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WATER DIPLOMACYImage: K G HortleA Mekong river fisherman at sunset in Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republicfor economic disaster. This has contributed to greatly elevating theissues in the minds of regional and international policymakers.Transboundary diplomacy is required and deliberation – debateand discussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opinions– has been in short supply, despite decades of ‘cooperation’.Deliberation is an important process because it requires supportersof policies and projects to articulate their reasoning and identifywhich interests they serve or risks they create.Decision support tools that support deliberation are increasinglybeing used to inform Mekong water-related diplomacy. These tools,used effectively, assist the exploration of options, examination oftechnical outputs and contestation of discourses. Tools that shouldbe explicitly rooted in deliberation include multi-stakeholder platforms(MSPs), environmental flows (e-flows) and scenario-building.MSPs can help routinize deliberation, enabling complex water issuesto be more rigorously examined in better informed negotiations. Thisis not to say that MSPs are a panacea. For example, we have observedthat MSPs can be captured by players who are able to frame and controlthe debate and keep it confined within the limits of their choice. Wehave also seen MSPs permitted to engage many stakeholders in goodfaith, only to be ignored in subsequent decision-making. Despite thesecaveats, we have found that networks and organizations with flexibleand diverse links with governments, firms and civil society have beenuseful to convene and facilitate dialogues on sensitive but importanttopics for development in the Mekong region. The outcomes of theseare not primarily in terms of direct decisions on projects, policies orinstitutional reform; but rather in making sure alternatives are consideredand assessed, a diversity of views and arguments recognized, andmutual understanding improved.E-flow-setting requires the integration of a range of disciplinesfrom across the social, political and natural sciences. Above all, itrequires processes of cooperative negotiation betweenvarious stakeholders that help bridge their different andoften competing interests over water. Hence, e-flows arewell-suited to MSP approaches. There have been fewapplications of e-flows in the Mekong region, but somewith which the authors are very familiar include rapide-flows assessments of the Huong River in Viet Namand Songkhram River in Thailand, and an integratedbasin flow management project of the Lower MekongRiver. E-flow processes have substantial potential in theMekong region to assist river basin managers as theygrapple with competing demands, including the need forenvironmental sustainability. At present, however, thetool has only been used in academic or technical settingsand has not yet been internalized into influential decision-makingarenas.Deploying scenarios can enhance MSPs, e-flows andother deliberative forums. Scenarios should improveunderstanding of uncertainties, not hide them. The goal offormal scenario analysis is to generate contrasting storiesof what the future of a geographical area, policy sectoror organization might look like, depending on plausiblecombinations of known, but uncertain, social and environmentalforces. The analyst and others participating inthe process should gain insight into the contrast betweenalternative stories. Good scenarios are rigorous, self-reflexivenarratives: they attempt to be internally coherent, toincorporate uncertainties and to be explicit about assumptionsand causality.We observe that core decision-making processesabout water in the Mekong region are still often opaque[ 33 ]