Sectors and Scales in Transboundary Water Governance: A Case Study of the Mekong Region

Freshwater resources are subject to conflictive views about appropriate ways of organizing ownership, access, and allocation. Where these views concern the management of a transboundary river, they are embedded in multiple and overlapping governance regimes that involve a diverse range of stakeholders with conflicting interests, including state and private, as well as local, national, regional and global actors. This gives rise to complex power dynamics over the control of water. These power dynamics are constantly changing, cutting across scales to shape and re-shape river governance.

This contribution explores these dynamics drawing on notions of scale, nested governance, and water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. The Mekong region functions as a case study. The Mekong region is an area of multiple governance arrangements based on a diversity of interests within and beyond the river basin and the wider region. By applying a scalar view of transboundary river governance, the argument pursued here is that transboundary river governance is characterized by networks rather than hierarchies and a permeability of domestic and international policy arenas. Drawing on recent literature that critically addresses the meaning of the term transboundary (Hirsch 2020; Albrecht and Gerlak 2022), I propose an expanded notion of the WEF nexus that considers not only regional dynamics but also takes into account the ways in which a region is connected with extra-regional interests such as investment flows and great power rivalries.