Books Chapters

The chapter presents a historical perspective of India’s transboundary relationships to engage with water disputes and environmental risks. This offers a nuanced understanding of India’s engagement with the narratives about its role as a hydrohegemon and its preference for bilateralism. Additionally, despite the uneven responses to the UN Watercourses Convention, 1997, the evolving water disputes case law shows an encouraging trend of accommodating for climate change and other environmental risks. Building on these strands and the emerging context of transboundary environmental risks surrounding India, the chapter posits that India’s development interests and the collective concerns of transboundary environmental risks in South Asia align. This allows for building a case for an incremental evolution of regional institutional architecture, beginning with a pursuit of disaster resilience in South Asia. The new rationalities of transboundary environmental risks may be the basis for addressing the structural deficiencies and rebuilding the existing dormant regional institutions.