Projects > River Basin Development

River Basin Development: A Negotiated Approach

The overall purpose of this project is to document alternative strategies for effective river basin management, based on grassroots initiatives that have scaled up their activity from the local to the wider river basin context through key negotiation processes. The project involves cases in seven locations, two of which are being documented by AMRC. Coordinated by the NGOs Both Ends (Netherlands) and Gomukh (India), the project also includes partners in South Africa (AWARD), India (Gomukh), Bangladesh (CEGIS), Bolivia (Centro Agua) and Peru (AEGIS).

For its contribution to this initiative, AMRC is working with partners in Cambodia (Se San Project) and Thailand (Nan Civil Society Coordination Centre) to document the upscaling of grassroots concerns in river basin management. In Cambodia, the key context is the strategic way in which isolated indigenous communities are networking, researching and documenting effects on their livelihoods from the Yali Falls Dam, as part of a protracted negotiation process to establish a river flows regime that more closely matches that which has been affected by the dam, with devastating impacts on their livelihoods. In Thailand, the context is a combination of proposals for large scale river diversion, notably the Kok-Ing-Nan scheme, and the establishment of river basin committees, which worry local groups in the sense that they are not based on existing management and negotiation arrangements and may disenfranchise local communities form managing their own water and rivers.

Duration: 2002 - 2004

Partners:
Both ENDS (Netherlands)
Centro Agua, Bolivia
Save the Sand, South Africa
CEGIS, Bangladesh
AEGIS, Peru
AMRC, Australia
Gomukh, India

Funding bodies: DGIS/Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

© 2005 Australian Mekong Resource Centre