Ecology Meets Geopolitics: Water Security in Himalayan Asia

Apr 4, 2019 | Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the US Water Partnership
Washington, D.C.
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Please join us on Thursday, April 4, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. for a discussion on water security challenges in Asia and their implications for the continent’s peace and security.

Hosted by the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the US Water Partnership, this event will feature keynote remarks by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and will coincide with the release of a new study, “Ecology Meets Geopolitics: Water Security in Himalayan Asia,” which is the culmination of nearly two years’ of intensive exploration and on-the-ground research in the region.

There are few regions in the world where water insecurity has as much consequence as it does in Himalayan Asia, a term delineating the vast swath of the continent dominated by Asia’s high mountain ranges and the rivers that flow from them. Himalayan Asia’s transboundary water dynamics threaten to erode interstate cooperation, including among the continent’s major powers, risk worsening geopolitical competition, and heighten the odds of domestic and interstate conflict.

Yet there are viable pathways for avoiding such an outcome, the most important of which treat water as a shared resource to be managed cooperatively. Without such leadership and engagement, there is significant risk of water insecurity becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy, wherein states securitize water and therefore define it in zero-sum geopolitical terms. That scenario has few, if any, positive outcomes.

For more information and to register, please visit https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/events/upcoming-events/registration/a080H00002bKukFQAS

Where: Washington, D.C.

When: 4 April 2019

Organizers: Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the US Water Partnership