This new IWRA webinar will focus on how power impacts water conflict. Increasingly, scholarship is discovering how power shapes the interplay between the actors, and frames conflicts, as well as achieves or hinders positive cooperation. The panellists will explore the role of power and influence on actors in transboundary water diplomacy.

This webinar is based on Water International’s Special Issue on “Power in Water Diplomacy”, and will present the nuances of how power in water diplomacy plays an important role in shaping negotiations and interactions, exploring both covert and overt interactions in transboundary waters. Presentations will explore themes such as how ideational and material power lead to the status quo in water diplomacy, the role non-diplomats can play in altering the power relations in water discussions, the impact of scale on water negotiations and how to locate power in water diplomacy.

Topics

• An analysis for water conflict transformation
• Power interplay between Bangladesh and India over the Brahmaputra River
• Transboundary water diplomacy among small states: a giant dilemma for Central American regionalism

Distinguished Panellists

• Anamika Barua, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati, India
• Carmen Maganda Ramírez, Instituto de Ecología – INECOL, Mexico
• Sumit Vij, Public Administration and Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
• Jeroen Warner, Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
• Mark Zeitoun, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK

Presented by: Scott McKenzie, PhD Candidate, University of British Columbia