Resource frontiers: managing water on a trans-border Asian river

Recent years have seen increased global policy concern with the management and governance of fresh-water resources. Against this policy background, the social sciences are paying increasing attention to fresh water as a scarce global resource requiring careful management as it is essential for the maintenance and reproduction of life on earth.

The project aims to explore the politics of managing, and planning the management of, trans-border rivers on water resource frontiers. In such contexts the actions of ‘upstream’ riparian states affect those in ‘downstream’ ones, and so often have strategically, politically and economically significant consequences. In particular, it aims to understand how these politics of management work in contexts where multilateral legal agreements on trans-border river use are eschewed.