Kathmandu, March 27

Civil Society Organisations in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basins have decided to form a regional networking and an experience-sharing platform for CSOs as soon as possible.

The first Regional Consultation Workshop on a CSO Vision for Cooperative Trans-boundary Water Resource Management in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna River Basins was organised in Kathmandu last week to draft the regional platform.

Participants from the premises of three trans-boundary rivers from five countries Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China had agreed to form regional platform for sharing common issues as well as working on future plans and programmes.

One of the participants in workshop and Natural Resource Management Specialist of International Union for Conservation of Nature, Deep Narayan Shah said the draft of the regional platform establishment will be finalised in the next workshop that may most probably be organised in Kolkata of India in June this year.

Beside the formation of regional platform, objectives of the workshop were to review institutional aspects linked to shared water governance and to gain practical understanding of the use of principle in negotiations on shared water governance.

The workshop also aimed to discuss and agree on the framework, strategy and elements for inclusion in the GBM CSO vision, identify and incorporate the elements or experiences from the CSO projects being implemented in the GBM basins

The BRIDGE GBM is a project funded by The Asia Foundation and facilitated by IUCN. The main goal of the project is to strengthen civil society engagement in water resource management and trans-boundary cooperation in the GBM basins.

In order to achieve this goal, the project is facilitating capacity building and dialogue events leading to the development of a regional CSO vision on inclusive water governance in the GBM and a roadmap for sustainable trans-boundary inland navigation and fisheries management.

IUCN said that in developing the regional CSO vision, the project has collaborated with a group of more than 20 CSOs and key civil society representatives from the five GBM countries to participate in the dialogue process in a structured manner.

The regional CSO vision will provide recommendations on how to address the governance of water management and make it more inclusive. It will also be used as a tool to initiate dialogue with policy makers.