Governance Framework- Upper Indus Basin Network (UIB-N) Afghanistan Chapter

The Upper Indus Basin (UIB), shared by Afghanistan, China, India, and Pakistan, has been facing the impacts of climate change on its water resources and other sectors. The basin is crucial and important for all these riparian countries–they face many common challenges by way of managing water resources and risks such as flood, glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), erosion, etc. Therefore, a neutral science-based regional platform like the UIBN can play an important role in understanding the challenges and opportunities; it can foster coordination among the researchers working in the region so that they share their experiences, knowledge and understanding in order to effectively deal with the effects of climate change on the water resources as well as on upstream/downstream linkages. The third regional UIBN workshop saw the participation of different governmental and non-governmental organizations from Afghanistan, China, India, and Pakistan, as well as that of other international research and academic entities. The participants emphasized on the need to use the UIBN as a regional platform to discuss emerging issues and potential solutions related to the UIB. Therefore, it was mutually agreed to expand the UIBN to all the riparian countries sharing the Indus water and form respective country chapters to deal with the issues at the country level.