Seminar on Water Security and Cross-Border Cooperation in South Asia (May 20, 2025)

The Sundar Singh Institute held a high-powered academic seminar on Water Security and Cross Border Cooperation in South Asia on May 20, 2025. The seminar was a response to climate change, population pressures, and uneven developmental resources putting added stress on transboundary waterways across the region. The seminar was co-chaired by Prof. Helena von Strauss, a leading expert in the field of hydropolitics, and Dr. Ravi Iyer, a prominent scholar of environmental governance in South Asia.

The seminar sought to explore the intersection of legal constructs, hydropolitical conflict, and ecological responsibility within South Asia. Issues related to relative and future agreements for water sharing, downstream challenges when upstream problems are addressed without negotiation, and transcendental jurisdictional control over water resources based on scientific evidence and equitable treatment were explored.

In-person and remote participants from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan included both academic and field practitioners who championed topical discourse with case study evidence and theoretical justification for continued approaches to cooperation. The Asian Development Bank and the World Water Council sent representatives to provide keynote addresses emphasizing that trust between institutions/factions remains ever critical, as does appropriate watershed-based management and policy negotiations with all stakeholders.

Thus, this seminar was a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder effort that increased awareness of the need for water diplomacy as a mechanism for regional peace and sustainability.