Title: The Himalayan Confluence
Subtitle: India, Nepal and Bhutan's Hydro-Strategic Cooperation
Subject Classification:  Energy, Politics and Government, War and Conflict  
BIC Classification: KNB, JP, GTJ
BISAC Classification: POL011000, TEC031010, BUS070040
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Dec 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-664-5
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-665-2

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Description

The Himalayan Confluence: India, Nepal, and Bhutan’s Hydro-Strategic Cooperation examines how shared Himalayan waters can anchor peace, energy security, and regional integration, challenging the default narrative that treats transboundary rivers as triggers for conflict. Framed against global “water wars”, the book argues that water is a practical bridge for diplomacy when institutions privilege equity, transparency, and joint benefit. It contrasts the limits of weak international regimes (e.g., partial ratification and soft enforcement of the UN Watercourses Convention) with grounded, neighboring-state arrangements that actually shape flows, finance, and grids.

It positions India - now the world’s most populous nation - as downstream integrator and upstream investor, tracing decades of river treaties, power-purchase agreements, and cross-border infrastructure with Nepal and Bhutan. The result is a detailed anatomy of how dams, lines, and contracts co-produce interdependence. A central empirical contribution is the sizing of upstream endowments: Nepal and Bhutan’s possible hydropower form a combined 70 GW reservoir of clean energy for India’s northern demand centers.
The book shows how Indian capital and engineering accelerated build-out while also creating concentration risks - trade asymmetries in Nepal, and energy-mix narrowness in Bhutan - inviting diversification debates and, in Nepal’s case, a measured Chinese counter-presence after the 2015 blockade. The book advances a Collaborative Hydro-Strategy: codify data-sharing, co-design projects, distribute value chains, and embed “Blue Peace” style proactive water diplomacy to prevent zero-sum turns. Steady, rules-based hydropower trade can buffer climate shocks, reduce grievance, and lock in peace through infrastructure-backed interdependence.

Biography

Author(s):  Filippo Verre is a researcher at Lund University (Sweden) in Water Cooperation and a research fellow in Water Politics at the University of Auckland (New Zealand). He is the Hydro and Energy Advisor for SIOI - the Italian Society of International Organization - and President of AB AQUA, the first Italian Water Strategy think tank. He holds a PhD from the University of Pisa, a MA from Oxford Brookes University, and a BA and LLB both from the University of Siena. Besides his academic and scientific career, he advises companies and enterprises on geoeconomics, energy, and sustainability, integrating science with policy in top-tier international research and strategic projects.

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