Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) - Rivers Rights Resilience

The Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) river system is the lifeline of South Asia, sustaining the livelihoods of over 800 million people across Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Bangladesh. These rivers are not just sources of water—they shape cultures, support economies, and define the identities of communities living along their banks. For centuries, riverine communities have relied on these waters for agriculture, fisheries, trade, and transport, weaving their traditions and spiritual beliefs into the natural rhythm of the rivers.

However, these lifelines are under severe threat. Climate change, unsustainable development, and weak governance have disrupted the delicate balance between people and rivers. Erratic monsoon patterns, prolonged droughts, and intensified floods have made water access unpredictable, while unchecked riverbank erosion displaces thousands of families every year. Women, Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale fishers—who have historically played key roles in managing and protecting these water systems—are often the most vulnerable, yet their voices are seldom included in decision-making.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, protecting these rivers requires regional cooperation, inclusive governance, and the leadership of local communities. By strengthening collective action and knowledge-sharing, we can ensure that the GBM rivers continue to support life for generations to come.

The Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) program, launched in 2017, has focused on transforming water governance across the GBM basin. Over five years, it facilitated cross-border dialogues, strengthened community leadership, and promoted sustainable water management at multiple levels across Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. In its second phase, TROSA focused its activities in Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.

In Phase I, TROSA helped communities secure fairer access to water resources by organizing local river dialogues (nadi baithaks/nodi boithoks), where fishers, farmers, and women's groups could meaningfully engage with decision-makers. It also played a critical role in establishing early warning systems, reducing the loss of life and property during seasonal floods. In Bangladesh and India, TROSA supported the adoption of nature-based solutions (NbS) such as bandalling, a traditional bamboo structure that reduces erosion and improves fish breeding. In Nepal, TROSA secured a joint commitment called The Dhangadi Declaration—an instrumental six-point commitment among the local government, CSOs, the private sector, and riverine communities to collaboratively address the issues facing the Mahakali River. The establishment of Women Empowerment Centers (WECs) has capacitated and empowered local community women to take leadership roles and contribute meaningfully to policymaking processes.

Building on these successes, the second phase of TROSA, also called T2:3R, Rivers, Rights, and Resilience (2023–2026), deepened its commitment to strengthening climate resilience and ensuring inclusive governance. This phase scaled up previous initiatives while addressing emerging challenges such as climate-driven displacement, transboundary cooperation, and access to climate finance for vulnerable communities. By expanding partnerships and amplifying local voices, TROSA T2:3R created lasting, systemic change in river governance across South Asia. In 2026, after ten years of work, TROSA formally concluded, with partners across the region marking the milestone together before the program came to a close.

TROSA T2:3R focused on four key areas: climate-resilient livelihoods, ecosystem protection, community empowerment, and regional cooperation.

To strengthen climate resilience, the program supported sustainable aquaculture, alternative livelihoods, and climate-smart agriculture. In Nepal’s Mahakali basin, small-scale farmers adopted drought-resistant crops and water-efficient irrigation to safeguard food security.

For ecosystem protection, it promoted community-led conservation and river health monitoring. In Bangladesh’s Kurigram district, fishers tracked species migration and collaborated with policymakers on sustainable fishing policies.

Community leadership is central, with women, Indigenous groups, and youth trained in water governance and advocacy. In Assam, women’s networks have already secured government funding for flood protection projects and continued lobbying for improved water access.

To enhance regional cooperation, the program facilitated cross-border agreements on water-sharing and flood management, particularly between India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Partnering with research institutions and civil society, it established real-time water data sharing to improve disaster preparedness and reduce conflicts.

In 2026, after ten years of work across the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin, TROSA came to a close. Partners from across Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Bhutan gathered to celebrate the programme’s tenth anniversary and reflect on a decade of community-led change in transboundary water governance. Ten highlights from that decade:

1. Women emerged as leaders in water governance. Women leaders secured local government support through gender-responsive budgets for water management and strengthened their leadership through learning exchanges.

2. Livelihoods are better adapted to climate change. Supported by local governments, communities secured improved water access, livelihood diversification, flood early warning systems, and erosion risk reduction — benefiting 75,000 people.

3. Community-led early warning systems prepared households for natural disasters. A community-built early warning system protects 15,000 households from floods, combining sirens, WhatsApp alerts, phone calls, and direct communication between upstream and downstream communities.

4. Local communities stepped up to protect their water bodies. More than 260 km of rivers, wetlands, and haors are better protected through community-led action addressing erosion, ecosystem degradation, irrigation channel maintenance, and sand mining guidelines across Nepal, Bangladesh, and India.

5. Communities led with evidence. Community members trained as citizen scientists generated water quality data and led Hilsa Watch initiatives, informing river health reports and strengthening advocacy against pollution and for fairer access to entitlements.

6. Fisherfolk rights were strengthened. Grassroots advocacy helped fisherwomen in Bangladesh secure rights and entitlements, including fisherfolk identity cards, fair entitlement, social security, and protection against confiscation of fishing gear.

7. Cross-border dialogues and knowledge exchange strengthened water governance. Platforms including the Mahakali-Sharda Samvad, the Yarlung Zangbo–Brahmaputra–Jamuna Basin Network, the Regional Youth Forum, the Rivers Rights Resilience Forum, and the Meghna Knowledge Forum supported knowledge-sharing for inclusive, transboundary water governance, alongside multistakeholder dialogues and Traders’ Meets that built inclusive cross-border trade via inland waterways between India and Bangladesh.

8. Youth led change in water governance. 55+ youth-led initiatives strengthened community action on water governance, from water quality monitoring and empowering fishing communities to documenting women leaders, reducing river pollution, conserving wetlands, and advancing climate action through platforms like Youth for Meghna.

9. Indigenous technologies reduced flood risks. Twenty-seven bandals, an indigenous river management technology, were installed to reduce flood and erosion risk — working with the natural ecology of rivers rather than hard engineering to protect homes, schools, and community infrastructure.

10. Local institutions were strengthened. Through platforms such as Nodi Baithak (River Meetings), Women Economic Empowerment Committees (WEECs), and Gram Panchayat Development Committees (GPDCs), local institutions mobilised over USD 1 million to advance water governance, climate action, natural resource management, and disaster risk management.

TROSA 2 is built on a strong network of regional and national partners, bringing together organizations with expertise in research, policy advocacy, and community engagement. These partnerships ensure that TROSA’s work is informed by scientific research, traditional knowledge, and local realities.

At the regional level, TROSA collaborates with leading international institutions such as IUCN, ADPC, CUTS, ICIMOD, IWMI, and SEI which provide technical expertise on climate adaptation and transboundary water management. These organizations play a key role in developing policy recommendations and research-driven solutions that influence national and regional water governance frameworks.

At the national level, TROSA partners with leading organizations in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal that work directly with riverine communities. In Bangladesh, RDRS Bangladesh and CNRS focus on flood resilience and climate adaptation. In India CUTS, and Grameen Development Services work on advocacy and capacity building for marginalized communities. In Nepal, NEEDS Nepal, CRDS, and RUWDUC empower local communities in river governance and sustainable resource management.

These partnerships create a powerful network for collective action, ensuring that TROSA 2’s impact is long-term and sustainable.

Young people and women played a crucial role in shaping the future of water governance in South Asia. TROSA placed a strong emphasis on empowering youth and women as leaders in transboundary cooperation and climate action.

One of its flagship initiatives was the Youth Basin Ambassadors (YBA) program, which trained young leaders from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh in water governance, climate resilience, and advocacy skills. These youth ambassadors worked within their communities to promote sustainable water practices, organize awareness campaigns, and facilitate dialogues between stakeholders. In Assam, for example, youth-led initiatives have already helped introduce climate-smart farming techniques to local farmers, improving crop yields while conserving water.

In early 2026, the Youth Basin Ambassador programme held a workshop in Kathmandu, bringing together young water leaders from across the GBM basin for three days of learning, reflection, and connection. Participants exchanged experiences from their own community projects and took part in field visits across the Kathmandu Valley — including Bishnudwar, Sundarijal, Godavari Botanical Garden, Taudaha, Chovar Gorge, and Manga Hiti in Patan — exploring river source protection, urban water supply systems, wetlands, biodiversity conservation, and traditional water infrastructure. The workshop closed with a networking session that strengthened bonds across the three basins, building on the momentum of the 2025 International Youth Conference in Kanchanpur, Nepal, and its Kanchanpur Declaration on transboundary governance.

Women’s leadership was equally central to TROSA 2’s approach. Women’s networks established during the first phase were further strengthened, allowing more women to engage in decision-making spaces, advocate for their water rights, and influence local policies. In Nepal’s western river basins, women’s cooperatives were trained to monitor groundwater levels and negotiate with local authorities for fairer water allocation. By the programme’s end, more than 23 Women’s Empowerment Centres in Nepal had been formally institutionalised within municipal and provincial planning processes, and 109 of 111 trained citizen scientists monitoring water quality in the Mahakali basin were women.

By fostering collaboration across generations and sectors, TROSA worked to ensure that water governance was not only inclusive but also resilient, adaptable, and deeply rooted in local realities.

Oxfam in Asia convened the Rivers, Rights, Resilience Forum (RRRF) annually — formerly known as the TROSA Annual Learning Forum, renamed and opened to a wider audience in 2022 — as TROSA’s flagship regional platform, bringing together water experts, policymakers, civil society representatives, researchers, and community leaders from across South Asia and beyond. The forum served as a learning platform for exchanging knowledge on equitable governance of shared water ecosystems across the GBM basins, while also enabling cross-basin knowledge-sharing regionally and globally.

RRRF 2025, the second forum of TROSA’s Phase 2, was held virtually from 5–7 May 2025 and drew more than 70 participants from across the region.

The third and final edition, RRRF 2026, was held in a hybrid format from 13–15 January 2026 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, co-organised by Oxfam in Asia and Dev Pro Sri Lanka, bringing together around 160 participants — roughly 75 attending in person and a similar number joining virtually — under the theme “Building Resilient Communities and Ecosystems.” The forum explored how investment, innovation, and inclusivity could help riverine communities adapt to climate change, organised around four learning questions: what innovation and investment strategies best support community adaptation; what inclusive pathways for climate action strengthen riverine resilience; how to amplify the voices of marginalised groups — including Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth — in investment decisions; and how multi-stakeholder cooperation can foster equitable water governance regionally and globally. Sessions ranged from panel discussions and fishbowl debates to live polls, elevator pitches, and video storytelling, and the forum opened with remarks from John Samuel, Regional Director of Oxfam in Asia, on the deep connections between rivers, politics, climate change, and sustainability — marking a fitting close to a decade of regional dialogue.

TROSA T2:3R believes in partnership and collective action. We value your interest and welcome your support to foster stronger partnerships for a just world without poverty.

Please get in touch with our Program Management Unit (PMU) hosted at Oxfam in Cambodia, Phnom Penh to learn more about our work.

Email: Info.Trosa@oxfam.org

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