The Framework of Hydro-Hegemony (described by Zeitoun & Warner, in Water Policy 8, pp 435-460, 2006) challenges mainstream analyses of hydro-political relations in transboundary river basins and highlights the role of power. The approach asserts that asymmetric power relations represent the cornerstone of the analysis of hydropolitical relations. Varying hegemonic configurations and the unequal control of water resources among riparian states are characteristic of these relations. The hegemonic riparian in a given international transboundary water setting deploys several strategies to attain and maintain control, sometimes unilaterally, over the shared water resources. But is the control always as deep and entrenched as it sometimes seems to be?The starting point of this paper is that hydro-hegemony is not incontestable. An established hegemonic order may often be challenged and resisted through a variety of counter-hegemonic strategies. Through examination of Ethiopian contest and consent of Egyptian hydro-hegemony, this study attempts to provide insights into the condition of counter hydro-hegemony and to provide a framework for further analysis in the field of transboundary water relations. The approach explores the options available for non-hegemonic riparians to challenge a particular hydro-hegemony and finds that these come from unexpected or unacknowledged sources. An assessment of these strategies shows how non-hegemonic riparians might challenge unequal hydro-political configurations and eventually contribute towards a more sustainable and equitable water and benefit-sharing regime. Power relations in the Nile BasinThe Nile is a well-known and long river, though relatively modest in terms of volume. Flows are uneven across the Nile Basin and are often impacted upon by extreme climatic events. The main hydraulic and political features of the basin, however, are the asymmetric use of water resources. The downstream riparians (Egypt and Sudan) have consolidated their control over water resources. Egypt is the most powerful state in the basin; it has achieved a substantial degree of hydraulic, legal and political control over the Nile waters. Political and structural factors-regional and national circumstances-mean that upstream riparians do not currently use a great deal of the water resources inside their boundaries.

This article analyzes the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam both as an outcome of shifts in the regional hydropolitical dynamics in the past decade and as a catalyst of future cooperation developments in the Nile Basin region. First, it analyzes the GERD in the context of changing power relations, including a critical discussion of the role of multilateral cooperation process and norms. Second, it examines the GERD as a shaper of future hydropolitical dynamics, and how the complex trilateral cooperative process around the GERD (2011GERD ( -2015 can represent a constructive step towards wider institutional transboundary cooperation and regional economic integration in the Nile Basin.ARTICLE HISTORY

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This paper serves international water conflict resolution efforts by examining the ways that states contest hegemonic transboundary water arrangements. The conceptual framework of dynamic transboundary water interaction that it presents integrates theories about change and counter-hegemony to ascertain coercive, leverage, and liberating mechanisms through which contest and transformation of an arrangement occur. While the mechanisms can be active through sociopolitical processes either of compliance or of contest of the arrangement, most transboundary water interaction is found to contain elements of both. The role of power asymmetry is interpreted through classification of intervention strategies that seek to either influence or challenge the arrangements. Coexisting contest and compliance serve to explain in part the stasis on the Jordan and Ganges rivers (where the non-hegemons have in effect consented to the arrangement), as well as the changes on the Tigris and Mekong rivers, and even more rapid changes on the Amu Darya and Nile rivers (where the non-hegemons have confronted power asymmetry through influence and challenge). The framework also stresses how transboundary water events that may appear isolated are more accurately read within the many sociopolitical processes and arrangements they are shaped by. By clarifying the typically murky dynamics of interstate relations over transboundary waters, furthermore, the framework exposes a new suite of entry points for hydro-diplomatic initiatives.

This article contributes to our understanding of transboundary environmental management regimes through the application of an analytical framework that facilitates an exploration of the co-existence of conflict and cooperation. Rather than framing conflict and cooperation as mutually exclusive states at opposite ends of a spectrum, we seek to understand the ways in which cooperation can exist at the same time as conflict. We apply this framework to a study of conservation management in a transboundary area at the intersection of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. We identify two actual and one hypothetical phase of conflict-cooperation relations, in a landscape notorious for some of the worst violence of the last two decades. We map the evolution of phases of transboundary protected area management against the evolving security context, and we find that this approach has greater explanatory power than previous approaches that polarize conflict and cooperation. In particular, it helps us to understand the drivers of environmental cooperation, including the evolving characteristics of that cooperation. This new way of understanding the relationship between environmental management and security also enables us to reconsider the potential for environmental management to be instrumental in working towards interstate security objectives, for example through peace parks. We don't find that the 'low politics' of environmental management should be seen as a predictable and manageable determinant of international relations. But an understanding of the coexistence of conflict and cooperation does also point to a more complex, non-linear relationship between low and high politics.