Hydro-Diplomacy in Practice: Applying Swedish Strategies to South Asia's Environmental Security Challenges

Abstract

In the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra–Meghna basins, climate change, population pressures, and geopolitical rivalries overlap, and South Asia is confronting an increasing water-related environmental security risk. Floods, droughts, and changing hydrological processes pose a threat to livelihoods, augment displacement, and create distrust among the riparian states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Traditional securitized models of water governance tend to build upon conflict instead of collaboration, which highlights the necessity of new models. The paper uses hydro-diplomacy as the policy and analysis tool that is focused on the importance of cooperative and science-driven negotiation rather than shared water resources and that water governance is connected to environmental and human security. It looks into the ways the Swedish experiences in domestic water governance, climate-water integration, and multilateral diplomacy can be transformed to suit the South Asian situation. The study based on the qualitative comparative case study and review of the policy documents compares the chosen Swedish practices with the systems of cooperation in the Indus and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins, outlines the points of convergence and divergence. The results indicate that despite the limitation of direct replication of the Swedish models in terms of power asymmetries, and securitized discourses, such important factors as the science-mediated conversation, co-located early-warning systems, and climate-sensitive institutional structures can be adjusted to the local conditions. The paper ends with some recommendations on how Sweden and Nordic actors, South Asian states, and regional institutions can collaboratively design a climate-resilient and equity-based hydro-diplomacy architecture in the region.