Over the past decade in the Asian Highlands the pace and magnitude of environmental and social change have been accelerating due to global warming and increasing rates of socio-economic transformation. The effects of change in the Asian Highlands are deepened by the vulnerability of many inhabitants. These factors impact on water governance in the Asian Highlands which is also constrained by gaps between scientific information and policy making. We sought answers to water governance questions at three scales-international regional and local. From exploring the published literature we found clear international consensus on best practices for better water governance but discovered that few such policies have been adopted in the Asian Highlands. The three countries in our study (China Nepal and Pakistan) all have strong water laws and strategies on paper but a mix of political institutional and capacity barriers often prevents effective implementation.At the regional level from published documents and field work we found striking similarities in both barriers against-and bridges toward-effective water governance. Locally at our village study sites using household surveys focus groups key informant interviews a water use master planning process with stakeholder dialogues and a variety of risk and vulnerability analyses we discovered that while climate and socioeconomic changes are often rapid governance responses to change have so far been slow. Our research shows that piloting solutions for more effective water governance in the Asian Highlands is more likely to yield success through acknowledging upstream-downstream linkages that create local win-win relationships while building adaptations from the bottom up making use of local hybrid knowledge and science. Given that all Asian Highlands’ rivers flow across international borders the ultimate scaling up issue involves moving water governance from local district and regional levels to transboundary water governance for environmental security.
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5716/WP15013.PDFAltmetric score:
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Publication year
2015
Authors
Grumbine, R.E.; Nizami, A.; Tharu, B.R.; Niraula, R.R.; Su, Y.; Xu, J.C.
Keywords
Climate change, Water resources, Livelihoods
