Water Security in the Brahmaputra River Basin: A Review of Literature from 2021 to 2025

The Brahmaputra River, a vital source of livelihood for an estimated 130 million people across its basin, faces escalating water security risks driven by climate change, infrastructure development, and geopolitical contestation. Recent literature highlights that power asymmetries and a lack of transparency have securitised water issues, with infrastructure projects—such as China's announced mega-dam near the Great Bend—serving as a means of territorial and symbolic control. While conflict risk is low, the dam announcement in late 2024 has renewed urgency for formalised arrangements.

Climate change, manifested through erratic rainfall and glacier melt, increases the frequency of floods and riverbank erosion, severely impacting highly vulnerable communities (e.g., in Assam). The implementation of adaptive climate plans is often stalled by institutional and funding deficits. To counter these challenges, experts propose an integrated basin management framework that emphasizes cross-border cooperation, benefit-sharing, and ecosystem conservation. Ultimately, the path forward requires transparent data sharing, depoliticized dialogue facilitated by neutral platforms, and participatory governance that integrates local knowledge.

• Hydropolitical Frameworks: Scholars critique China's perceived hydro-hegemonic stance ("Brahma hypothesis") and note that power imbalances have turned water into an extension of national strategic agendas.

• Instrumentalisation: Water infrastructure, especially dams, is seen as a means for territorial and symbolic control, with the river increasingly instrumentalised as a geopolitical tool.

• Data-Driven Dialogue: There's a call to move beyond alarmist narratives and adopt an evidence-based approach to transboundary governance, urging data-driven dialogue between China and India.