BRIDGE - Building River Dialogue and Governance. This project aims to build water governance capacities through learning, demonstration, leadership, and consensus-building, in particular in transboundary river basins.
Photo: IUCN Water Programme
The BRIDGE Project is financed by the Water Diplomacy Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC).
BRIDGE supports the capacities of countries sharing river or lake basins to implement effective water management arrangements through a shared vision, benefit-sharing principles and transparent and coherent institutional frameworks. Its goal is to enhance cooperation among riparian countries by applying water diplomacy at multiple levels.
BRIDGE works through 5 key implementation strategies:
- Demonstration – using demonstration and testing of how to make cooperation operational in a basin through confidence and trust building, shared learning and joint action in building national and transboundary water governance capacity;
- Learning – using training and capacity building for multiple stakeholders, including municipal and civil society actors, as well as high-level national officials in water governance, international water law and benefit sharing to enhance knowledge and understanding;
- Dialogue – applying demonstration actions and learning events to catalyse new dialogues on technical, development, and political matters for consensus building;
- Leadership – supporting empowerment of champions for transboundary water cooperation and better water governance who can effectively advocate for mobilisation of water diplomacy;
- Advice and Support – providing advice and technical assistance on demand to governments and stakeholders, including legal and institutional frameworks.
