Water governance throughout South Asia has long been dominated by technical perspectives from civil engineering, economics, and international law. Across the region, state actors, scientists, and technocrats have monopolized policy formulation and implementation providing limited space for the expression of legitimate civil society voices and stakeholder interests. In this largely state driven discourse, broader social and ecological perspectives have been underrepresented. Bringing the discourse on water use, sharing, and management closer to affected communities and stakeholders can help to reduce environmental degradation.
In May 2012, with support from the Skoll Global Threats Fund, The Asia Foundation in partnership with the LIFE and the BELA conducted a political economy analysis of the Teesta River Basin. Based on field work on either side of the India and Bangladesh border, the study examined the social, political and economic factors influencing basin governance, and mapped key stakeholders, their incentives, relative stakes, and capacity to influence water governance decisions in the basin.