By the same token, third-party water diplomacy can 

help address the array of potential water conflict pathways. Even so, certain strategies may be more apt to 

help mitigate particular water security risks. Strategies 

to encourage inclusive governance institutions and 

participatory policy processes can alleviate the dangers 

arising from state resource expropriation and exclusionary decision making. Similar strategies can help better 

position parties to manage growing or changing water 

user demands. Strategies advancing multi-stakeholder 

dialogue, collective knowledge building and information 

exchange, via measures such as joint environmental 

and social impact assessments for example, can help 

parties to foresee and evaluate the differential water 

insecurity ramifications of infrastructure development 

projects on shared waters. Likewise, strategies working 

to augment knowledge resources, bolster actor capacities to collect and share water data, and to integrate 

scientific information into policymaking can help actors 

apprehend and prepare for water-related disasters and 

evolving environmental pressures on water resources. 

Public awareness initiatives may be particularly valuable 

to help blunt the growth of “cultures of conflict,” fed by 

entrenched grievance narratives and the formation of 

polarized in-group/out-group social identifications that 

can fuel conflict persistence and recurrence.147

Beyond particular conflict phases and potential conflict 

pathways, third-party water diplomacy can contribute 

to broader peacebuilding efforts to reduce or remove 

core tensions driving conflict and assist parties to 

establish positive structures, practices, and institutions 

for durable peace. Collaborative water governance, 

embodied in collective agreements, cooperative institutions, participatory policy approaches, and shared 

standards of practice, helps promote sustainable water 

management and reduce vulnerability to environmental 

pressures and hydro-political tensions around shared 

water resources.148 By supporting countries and communities to practice integrated water governance approaches through cooperative processes and inclusive 

institutions, third-party water diplomacy can contribute 

to ensure the environmental and societal resilience to 

peacefully manage future water resource challenges.
30 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

Notes

1. François Molle et al., “River Basin Closure: Processes, Implications and Responses,” Agricultural Water Management 97, no. 4 

(2010): 569–77.

2. Upmanu Lall, Laureline Josset, and Tess Russo, “A Snapshot of the World’s Groundwater Challenges,” Annual Review of 

Environment and Resources 45 (2020): 1–24.

3. Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, “Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity,” Science Advances 2, no. 2 

(2016). Net withdrawals are defined as water removed from the system and not returned to it because the water was consumed, 

incorporated into a plant or product, or evaporated.

4. UN Water, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-Based Solutions for Water (Paris: UNESCO, 2018), 15.

5. Peter Burek et al., “Water Futures and Solution: Fast Track Initiative—Final Report,” Working Paper WP-16-006, International 

Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, May 2016, 58, http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/13008. Increase compared to 2010 levels. 

See also OECD, Environmental Outlook to 2050 (Paris: OECD, 2012): 216.

6. Hugh Turral, Jacob Burke, and Jean-Marc Faurès, Climate Change, Water and Food Security (Rome: Food and Agricultural 

Organization [FAO], 2011), xviii.

7. UN Water, World Water Development Report 2020: Water and Climate Change (Paris: UNESCO, 2020).

8 C. Adam Schlosser et al., “The Future of Global Water Stress: An Integrated Assessment,” Earth’s Future 2 (2014): 341.

9. UN Water, World Water Development Report 2016: Water and Jobs (Paris: UNESCO, 2016), 37.

10. Annette Prüss-Üstün, Robert Bos, Fiona Gore, and Jamie Bartram, Safer Water, Better Health: Costs, Benefits and Sustainability 

of Interventions to Protect and Promote Health (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2008): 10.

11. World Bank, “High and Dry: Climate Change, Water and the Economy,” World Bank, 2016, 13, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water

/publication/high-and-dry-climate-change-water-and-the-economy.

12. World Economic Forum (WEF), The Global Risks Report 2020 (Geneva: WEF, 2020); National Intelligence Council, “Global Water 

Security: Intelligence Community Assessment,” ICA 2012-08, February 2012, www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Press

%20Releases/ICA_Global%20Water%20Security.pdf; UN Security Council, “Maintenance of International Peace and Security: 

Water, Peace and Security,” S/Pv.7818, November 22, 2016, www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C

-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/spv_7818.pdf; and Council of the European Union (CEU), “Council Conclusions on Water Diplomacy 

(Annex),” 13991/18, November 19, 2018, www.consilium.europa.eu/media/37022/st13991-en18.pdf.

13. Lucia De Stefano, Paris Edwards, Lynette de Silva, and Aaron T. Wolf, “Tracking Cooperation and Conflict in International Basins: 

Historic and Recent Trends,” Water Policy 12, no. 6 (2010): 871–84.

14. Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Thomas E. Sowers II, “Conflict Management of Riparian Disputes, Political 

Geography 25, no. 4 (2006): 383–411; and Marit Brochmann and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Shared Rivers and Conflict—A 

Reconsideration,” Political Geography 31, no. 8 (2012): 519–527.

15. Tobias Ide, “Why Do Conflicts over Scarce Renewable Resources Turn Violent? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis,” Global 

Environmental Change 33 (2015): 61–70; and United Nations/World Bank, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to 

Preventing Violent Conflict (Washington: World Bank, 2018).

16. Nils Gleditsch, Erik Melander, and Henrik Urdal, “Introduction: Patterns of Armed Conflict since 1945,” in What Do We Know 

About Civil War? ed. T. David Mason and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016): 15–32.

17. Kendra Saraguchi, Anil Varughese, and Graeme Auld, “Climate Wars? A Systematic Review of Empirical Analyses on the Links 

between Climate Change and Violent Conflict,” International Studies Review 19, no. 4 (2017): 622–45; and Vally Koubi, “Climate 

Change and Conflict,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 343–60.

18. Theodore-Ismene Gizelis and Amanda E. Wooden, “Water Resources, Institutions, & Intrastate Conflict,” Political Geography 29, no. 8 

(2010): 444–53; Jaroslav Tir and Douglas M. Stinnett, “Weathering Climate Change: Can Institutions Mitigate International Water Conflicts?” 

Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 519–27; Adrien Detges, “Local Conditions of Drought-Related Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa: 

The Role of Road and Water Infrastructures,” Journal of Peace Research 53, no. 5 (2016): 696–710; and Mariaflavia Harari and Eliana La 

Ferrara, “Conflict, Climate and Cells: A Disaggregated Analysis,” Review of Economics and Statistics 100, no. 4 (2018): 594–608.
USIP.ORG 31

19. Claudia W. Sadoff et al., Securing Water, Sustaining Growth: Report of the GWP/OECD Task Force on Water Security and 

Sustainable Growth (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2015).

20. Katharine J. Mach et al., “Climate as a Risk Factor for Armed Conflict,” Nature 571 (2019): 193–97.

21. United Nations/World Bank, Pathways for Peace.

22. Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936).

23. USAID, “Water and Conflict: A Toolkit for Programming,” 2014, www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/WaterConflictToolkit.pdf.

24. Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos and Joan Martinez-Alier, “Political Ecology of Water Conflicts,” WIREs Water 2, no. 5 (2015): 537–58.

25. Peter Gleick and Charles Iceland, “Water, Security, and Conflict,” World Resources Institute, August 2018, www.wri.org/publication

/water-security-and-conflict.

26. Sophie de Bruin et al., “Linking Water Security Threats to Conflict: An Exploration of Pathways,” Netherlands Environmental 

Assessment Agency, 2018, www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/3039_Linking_water_security_threats_to_conflict_DEF.pdf.

27. Erika Weinthal, Jessica Troell, and Mikiyasu Nakayama, eds., Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (New York: Earthscan, 

2013); Tobias Ide and Adrien Detges, “International Water Cooperation and Environmental Peacemaking,” Global Environmental 

Politics 18, no. 4 (2018): 63–84; and Maria Vink, “The Role of Water Diplomacy in Peacebuilding,” in Handbook of Environmental 

Conflict and Peacebuilding, ed. Ashok Swain and Joakim Öjendal (New York: Routledge, 2018), 283–94.

28. UN Water, “Water Security and the Global Water Agenda,” October 2013 (revised version), 1, www.unwater.org/publications/water

-security-global-water-agenda.

29. Carl-Friedrich Schleussner et al., “Armed-Conflict Risks Enhanced by Climate-related Disasters in Ethnically Fractionalized 

Countries,” PNAS 113, no. 33 (2016): 9216–21.

30. Jim Best, “Anthropogenic Stresses on the World’s Big Rivers,” Nature Geoscience 12, no. 1 (2019): 7–21.

31. Marcus W. Beck et al., “Environmental and Livelihood Impacts of Dams: Common Lessons Across Development Gradients that 

Challenge Sustainability,” International Journal of River Basin Management 10, no. 1 (2012): 73–92; and Andrew Dillon and Ram 

Fishman, “Dams: Effects of Hydrological Infrastructure on Development,” Annual Review of Resource Economics 11 (2019): 125–48.

32. Lyla Mehta, Gert Jan Veldwisch, and Jennifer Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing? Focus on the (Re)

appropriation of Finite Water Resources,” Water Alternatives 5, no. 2 (2012): 193–207.

33. Claudia W. Sadoff, Edoardo Borgomeo, and Dominick de Waal, “Turbulent Waters: Pursuing Water Security in Fragile Contexts,” 

World Bank, March 2017, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/26207.

34. James R. Lee and Kisei R. Tanaka, “Climate Change, Conflict, and Moving Borders,” International Journal of Climate Change: 

Impacts and Responses 8, no. 3 (2016): 29–44.

35. Sadoff, Borgomeo, and de Waal, “Turbulent Waters.”

36. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978): 167–214.

37. Aaron T. Wolf, “Shared Waters: Conflict and Cooperation,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32 (2007): 241–69; and 

T. I. E. Veldkamp et al., “Water Scarcity Hotspots Travel Downstream Due to Human Interventions in the 20th and 21st Century,” 

Nature Communications 8 (2017), www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15697.

38. National Intelligence Council, “Global Water Security.”

39. Feng Hu and Debra Tan, No Water, No Growth: Does Asia Have Enough Water to Develop? (Hong Kong: China Water Risk, 

September 2018): 12. Parts of this section also draw on Peter Engelke and David Michel, Ecology Meets Geopolitics: Water 

Security in Himalayan Asia (Washington: Atlantic Council, 2019), 77–80.

40. Stefan Siebert, Felix T. Portmann, and Petra Döll, “Global Patterns of Cropland Use Intensity,” Remote Sensing 2, no. 7 (2010): 1625–43; 

Stefan Siebert et al., “Update of the Digital Global Map of Irrigation Areas,” FAO, October 2013, www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/irrigation

map/gmia_v5_highres.pdf; and FAO, “Transboundary River Basin Overview—Indus,” 2011, 9, www.fao.org/3/CA2136EN/ca2136en.pdf.

41. Finance Division, Pakistan Economic Survey 2018–2019 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 2019), 11; Ministry of National Food 

Security and Research, Agricultural Statistics of Pakistan 2017–2018 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 2018).

42. Santosh K. Singh, “India: Grain and Feed Annual,” US Department of Agriculture, March 31, 2020, 8, 21, www.fas.usda.gov/data

/india-grain-and-feed-annual-4.

43. FAO, “Transboundary River Basin Overview.” India and Pakistan together account for 99 percent of all Indus water withdrawals.

44. Mekonnen and Hoekstra, “Four Billion People.”

45. René Reijer Wijngaard et al., “Climate Change vs. Socio-Economic Development: Understanding the Future South Asia Water 

Gap,” Hydrology and Earth Systems Sciences 22, no. 12 (2018): 6304.

46. Arthur F. Lutz et al., “Climate Change Impacts on the Upper Indus Hydrology: Sources, Shifts, and Extremes,” PLoS ONE 11, no. 11 

(2016): 1–33.
32 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

47. Christopher A. Scott et al., “Water in the Hindu Kush Himalaya,” in The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment: Mountains, Climate 

Change, Sustainability and People, ed. Philippus Wester et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2019).

48. William J. Young et al., Pakistan: Getting More from Water (Washington: World Bank, 2019): 46.

49. Wijngaard et al., “Climate Change”; and Yusuke Satoh et al., “Multi-Model and Multi-Scenario Assessment of Asian Water 

Futures: The Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) Initiative,” Earth’s Future 5, no. 7 (2017): 823–52.

50. Shabeh ul Hasson, Jürgen Böhner, and Farrukah Chistie, “Low Fidelity of CORDEX and Their Driving Experiments Indicates 

Future Climatic Uncertainty over Himalayan Watersheds of Indus Basin,” Climate Dynamics 52 (2019): 777–98.

51. Lutz et al., “Climate Change Impacts,” 26.

52. Winston Yu et al., The Indus Basin of Pakistan: The Impacts of Climate Risks on Water and Agriculture (Washington: World Bank, 

2013), 124–26.

53. Daniel Haines, Rivers Divided: Indus Basin Waters in the Making of India and Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

54. Rafay Alam et al., Re-Imagining the Indus (New Delhi/Lahore: Observer Research Foundation/Lahore University of Management 

Sciences, 2011): 6.

55. Mandakini D. Surie and Sagar Prasai, Strengthening Transparency and Access to Information on Transboundary Rivers in South 

Asia (New Delhi: Asia Foundation, March 2015).

56. Alam et al., Re-Imagining the Indus; Mary Miner et al., “Water Sharing between India and Pakistan: A Critical Evaluation of the 

Indus Water Treaty,” Water International 34, no. 2 (2009): 204–216; Uttam Sinha, Arvind Gupta, and Ashok Behuria, “Will the 

Indus Water Treaty Survive?” Strategic Analysis 36, no. 5 (2012): 735–52; Salman M. A. Salman and Kishor Uprety, Shared 

Watercourses and Water Security in South Asia: Challenges of Negotiating and Enforcing Treaties (Leiden, The Netherlands: 

Brill, 2018); and Dhanasree Jayaram, “India-Pakistan River Water Sharing: Prospects for Environmental Peacebuilding,” in Water 

Management in South Asia, ed. Sumana Bandyopadhyay et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020), 175–202.

57. Nathanial Gronewold, “Climate Change, Deforestation and Corruption Combine To Drown a Region,” E&E News, October 13, 2010, 

www.eenews.net/stories/1059940974; Pallava Bagla, “Along the Indus River, Saber Rattling over Water Security,” Science 328, no. 

5983 (2010): 1226–27; and “South Asia’s Water: Unquenchable Thirst,” The Economist, November 19, 2011, www.economist.com

/briefing/2011/11/19/unquenchable-thirst.

58. Asif Ali Zardari, “Partnering with Pakistan,” Washington Post, January 28, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content

/article/2009/01/27/AR2009012702675.html.

59. “Kayani Spells Out Threat Posed by Indian Doctrine,” Dawn, February 4, 2010, www.dawn.com/news/858309.

60. IDSA Task Force Report, Water Security for India: The External Dynamics (New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and 

Analyses, 2010); Brahma Chellaney, Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011); and 

“India Should End Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan: Yashwant Sinha,” Financial Express, September 27, 2016, www.financial

express.com/india-news/india-should-end-indus-waters-treaty-with-pakistan-yashwant-sinha/393781.

61. Navin Singh Khadka, “Are India and Pakistan Set for Water Wars?” BBC News, December 22, 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world

-asia-37521897; and Jeffrey Gettleman, “India Threatens a New Weapon Against Pakistan: Water,” New York Times, February 21, 

2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/world/asia/india-pakistan-water-kashmir.html.

62. “PM Modi Reviews Indus Water Treaty, Says ‘Blood and Water Can’t Flow Together,’” Times of India, September 26, 2016, https://timesof

india.indiatimes.com/india/PM-Modi-reviews-Indus-Water-Treaty-says-blood-and-water-cant-flow-together/articleshow/54526722.cms.

63. Nitin Pai, “Climate Change and National Security: Preparing India for New Conflict Scenarios,” Indian National Interest Policy 

Brief no. 1, Takshashila Institution, April 2008; and Mehda Bisht, Water Sector in Pakistan: Policy, Politics, Management (New 

Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 2013).

64. Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, Joint Doctrine Indian Armed Forces, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Ministry of Defence, April 2017).

65. Ashok Swain, “Water Insecurity in the Indus Basin: The Costs of Noncooperation,” in Imagining Industan: Overcoming Water 

Insecurity in the Indus Basin, ed. Zafar Adeel and Robert G. Wirsing (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2017), 38–47; 

and Daanish Mustafa et al., “Subnational Scale Water Conflict in Pakistan,” Peaceworks report no. 125, United States Institute of 

Peace, April 2017, www.usip.org/publications/2017/04/contested-waters-subnational-scale-water-conflict-pakistan.

66. Khalid Mustafa, “India out to Damage Pakistan’s Water Interests on Kabul River,” News International, June 5, 2016, www.thenews

.com.pk/print/125490-India-out-to-damage-Pakistans-water-interests-on-Kabul-river; Vincent Thomas, Mujib Ahmad Azizi, and 

Khalid Behzad, Developing Transboundary Water Resources: What Perspectives for Cooperation between Afghanistan, Iran 

and Pakistan? (Kabul: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, 2016).
USIP.ORG 33

67. Shahid Mehmood Akhtar and Javed Iqbal, “Assessment of Emerging Hydrological, Water Quality Issues and Policy Discussion 

on Water Sharing of Transboundary Kabul River,” Water Policy 19, no. 4 (2017): 650–72; Said Shakib Atef et al., “Water Conflict 

Management and Cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Journal of Hydrology 570 (2019): 875–92.

68. Srikanth Kondapalli, “The Indus Basin: The Potential for Basin-Wide Management Between China and Its Himalayan Neighbours 

India and Pakistan,” in Imagining Industan, ed. Adeel and Wirsing, 159–74.

69. Eugene Black, “The Indus: A Moral for Nations,” New York Times, December 11, 1960.

70. James Kraska, “Sharing Water, Preventing War—Hydrodiplomacy in South Asia,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 20, no. 3 (2019): 515–30.

71. Neda Zawahri and David Michel, “Assessing the Indus Waters Treaty from a Comparative Perspective,” Water International 43, 

no. 5 (2018): 696–712.

72. Indian Ministry of Water Resources, “National Water Policy (2012),” http://jalshakti-dowr.gov.in/sites/default/files/NWP2012Eng6495132651

_1.pdf; Pakistani Ministry of Water Resources, “National Water Policy, 2018,” http://mowr.gov.pk/index.php/national-water-policy-2018.

73. Alam et al., Re-Imagining; Gareth Price et al., Attitudes to Water in South Asia (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 

2014); J. Peter Burgess, Taylor Owen, and Uttam Kumar Sinha, “Human Securitization of Water? A Case Study of the Indus 

Waters Basin,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29, no. 2 (2016): 382–407; and Jessica M. Williams, “Stagnant Rivers: 

Transboundary Water Security in South and Southeast Asia,” Water 10, no. 12 (2018).

74. Jayaram, “India-Pakistan River Water Sharing”; Amit Ranjan, “Disputed Waters: India, Pakistan and the Transboundary 

Rivers,” Studies in Indian Politics 4, no. 2 (2016): 191–205; and Majed Akhter, “Adjudicating Infrastructure: Treaties, Territories, 

Hydropolitics,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 2, no. 4 (2019): 831–49.

75. Satoh et al., “Asian Water Futures”; Olli Varis, Matti Kummu, and Aura Salmivaara, “Ten Major Rivers in Monsoon Asia-Pacific: An 

Assessment of Vulnerability,” Applied Geography 32, no. 2 (2012): 441–54; and UNEP-DHI Partnership, Transboundary River 

Basins: Status and Trends, Vol. 3 (Nairobi: UN Environment Programme (UNEP), 2016).

76. Unless otherwise noted, data in this and the following section are drawn from FAO, “Profil de Pays—Mali,” 2015, www.fao.org/3/

ca0200fr/CA0200FR.pdf. 

77. Moussa Barry et al., Evaluation économique de la gestion environnementale au Mali: Coûts et bénéfices (Bamako: UNEP/UN 

Development Programme, 2009).

78. Water Footprint Network, “Country Water Footprint Profile: Mali,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, October 2016, 

www.waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mali_Water_Footprint_Profile_1.pdf.

79. Inger Andersen et al., The Niger River Basin: A Vision for Sustainable Management (Washington: World Bank, 2005): 27.

80. Christopher C. Funk, “A Climate Trend Analysis of Mali,” Famine Early Systems Network Fact Sheet 2012-3105, US Geological Survey, 

August 2012, https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/fs20123105; Aondover Tarhule et al., “Exploring Temporal Hydroclimatic Variability 

in Niger Basin (1901–2006) Using Observed Gridded Data,” International Journal of Climatology 35, no. 4 (2015): 520–39. Some of 

the change in river flow is likely due to factors such as land use change and water withdrawals, in addition to rainfall changes.

81. Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla et al., “Projected Increased Risk of Water Deficit over Major West African River Basins under Future 

Climates,” Climatic Change 151 (2018): 247–58; and Philip G. Oguntunde, Gunnar Lischeld, and Babatunde J. Abiodun, “Impacts 

of Climate Variability and Change on Drought Characteristics in the Niger River Basin, West Africa,” Stochastic Environmental 

Research and Risk Assessment 32 (2018): 1017–34.

82. Leif V. Brottem, “Environmental Change and Farmer-Herder Conflict in Agro-Pastoral West Africa,” Human Ecology 44 (2016): 547–63.

83. Robin-Edward Poulton and Ibrahim ag Youssouf, A Peace of Timbuktu: Democratic Governance, Development and African 

Peacemaking (New York: United Nations, 1998); and Baze Lecocq and Georg Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali and Niger,” in 

Secessionism in African Politics: Aspiration, Grievance, Performance, Disenchantment, ed. Lotje de Vries, Pierre Englebert, and 

Mareike Schomerus (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 23–57.

84. Alessandra Giannini et al., “Climate Risk and Food Security in Mali: A Historical Perspective on Adaptation,” Earth’s Future 5, no. 

2 (2017): 144–57.

85. Macartan Humphreys and Habaye Ag Mohamed, “Senegal and Mali,” in Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis, Vol. 1: Africa, 

ed. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (Washington: World Bank, 2005), 274; and Poulton and Youssouf, Peace of Timbuktu, 26, 29.

86. Tor A. Benjaminson, “Does Supply-Induced Scarcity Drive Violent Conflicts in the African Sahel? The Case of the Tuareg 

Rebellion in Northern Mali,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 6 (2008): 819–36.

87. Keijiro Otsuka and Frank Place, “Changes in Land Tenure and Agricultural Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa,” WIDER Working 

Paper no. 2014/051, UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research, February 2014, www.wider.unu.edu

/publication/changes-land-tenure-and-agricultural-intensification-sub-saharan-africa; and FAO AQUASTAT Main Database.

88. Edmond Bernus, “Le nomadisme pastoral en question,” Etudes Rurales 120 (1990): 47.
34 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

89. These government land tenure and agricultural policies also impacted other pastoralist peoples beyond the Tuareg, such as 

the Fulani. Mary Hobbs, “Mali Country Profile,” in Country Profiles of Land Tenure: Africa 1996, ed. John W. Bruce (Madison, 

WI: University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, December 1998), 88–94; and Muna A. Abdalla, “Understanding of the Natural 

Resource Conflict Dynamics: The Case of Tuareg in North Africa and the Sahel,” ISS Paper no. 194, Institute for Security Studies, 

August 2009, https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper194.pdf.

90. Poulton and Youssouf, Peace of Timbuktu; Humphreys and Mohamed, “Senegal and Mali”; and Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism.”

91. The text of the National Pact can be found in Annex 2 of Poulton and Youssouf, Peace of Timbuktu.

92. Poulton and Youssouf, Peace of Timbuktu; Humphreys and Mohamed, “Senegal and Mali”; and Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism.”

93. Oumar Ba, “Tuareg Nationalism and Cyclical Pattern of Rebellions: How the Past and Present Explain Each Other,” Sahel 

Research Group Working Paper no. 007, University of Florida, March 2014, https://sites.clas.ufl.edu/sahelresearch/files/Ba

_Tuareg-Nationalism_final.pdf; and Stephanie Pezard and Michael Shurkin, Achieving Peace in Northern Mali: Past Agreements, 

Local Conflicts, and the Prospects for a Durable Settlement (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2015).

94. Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism”; and Alexander Thurston and Andrew Lebovich, “A Handbook on Mali’s 2012-2013 

Crisis,” Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa Working Paper no. 13-001, Roberta Buffett Center for International and 

Comparative Studies, Northwestern University, September 2013.

95. Anca-Elena Ursu, “Under the Gun: Resource Conflicts and Embattled Traditional Authorities in Central Mali,” Clingendael 

Institute, July 2018, www.clingendael.org/pub/2018/under-the-gun; and Tor A. Benjaminson and Boubacar Ba, “Why Do 

Pastoralists in Mali Join Jihadist Groups? A Political Ecological Explanation,” Journal of Peasant Studies 46, no. 1 (2018): 1–20.

96. Marco d’Errico, Francesca Grazioli, and Aurélien Mellin, “The 2012 Crisis in Mali and Its Implications on Resilience and Food 

Security,” Agricultural Development Economics Working Paper 17-04, FAO, 2017, www.fao.org/3/a-i7560e.pdf.

97. “Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali Resulting from the Algiers Process,” preamble and section II.3, article 6, 2015, 

www.peaceagreements.org/viewmasterdocument/1365.

98. Julia Lendorfer and Johannes Hoogeveen, “Does the 2015 Peace Accord in Mali Reflect the Priorities of Households and Local 

Leaders?” Policy Research Working Paper 7749, World Bank, July 2016, https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-7749.

99. UN Security Council, “Situation in Mali: Report of the Secretary-General,” S/2020/223, March 20, 2020, www.undocs.org/en/S/2020/223.

100. International Hydropower Association (IHA), 2015 Hydropower Status Report (Sutton, UK: IHA, 2015): 69. By comparison, the 

Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower station, has 22.5 gigawatts of installed generation capacity.

101. Ronald Finlay, Cyn-Young Park and Jean-Pierre A. Verbiest, “Myanmar: Building Economic Foundations,” Asian Pacific Economic 

Literature 30, no. 1 (2016): 42–64.

102. International Finance Corporation (IFC), Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Myanmar Hydropower Sector: Final Report

(Washington: IFC, 2018): 22.

103. Kee-Yung Nam, Maria Rowena Cham, and Paulo Rodelio Halili, “Power Sector Development in Myanmar,” ADB Economics Working 

Paper Series no. 460, Asian Development Bank, October 2015, 8–10, www.adb.org/publications/power-sector-development-myanmar.

104. FAO, Country Profile—Myanmar, 2011, 4, www.fao.org/3/ca0401en/CA0401EN.pdf.

105. Aaron Soanes and Masato Abe, Myanmar Business Survey: Data Analysis and Policy Implications (Bangkok: United Nations/

Mekong Institute, 2015).

106. IFC, Final Report, 23.

107. Mirja Kattelus, Muhammad Mizanur Rahman, and Olli Varis, “Hydropower Development in Myanmar and Its Implications on 

Regional Energy Cooperation,” International Journal of Sustainable Society 7, no. 1 (2015): 42–66.

108. May Myat Moe Saw and Li Ji-Qing, “Review on Hydropower in Myanmar,” Applied Water Science 9 (2019).

109. Kevin M. Woods, “The Conflict Resource Economy and Pathways to Peace in Burma,” Peaceworks report no. 144, United States 

Institute of Peace, November 2018, www.usip.org/publications/2018/11/conflict-resource-economy-and-pathways-peace-burma.

110. Kim Joliffe, Ethnic Armed Conflict and Territorial Administration in Myanmar (Yangon: Asia Foundation, 2015).

111. Woods, “Conflict Resource Economy”; and IFC, “Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Hydropower Sector in Myanmar: 

Baseline Assessment Report: Peace and Conflict,” 2017, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/638931548869008202

/Baseline-Assessment-Report-Peace-and-Conflict.

112. Kattelus, Rahman, and Varis, “Hydropower Development,” 47.

113. IFC, “Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Hydropower Sector in Myanmar: Baseline Assessment Report: Introduction,” 2017, http://

documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/126001548867293771/Baseline-Assessment-Report-Introduction; and Burma Environmental Working 

Group (BEWG), Resource Federalism: A Roadmap for Decentralized Governance of Burma’s Natural Heritage (Yangon: BEWG, 2017).
USIP.ORG 35

114. David Dapice, “Hydropower in Myanmar: Moving Electricity Contracts from Colonial to Commercial,” Ash Center for Democratic 

Governance and Innovation, Harvard University, December 2015, https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/hydropower

-myanmar-moving-electricity-contracts-colonial-commercial.

115. Linda Taft and Mariele Evers, “A Review of Current and Possible Future Human-Water Dynamics in Myanmar’s River Basins,” 

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 20 (2016): 4913–28.

116. IFC, Final Report, 25.

117. Priscilla Clapp, “The Intersection of Investment and Conflict in Myanmar,” Special Report no.463, United States Institute of Peace, 

February 2020, www.usip.org/index.php/publications/2020/02/intersection-investment-and-conflict-myanmar.

118. E. Zerrouk, “Water Grabbing/Land Grabbing in Shared Water Basins: The Case of Salween River Hatgyi Dam,” Journal of Water 

Resources and Ocean Science 2, no. 5 (2013): 68–78.

119. Laur Kiik, “Nationalism and Anti-Ethno-Nationalist Politics: Why ‘Chinese Development’ Failed at Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam,” 

Eurasian Geography and Economics 57, no. 3 (2016): 374–402; Debby Sze Wan Chan, “Asymmetric Bargaining between 

Myanmar and China in the Myitsone Dam Controversy: Social Opposition Akin to David’s Stone Against Goliath,” Pacific Review

30, no. 5 (2017): 674–91 ; and German Institute of Global and International Studies, “Chronology of the Myitsone Dam at the 

Confluence of Rivers above Myitkyina,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 31, no. 1 (2012): 141–53.

120. Kiik, “Nationalism”; IFC, Peace and Conflict: 28-29; and Jonathan Watts, “Dozens Killed in Burma amid Clashes over Chinese 

Dams,” The Guardian, June 16, 2011, www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/16/china-burma-hydropower-clashes.

121. Kiik, “Nationalism”; and Julian Kirchherr, “Strategies of Successful Anti-Dam Movements: Evidence from Myanmar and Thailand,” 

Society & Natural Resources 31, no. 2 (2018): 166–82.

122. Kang Wan Chern and Thit My Moe, “Myanmar, China sign agreements on Kyaukphyu, no mention of Myitsone Dam project, 

peace talks,” Myanmar Times, January 20, 2020, www.mmtimes.com/news/myanmar-china-sign-agreements-kyaukphyu-no

-mention-myitsone-dam-project-peace-talks.html.

123. IFC, “Peace and Conflict”; and Diana Suhardiman, Jeff Rutherford and Saw John Bright, “Putting Violent Armed Conflict in the 

Center of the Salween Hydropower Debates,” Critical Asian Studies 49, no. 3 (2017): 349–64.

124. BEWG, Resource Federalism; and Global Witness, “Myanmar Peace Talks Must Address Natural Resource Management,” May 

23, 2017, www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/myanmar-peace-talks-must-address-natural-resource-management.

125. Woods, “Conflict Resource Economy”; IFC, “Peace and Conflict”; and Clapp, “Intersection of Investment.”

126. Asian Development Bank (ADB), Thinking about Water Differently: Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus (Mandaluyong City, 

Philippines: ADB, 2013); and Paolo d’Odorico et al., “The Global Food-Energy-Water Nexus,” Reviews of Geophysics 56, no. 3 

(2018): 456–531.

127. Jess Schoeman, Catherine Allan, and C. Max Finlayson, “A New Paradigm for Water? A Comparative Review of Integrated, 

Adaptive and Ecosystem-Based Water Management in the Anthropocene,” International Journal of Water Resources 

Development 30, no. 3 (2014): 377–90; and David Benson et al., “Water Governance in Comparative Perspective: From IWRM to 

a ‘Nexus’ Approach,” Water Alternatives 8, no. 1 (2015): 756–73.

128. World Water Assessment Programme, The United Nations World Water Assessment Report 4: Managing Water under 

Uncertainty and Risk (Paris: UNESCO, 2012); and OECD, Principles on Water Governance (Paris: OECD, 2015).

129. United Nations, “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” 2015, https://sustainabledevelopment

.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld.

130. Kate Molnar et al., “Preventing Conflicts, Fostering Cooperation—The Many Roles of Water Diplomacy,” International Centre for 

Water Resources and Global Change, December 2017, 33–7, www.waterandchange.org/en/preventing-conflicts-fostering

-cooperation-water-diplomacy-2017; and Martina Klimes et al., “Water Diplomacy: The Intersect of Science, Policy and Practice,” 

Journal of Hydrology 575 (2019): 1362–70.

131. Karen Bakker and Cynthia Morinville, “The Governance Dimensions of Water Security: A Review,” Philosophical Transactions 

of the Royal Society A 371, no. 2002 (2013); and Jeremy Allouche, Carl Middleton, and Dipak Gyawali, “Technical Veil, Hidden 

Politics: Interrogating the Power Linkages behind the Nexus,” Water Alternatives 8, no. 1 (2015): 610–26.

132. Allen V. Kneese, “The ‘Problem Shed’ as a Unit for Environmental Control,” Archives of Environmental Health 16, no. 1 (1968): 124–27.

133. Nina Weitz et al. “Closing the Governance Gaps in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Insights from Integrative Governance,” Global 

Environmental Politics 45 (2017): 165–73; Charlotte Grech-Madin et al., “Negotiating Water across Levels: A Peace and Conflict 

‘Toolbox’ for Water Diplomacy,” Journal of Hydrology 559 (2018): 100–9; and Gloria Salmoral et al., “Water Diplomacy and Nexus 

Governance in a Transboundary Context: In the Search for Complementarities,” Science of the Total Environment 690 (2019): 85–96.
36 PEACEWORKS | NO. 164

134. Melissa McCracken and Aaron T. Wolf, “Updating the Register of International River Basins of the World,” International Journal of 

Water Resources Development 35, no. 5 (2019): 732–82.

135. Mark Giordano et al., “A Review of the Evolution and State of Transboundary Freshwater Treaties,” International Environmental 

Agreements 14 (2014): 245–64; and UN Water, “Progress on Transboundary Water Cooperation,” 2018, www.unwater.org/publications

/progress-on-transboundary-water-cooperation-652.

136. Mark Zeitoun and Jeroen Warner, “Hydro-Hegemony—A Framework for Analysis of Trans-Boundary Water Conflicts,” Water 

Policy 8, no. 5 (2006): 435–60.

137. UN Water, “Progress on Integrated Water Resources Management,” 2018, www.unwater.org/publications/progress-on-integrated

-water-resources-management-651.

138. UNEP-DHI Partnership, Transboundary River Basins.

139. Klimes et al., “Water Diplomacy”; and Benjamin Pohl et al., “The Rise of Hydro-Diplomacy: Strengthening Foreign Policy for 

Transboundary Waters,” adelphi/German Federal Foreign Office, 2014, www.adelphi.de/en/publication/rise-hydro-diplomacy.

140. The analytical framework described by the context/action arena schema was first formulated by Elinor Ostrom. See Elinor Ostrom, 

Understanding Institutional Diversity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Blake D. Ratner et al., “Addressing Conflict 

through Collective Action in Natural Resource Management,” International Journal of the Commons 11, no. 2 (2017): 877–906.

141. Susanne Schmeier and Zaki Shubber, “Anchoring Water Diplomacy—The Legal Nature of International River Basin 

Organizations,” Journal of Hydrology 567 (2018): 114–20.

142. See, for example, African Ministers’ Council on Water, “Strategy 2018-2030, April 2018, www.amcow-online.org/images/docs

/amcow_strategy_2018_2030_final_signed_en.pdf; and UN Economic Commission for Europe, “Draft Strategy for the 

Implementation of the Convention at the Global Level,” ECE/MP.WAT/2018/6, July 30, 2018, www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env

/documents/2018/WAT/10Oct_10-12_8thMOP/Official_docs/ECE_MP.WAT_2018_6_ENG.pdf.

143. Pohl et al., “Rise of Hydro-Diplomacy”; and Patrick Huntjens et al., The Multi-Track Water Diplomacy Framework: A Legal and 

Political Economy Analysis for Advancing Cooperation over Shared Waters (The Hague: Hague Institute for Global Justice, 2016). 

Of course, third-party diplomacy can, intentionally or inadvertently, also pursue self-serving agendas and partisan interventions.

144. This list draws in part on Lawrence E. Susskind et al., “Multistakeholder Dialogue at Global Scale,” International Negotiation 8 

(2003): 235–66; Peter Jones, Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015); Oli 

Brown and Michael Keating, “Addressing Natural Resource Conflicts: Working Towards More Effective Resolution of National and 

Sub-National Disputes” (London: Chatham House, 2015); and analyses and reports produced by third-party initiatives.

145. Brown and Keating, “Addressing Natural Resource Conflicts”; and Pohl et al., “Rise of Hydro-Diplomacy.”

146. Carl Bruch, David Jensen, Mikiyasu Nakayama, and Jon Unruh, “The Changing Nature of Conflict, Peacebuilding, and 

Environmental Cooperation,” Environmental Law Reporter 49, no. 2 (2019): 10134–54.

147. R. M. Colvin, G. Bradd Witt, and Justine Lacey, “The Social Identity Approach to Understanding Socio-Political Conflict in 

Environmental and Natural Resources Management,” Global Environmental Change 34 (2015): 237–46.

148. Sadoff et al., Securing Water, Sustaining Growth; Claudia Pahl-Wostl et al., “From Applying Panaceas to Mastering Complexity: 

Toward Adaptive Water Governance in River Basins,” Environmental Science & Policy 23 (2012): 24–34; and Diana Suhardiman, Alan 

Nicol, and Everisto Mapedza eds., Water Governance and Collective Action: Multi-Scale Challenges (New York: Routledge, 2017).
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Making Peace Possible

NO. 164 | August 2020

Growing populations and economies, unsustainable management practices, and mounting 

environmental pressures are exerting increasing strains on the world’s vital freshwater resources. Resulting shortfalls between rising demands and shifting supplies could engender or exacerbate water conflicts among countries or communities attempting to ensure their share. This 

report describes how water diplomacy—the formal and informal engagements undertaken by 

state and nonstate actors not party to the water conflict—can constructively shape the context 

and collective decision-making frameworks for collaborative water resources management. By 

working to enhance the conflict parties’ water governance resources and capacities, promote 

cooperative decision-making processes and inclusive policy institutions, and facilitate peaceful 

dispute resolution, water diplomacy can contribute to building the environmental and societal 

resilience to sustainably manage future water resource challenges.

• Preparing the Global Counterterrorism Forum for the Next Decade by Eric 

Rosand (Special Report, August 2020)

• Disengagement and Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Settings by Leanne 

Erdberg Steadman (Special Report, August 2020)

• Toward a Kashmir Endgame? How India and Pakistan Could Negotiate a 

Lasting Solution by Happymon Jacob (Special Report, August 2020)

• India’s Kashmir Conundrum: Before and After the Abrogation of Article 370 by 

Sameer P. Lalwani and Gillian Gayner (Special Report, August 2020)

• Measuring Collective Impact: Creating a Framework for Assessing Multiple 

Peacebuilding Projects in Colombia by Diego Benitez (Special Report, July 2020)

OTHER USIP PUBLICATIONS