Actors in water diplomacy: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Abstract

Water diplomacy, with its focus on preventing, mitigating, or resolving disputes over internationally shared water resources, has for a long time been shaped by and studied as state-to-state interactions, with international, regional, and, in particular, basin organizations as interstate platforms for states to address issues arising from the transboundary nature of many of the world’s water resources. It has, however, increasingly been acknowledged that nonstate actors also engage in or at least influence water diplomacy processes. However, the understanding of who these actors are, how exactly they engage in water diplomacy, and what effects these engagements have remains limited. This chapter sets out to identify the various actors-state, state-supported, or nonstate-that engage in and shape water diplomacy and also to understand their effects of actions on conflict and cooperation dynamics in shared basins.