IHE Delft 💧Alumni online seminar: Can countries trust each other in sharing water?

Welcome to our new IIC delumni online seminar. I'm very happy to welcome you and that you are with us today. We are addressing a very important question. Can countries trust each other in sharing water data relationship and the everyday practice of transboundary water cooperation. Today our speaker is Dr. Ba Sharipova and you can see her in the screen. She is Aichi Del alumna and of of course lecture and researcher in water conflict cooperation and diplomacy at Iichi del. My pleasure ba to have you with us in this seminar. My name is Mariela Sorentino. I'm alumni relation advisor at Iichi Del and I coordinate these seminars that are designed with the interests and needs of our alumni community in mind but open to all interested audience. So do not hesitate later to share this video if you wish. I would like to kindly ask everybody to keep their microphones muted to avoid disturbance and please be informed that after the presentation there will be time for questions and answer. So please write your questions in the chat during the dissertation and I will read them during the question and answer session. also be informed that the event will be recorded and will be shared later on I delve YouTube channel and I will also email to all people who has registered the the video. Well, without further ado, I would like to give the floor or better say the microphone to our speaker of today Shahipova. The mic is yours. >> Thanks a lot Maria Loro for introduction and for organizing it and thanks a lot for all the participants for joining. I hope we are going to have very nice discussion today. Uh and I am particularly excited about this topic because this is topic of my PhD that I just finished this year in March and I find it really fascinating. So I hope you will also share my enthusiasm during the lecture and also after. So for today we have very exciting question that we will I hope all together disentangle. It is about can actually countries trust each other when they cooperate on water or maybe not. So this is our main puzzle and main question of today. So please keep it on the back of your head and we're going to go step by step to try to answer it together. So what are we going to discuss in this um in this presentation in this webinar is first question is why actually to study trust why it is important how it is important and also things that we know and maybe don't know about trust and thanks to that we hopefully will be able to answer our main question can states trust each other and we are also going to try to think together about what can be done to actually improve trust So let's start with the first question. Why actually study trust? And let's start with a very simple definition because trust has a lot of different definitions because trust was studied in very different disciplines and studies. It was studied in psychology, in sociology, in business, now in digital marketing and marketing broadly almost in all areas and sectors uh of our life. So we can use this very basic definition that trust is a positive expectation in the conditions of uncertainty. And we also don't have to think about trust from very scientific perspective because all of us experience trust, right? So I didn't even need to put the definition out here because all of us basically know what trust is and we experienced it. But nevertheless, I'm going to share with you this um presentation and also use some um maybe some terms and if they are not clear, I'm also happy to answer your questions. So let's start and as we can imagine trust and mistrust are deeply rooted survival mechanisms which means that for a long time humans and also other social beings they had to rely on trust or mistrust as mechanisms to help them navigate uncertainty. Specifically in thinking about okay whom should we approach or whom should we avoid uh when to cooperate and when maybe to remain cautious about copyrighting with another human being or in the world around with the world around us. But today we live in a much more complex world because human beings we created institutions, laws, um contracts and different procedures to help us manage uncertainty. So that when uncertainty is reduced, this is where we have more predictability and we are able to trust more. So we can say that whenever there are agreements reached we know the procedure we know what is going to happen and therefore it is easier for us to trust. But nevertheless formal structures they were not able to replace trust fully because even nowadays we have to make decisions in the conditions of uncertainty and clarity maybe insufficient information or ambiguity. And also what is very critical for for our topic for today is also dependence on others because in the world that we are living in more almost half of the world's of the earth's surface is covered by transpoundary rivers or international river basins which means this is the area uh in which rivers which are flowing on this area they cross borders of two or more countries and as you can See uh you can see them on this map in blue color and almost half of the world's population live in the basins of transboundary rivers and that of course means that those countries who are especially lying downstream they are very much dependent on the decisions or actions of the countries laying upstream. And therefore here in this context trust matters a lot because countries and also communities, individuals, cities uh sectors they are dependent on decisions of others and we can think for ourself probably we all have experience uh of working with water. We can think about examples when for example uh suggestions about cooperation which were which were actually beneficial were not accepted because of mistrust because and uh my uh area of expertise is transboundary. So it is more about countries cooperating with each other and therefore I'm going to bring examples from country to country relationship. But you can think for yourself. For example, the examples where uh there were not enough information but only because there were trustful relationship for example between presidents or maybe ministers of water or heads of uh local communities for example elders of local communities. uh trust between these individuals made certain cooperation uh happen and the importance of trust and mistrust also called distrust uh which are used synonymously is being mentioned in many different transboundary basins in the world be it in be it in Asia, Africa, Latin American countries in the North America or in Europe. So we cannot immediately assume that mistrust or distrust is something which happens only in the basins with conflicts or those basin where there is war. Um generally when we look at the literature we can see that for example in Ryan basin or sometimes even in the Daniel basin in Europe we also see cases of uh mistrust and distrust. But uh I would like to tell you a bit more how I approached these two um big topics of trust and mistrust in my PhD research. I compared two transboundary basins. First is Sava River basin in southeastern Europe uh with 8 million people and the Sava River flows through five riparian countries that's Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzgoina, Montenegro and Serbia. Uh we can also refer to this region as western balkcans. And the second transboundary basin is Saria river basin which is a home to 25 million people roughly and it is shared by four riparian countries Kyrgystan Tajakistan and Kazakhstan. And why I decided to compare these two cases is because they have something in common. Some of you might recognize it immediately. It is that Sava riverbasing countries they used to be part of Yugoslavia before 1991 and Sadia river basin countries used to be part of Soviet Union also before 1991. So that means that has that means few different things for us which are quite important is that um those rivers which are now transboundary they used to be rivers within one country. So they were before 1991 they were managed as uh they were flowing within basically one system. So it was centralized decision making and management which made it things much more easier of course. Uh secondly it also means that um countries which are living in these basins they share uh language uh and in sava river basin it is southeastern group of languages which are very much understandable or almost the same. So Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrian language, they are almost the same languages and Slovenia is slightly different but still very quite understandable for others. And for Sar Basin there are um different languages Kaggus and Tajik uh but still these countries used to speak Russian. So that was their linga lingua frana so that they could understand each other and they also because they used to be part of the same country and Soviet Union they shared similar culture traditions um also water management practices were very very similar but the despite the similarities there is also critical difference that in Sava River basin Yugoslavian Yugos the dissolution of Yugoslavia was accompanied by very difficult period of wars with a lot of casualties. So between 1991 and 1995 countries of this region they had a lot of conflicts with each other and the most um difficult uh or bloody one being war between Bosnia and Serbia at that time still being called Yugoslavia. And then there were around 130,000 casualties in this war which ended in 1995. But nevertheless we can say that okay war happened only 30 years ago. And then that means that still currently living people there and those who work in water sector they still remember it and they have some negative sentiments against each other which is also true. But at the same time capiration in sa river basin is develop has developed very well. there is beneficial cooperation. While if we look at Saria river basin as we said there are some similarities uh and but there was no war because the solution of the Soviet Union was very peaceful and countries of the basin these four countries they um they have very peaceful and friendly relationship between these countries but nevertheless cooperation on water between these countries are not is not that effective. And here when I say effective or non-effective, this is not only my judgment or opinion. Here I refer mostly to existing studies and opinions of practitioners. So here we have this interesting comparison between Saba river basin where there was war only 30 years ago but still capiration on water is very good and Saria river basin where relationship between countries and people are very good but capiration is not uh developing that well. So this was what this is the context two cases where I was trying to understand okay what does trust mean in these two basin does trust or mistrust play a role at all or maybe not. So this was the starting point of my PhD research and as a result of uh this research uh which lasted almost five years. There are some of the conclusions or statements that I would like to share with you which might sound a bit counterintuitive for you because as I mentioned at the beginning we all know or understand intuitively what trust is. We have experienced it but at the same time when we speak about trust a lot comes with our with assumptions. Therefore I would like to question some of them and um provide you three messages that we're going to discuss in more details. So first one is that trust is not always necessary and it is not always beneficial. Second is that trust and mistrust can coexist. And the third one is that trust is multi-dimensional and distributed across actors. And these are some of these are the messages that we are going to discuss in more details based on examples. Um so first let's have a look at transboundary water capation in the Sava River basin case. So as I mentioned um as I mentioned there was war between riparian countries in 1990s and then cooperation on the Sava River basin after war started only in 2002. Before that there were no diplomatic relationship, no cooperation at all. And therefore we can say that caperation in this basin started with mistrust. And you probably are going to ask question how do I know that? How do I know that there was mistrust? And that is going to be a very good question because um I didn't yet mention but my research was based on interviews and also on memoirs of people who were participating in this negotiations. And there they explicitly mention how countries didn't trust each other. Therefore, even when literally speaking the same language, they required that each country have their own translator interpreter to translate from the same language to the same language. And uh they also had their military forces accompanying their delegations to those negotiations. This strongly indicated that there was mistrust between riparian countries. But nevertheless in 2002 they had 11 month and 17 rounds of negotiations where they developed detailed and very very um robust protocols on cooperation, how to cooperate, where secretariat of the organization should be located, how they meeting, how decisions are made on which level. So all these processes of cooperation were documented in very very detail because countries didn't trust each other. So they were try they were trying to proactively prevent cases of mistrust to make sure that uncertainty is reduced and there are rules and protocols which are going to be strictly followed and they also did from the very beginning defined data sharing mechanisms and they tried to stick to it adhere to it and starting from 2002 then this cooperation has started and developed and since then We are talking about routinized daily caperation according to those protocols developed since 2002. So nowadays there is trustful relationship between water experts and cooperation is generally being called both by people uh working in this basin. So basically water experts but also higher level politicians and also by externals. This cyperation is usually called a successful case that thanks to this routinized daily activities and following rules and regulations countries of the basin they managed to build trust which was not there from the beginning. And what kind of message or what kind of kind of lesson can we learn from that is that institutions and routines they turn uncertainty into predictability. So as you remember trust is important only when there is uncertainty higher uncertainty more important trust is. So here what institutions and routines do they basically reduce uncertainty by developing some measures for predictability and therefore this is how mistrust didn't prevent uh cooperation and even more so it even helped to build trust and therefore one of the conclusions we can draw from the Saba case is that trust is not always necessary to start cooperation Because very often we have this assumption or we hear it a lot that trust must be there to to help cooperation to startle. Trust should be there to to help with data sharing which is I think partly also true because um trust also has layer of trusting whom? So I think in this case in Saba case four countries came together trusting not their counterparts but trusting international organizations and also international order that you know they can sign an agreement and then it is going to uh to work according to this agreement. So there was trust but not necessarily in the corner parts. So let's uh have a look at the second case. This is where we have um five countries of central Asia and four of them are sharing Saria river. And here the situation was the opposite. We can say in a certain way. Uh at the very beginning of capuration in '90s we had very trustful relationship between the countries and uh between water experts. And again the question here is how do I know that? And the answer will be very similar to Sava case that uh it is based on interviews with individuals but also with memoirs and also looking at the patterns of how cooperative agreements were reached in that period. So as I mentioned in Sava case you remember there were 11 months of negotiations and 17 meetings versus in Sava case there was an agreement on water management in 1992 which was signed during one meeting which lasted only a few hours and at that time we can say we can see it clearly from the um from the from the interviews that I took but also from They um because there are memoirs published of water ministers of that of that time that they were saying that relationship between water ministers were very very trustful, very good that they could meet informally and then discuss things informally. But um what it led into was that the agreement which was signed was very much uh repeating what the cooperation framework which was there during Soviet times and the clauses of the agreement were very vaguely formulated [gasps] and cooperation uh since then since that agreement of 1992 was very strongly dependent on informal profession. professional networks and some ad hoc solutions and countries of the basin water expert. They use strongly the narrative of brotherhood and relatives and we can see that from the formal official documents they refer to each other as brothers and they speak about them each other as relatives also saying we care about each other. Uh but data sharing is fragmented uh in most of the cases. So they countries although from the very beginning in 1992 they said that they want to develop data sharing mechanisms but that didn't happen and what do we have as a result nowadays is that uh there is quite strong mistrust and unsatisfactory cooperation when it comes to water. The institutions which are there to manage transpoundary rivers are considered are viewed as weak and coordination is insufficient. both mentioned by practitioners inside the country but also from outside there is opinion like that and then what can be our conclusion from that and also what also my PhD research showed is that trust among individuals through that informal professional networks it can allow some data sharing and cooperation but without institutionalized cooperation trust does not grow. So that means that even if uh individuals what experts have very good relationship with each other in this basin very often opinions of those who are their bosses let's say or superiors that matters a lot. So that limits kind of the area within which they can operate when trusting or not trust when when they want to trust each other. And for example that matters when for example in data sharing one um person from the ministry of water in Kazakhstan requests or asks data from a person working for the water ministry in Usbakistan or Kyrgystan and they say hey we know each other. We are friends and colleagues we met many times. Can you please share this and this information about water level for example in certain reservoir but then very often that what happens in these basins is that then this there is no freedom to share this information because then this water expert from let's say Kyrgyzstan has to go and ask permission from the senior and then that senior very often has to ask permission from somewhere else and then they try to look into the documents which are there which regulate it. Although there is an agreement of 1992 which says that countries should share information but that doesn't happen always and therefore there's not that much freedom for individuals to improve or strengthen their trust or transform it into something which can help cooperation. So in that sense we can also say that trust is not always leading directly to better cooperation. Um and another message that I would like you also to have it as a takeaway from today's webinar is that trust and mistrust they can coexist. And here uh we cannot speak about mistrust as direct mirror opposite of trust because trust generates positive expectations. Why mistrust generates negative expectations about harm? So it is not mistrust is not directly lack of trust and I just wanted to clarify that because in very often when we read about it it is being replaced or used synonymously and how we can see that trust and mistrust can coexist here for example from Sava case what we clearly see is that there is hostility among politicians presidents sometimes diplomats as you can see here on the picture It's a president of Croatia accusing another president of Serbia uh saying some not nice things about uh about each other. But here in the green square you can see also a quote from a water experts working in Sava River who says okay presidents have their own thing their own relationship but here in Saba we just continue working. So here we can also assume that trustful relationships are built there in that case but it develops on the opposite direction completely from the higher level relationship between presidents we can assume represent states in Sataria case. Interestingly we have again opposite case where we have quite friendly and nice relationship among presidents but also strong mistrust among water experts. Here on the quote in um orange in pink you can see that water expert from monaria countries says hey relationship between presidents are great but that doesn't mean we can trust each other even when presidents are like brothers. So from that we can see that even when we speak about country countries two countries if they trust or mistrust each other there is this parallel dynamic which can be trust and mistrust at the same time so they can coexist. Um there is another message which I would like to share with you about trust being multi-dimensional and also distributed across levels. And here how we can think about that is that trust is not this only one thing that we either trust or not. And for example, how I like to explain it usually is that I can trust my sister to uh to write a letter for me for example, but I will not trust her to cook my favorite dish. And you see these are different trust into different actions or capabilities. And therefore trust we cannot just directly say I trust this person. We need to specify and clarify in what and regarding what and the same goes when we speak about water relationship between countries. There is rational trust. Let's start with the top which is being usually very often prioritized which is about function of minimizing risks. So the logic here is that more if uncertainties are reduced risks are minimized. This is where we are going to trust more and usually it is about developing clear rules and protocols and clarifying roles and responsibilities. But there is also another trust which is called social trust which is about shared goals and values. It is about thinking hey but we both my organization and another organization we have the same goals or objectives and therefore I can trust that this organization is not going to harm me but we are going to move together and act based on that value or goals that we have in common. And there is also very important and interesting psycho psychological trust which is about psychosocial easiness. And I also saw that in my research when speaking the same language or even just having personal sympathies to people and spending time outside of work, it also helps a bit to get to know another person and then through that also to to release your guard a bit because you know this person and then hopefully or assumably he or she will not harm you. And also what is important to mention is that trust is multi-dimensional in a sense that it is not the same trust that we're always talking about it. Trust exists on spectrum. And here we can compare for example that we can trust a colleague whom we know for example who joined us last week as a new person. We share certain data with him and trust that we have in another colleague of ours with whom we worked for example for 20 years and we have gone through a lot. This will be different levels in a way right of trust. So we can recognize levels of low trust, medium trust or uh high trust or strong trust. But there are also important to recognize as we mentioned before also lack of trust and also active mistrust. So we are coming now to the very to the question which was uh the central one for our webinar. Can states trust each other? And here the answer would be not completely. And they also don't need to in order to cooperate with each other because strictly speaking states state or country is not a person and in that sense it cannot think or trust or feel something right and therefore it's only people who trust other people or institutions or certain procedures or another state. And in that sense when we mention that state A trusts state B it is usually how we project our individual feelings or conclusions to or how we interpret states um states logic or behavior [gasps] and as we mentioned trust and mistrust they can coexist. So in that sense we can say that they trust or mistrust each other but at the same time we also need to be careful about clarifying okay which about whom are we talking here? Is it presidents? Is it what experts? Is it people? Is it maybe local communities who live on the border areas and they trust each other better than they trust their central governments for example. And um another conclusion from today's lecture can be that cooperation can begin under mistrust and gradually produce trust through repeated and predictable interruption. This is something that both Sawa and Sadaria cases showed us that when you have this repeated interactions which can reduce uncertainty, this is where you can see trust growing. While even if you have quite good trust, if there is unstructured, uncoordinated, unregulated um cooperation which is mostly ad hoc, this is where we could see that trust is uh declining. So with that we can say that successful cooperation requires sufficient predictability but not necessarily complete trust and this sufficient predictability should make mutual vulnerability manageable. So we do we should not always strive to have complete trust which is I think very often the case when you read some policy papers or especially the favorite reading for this is project documents where you have applications for funding where the projects promise that they're going to build trust. So these kind of wordings are a bit that we need to be careful with. And the very last slide from me, how can we make trust constructive in transboundary water cooperation? So you might have noticed that in the in the in the beginning I formulated this question is how to increase trust but I think it is more important how to make trust constructive because in that sense if we are saying that trust is not necessary condition then we can also speak about constructive role of mistrust as we could see in Saba case because this is also logical right when you have mistrust you start building mechanisms which which reduce this mistrust trust which can help you control the situation the cooperation and with that through that you you build trust. So with this logic I'm asking this question as how to make trust constructive and here we can think about these different dimensions of trust that I mentioned before. So for rational trust we need to think about mechanisms or activities which can help to reduce risks and that of course very often comes through agreement but also we need to think in terms of okay can we establish clear rules and responsibilities roles. Can we develop some joint monitoring and verification and create predictable dispute resolution mechanisms that can also help in times of crisis? In terms of social trust, we can think about how to strengthen relationship, how to establish regular interactions, how can we formulate some shared task, shared goal, shared objectives that we could all agree on and move together. and how to build connections across different levels, political, technical, operational. And for psychological trust, we need to think about creating safe interaction when for example some concerns or challenges with caperation could be expressed openly because that very often helps. And then there might there should be also space to allow some face saving and there should be opportunities for informal contact and mutual understanding. Although I must also say that trust has strong cultural component in it because what I noticed also in sava basin it is very normal to communicate mistrust to say that yeah I mistrust you you mistrust me and this is normal let's build together um mechanisms which will help us to prove that we are wrong versus in central Asia where I'm from by the way I'm from Katan in central Asia it is it is will be very offensive to say that you mistrust someone. So even in the way how you formulate your words or the way how you behave or present, you should clearly avoid even hinting that you can mistrust. And I think this cultural aspect also adds a bit of um complexity or messiness in a way because then you avoid you know clarifying each step in order not to offend your counterpart. So with that my very final sentence here would be that the aim whenever we speak about trust building in transboundary water cooperation should not be to maximize trust but to try to design cooperation which allows to work with limited trust and also gives the space for trust to grow. So thanks a lot. With that I will stop sharing and I think um give the floor back to Melodora. >> Thank you very much V for your clear presentation and congratulations for your degree and your the work that you have done very very interesting. Well, you are always welcome to write your questions and I think we have a have the first one that is from Gen. Sorry for the pronunciations Ja that says thank you very much Dr. especially pova for the interesting seminar. In your view, how significant has the Europe role being in strengthening transpondering cooperation and building trust among the Sabar river basin countries particularly through institutional frameworks, data sharing and harmonizing with European Union required and financial resources. Yes, thanks a lot for the question which is definitely very interesting and just for the sake of time I didn't mention it but that's definitely a quite strong factor I must say. So again I try to understand this trust dynamics through interviews. So here um I'm going to mix a bit opinions of my interviewees but also my own interpretation. So how I see it um the role of European Union uh it is quite strong but we cannot directly assume that this is the main or the strongest factor in building trust in this basin and let me explain why I think so is that it is true for maybe those of you who don't know much about it so if you want to become member of European Union you also need to meet certain requirements in terms of legislation in terms of how this legislation is being implemented and water being part of it. So that means that um if you want to become part of EU you have to follow uh European water framework directive which basically says that you have to cooperate with with your other riparian countries. Um which means that okay Sava river basin countries which are um geographically can be attributed to Europe or at least to eastern part of it um that they actually could in theory become part of EU and then they could cooperate just because of the obligation underwater framework directive. But it is important to mention that as of now out of five Sava basing countries only two are members of EU which is Slovenia being first uh in 2006 if I'm not mistaken and Croatia who joined in 2014 and these two countries are obliged to cooperate with each other to share data uh with a certain protocol and and uh in certain format and everything. So they are under this umbrella of EU but other three countries Serbia, Bosnia, Herzgoina and Montenegro are not but they are candidate countries and they are there in candidacy already quite some years and the progress is not very fast. So in that sense we can say that right now they are not really obliged to cooperate or to follow European water framework directive regulations but um yeah based what on interviewee interviewees told me they also interested to uh standardize their for example data sharing mechanisms because not only you there's also layer of capation on the Danup because Safa river basin is attribut to Danup river and there's already established and well working cooperation mechanisms in the Danup river and when Sava become became Sava river countries cooperation on Sawa became part of the Danube cooperation they also had to synchronize uh their data sharing mechanism as it was in the Danup. So I would say therefore that there is a motivation for the three countries which are not the EU but at the same time I would not say that yes I think uh EU became also in a way valued between these countries. So that when countries which uh share uh which are part of EU are generally viewed as more transparent as more cooperative in that sense I think it became a value which also guided I think cooperation in Sava but I would not say that this was the strongest or the main factor. Thank you VA for your answer and Shari FA Muardi say thank you for the insightful session and his question or her question is if individual trust can enable initial cooperation while institutionalized cooperation allies allows trust to grow. And how can we distinguish whether trust is actually causing cooperation or whether it is emerging as a result of successful cooperation or can we really disentangle the two. >> Thanks a lot Cherula. And indeed here you are touching upon the very very central challenge in studying trust and cooperation. uh exactly how to disentangle how to separate these two and this is challenge not only for me or my research. This is also a challenge for broadly international relation discipline and scholars who study trust for many many years. They also don't really we don't have yet mechanisms to really say okay here we are looking into trust process separately from cooperation process and this is I think also beauty of it to try to think okay where where are those indications you know which can show us that trust and cooperation they uh they have their own you know both sources but also the way how they influence each Because indeed uh what we can see is that trust and cooperation they are mutually reinforcing each other which means that we have we are observing usually spiral um spiral mechanism where uh cooperation start from something. sometimes can start with trust or without trust or with mistrust. But then more cooperation, more trust and then we can have we can see that for example um for example first they started sharing data then there is certain trust we can say low-level trust then at the next level will be they developed countries for example joint flood protection mechanism then we have extended trust or bigger trust um however you would like to call it uh but I think that's Why there is this um there is a beauty of also comparison to see a bit different how trust behaves differently uh in different basins and that's why I really appreciate the Saba case which showed that with mistrust you can actually cooperate and here this is where you can distinguish uh but this is again conditional because okay how do we in the very foundation of my research. How can we really say that there is trust or there is mistrust or there is lack of trust for example? Because methodologically do we have any instruments to measure trust? Can we really you know assess it? Not really. What I try to do is to look at it through the eyes of interviewees of water experts. But there are also other ways. Some people try to quantify it but we cannot really experiment and we cannot go into humans brain in order to understand when they make decisions what do they rely on do they think about when I try to look into this for example rational social and psychological trust do they really think about you know agreement do they think about common values or do they think about the person who is in front of them and the same way we cannot really disentangle or or or study trust just simply as a factor of cooperation. We cannot look at it separately. Uh so this is a limitation and thank you for asking about that. Thank you. We have a comment from Lashmi Maharaja Maharam and he expressed that it is very complex presentation on trust and mistrust and he suggest she suggests that would be interesting if it is presented with some example of any river basin. Sorry if I miss the point. Uh we have also comments of the great session and there is a question from Grada Alame that say what are the major challenges for cooperation between Iraq and Turkey in the Tigris Eratis basin from your point of view if you can comment on that. Yeah. Well, I'm not an expert specifically in this basin integrats, but if I understand also correctly lately, there has been some last couple of years some positive developments in cooperation between Iraq and Turkey. But in general I think what as an outsider what I can say about this basin is that u there is quite strong power imbalance in this basin and I think here we can observe the the what can be useful is maybe use concept of hydro hegemony um in that sense uh also to try to see okay who has the power and who uh has the power to make decisions but also block some other decisions because also for um Turkey uh their priority is to have bilateral relationship with the countries of the basin and they are not very much in favor of multilateral cooperation processes which have uh both benefits and also u negative consequences because for the benefits we can say when two countries cooperate just two of them together. They can really go in depth of the issues between uh on the watershed between two countries. But at the same time when when two countries come together and negotiate power becomes the third uh invisible elephant in the room or third participants where you can clearly feel that one country can strongly dominate. But in multilateral processes when you have three and more participants this is where it can be seen as equalizer because this is where countries can you know they can create for example majority or there can be third opinion which might be a bit more neutral. So in that sense I think this aspect also plays quite a strong role there and of course we can also mention all other transboundary challenges with like upstream dependent downstream I know downstream dependence from upstream and then um not being very transparent about certain projects or data sharing. So all these issues which are there in other basins I think they're also present in these basins and difference in capacities and resources of course again power and balance. >> Thank you. We are coming to the last questions and Nadira says thank you very much B for the presentation and the question is might be less related to the research but I cannot contain my curiosity. Have you observed the trust dynamics within the institutions in one country that is in the aspect of cross- sectoral coordination and cooperation between national and regional water organization is there enough trust within the state to extend the trust to the neighbor and is spill over effect into the trans dimensioning dimension I'm more interesting in the Saria River case. However, I would be happy if I could draw comparisons across the cases. Thank you. Great. Thanks a lot, Nata, for the question. Um, yes. So within one country uh so trust dynamic within one country was not the focus of my research but what I clearly could see is that within one country there is also very complex trust and mistrust dynamic uh because uh in my research I was looking specifically on data sharing how countries share data or don't share data which kind of formal and informal mechanism they see use and there what I realize is that uh there is also quite strong mistrust between uh water agencies, state water agencies within one country because for example in Sardaria case that you are uh interested in for example hydromeats uh they collect data on natural streams. So before canals and not on damps but in the natural streams. So they are the main um the main holders of data water related data in all central Asian countries but they do not directly share it with another uh governmental agency which will be water ministry or water agency, water service organization. They sell this data. So that creates very ridiculous situation where governmental agency uh has to buy data from another governmental agency and then I think in Kazakhstan and partly in Usbakistan they managed to to solve this issue but nevertheless there are quite mistrustful relationship between what I could observe from when it comes to data sharing between hydromeats and water agencies. there is a bit of tension there. So that whenever water agencies and there I have some really beautiful quotes there water uh hydromeat people saying that hey this water people are so messy we cooperate very well as hydromeats they share data daily with each other by the way in Saria basin that's important to mention that's only hydromeats natural streams but when it comes to water agencies they uh and then hydrome people they call water people very messy and they want to stay a bit further from them and whenever they get invitation from water agencies, they prefer not to go there because they know that they're going to be accused, questioned and all this thing and they say we just don't want to be involved there and therefore of course they are both governmental agencies but still cooperation is within the country is uh is uh not always easy and in that sense I could see clearly that it feels pulls over negatively to transboundary level because when you have delegations which are not prepared or governmental agencies which do not copyright with each other to for example share data with the neighbors that of course becomes visible and also complicates cooperation on transboundary level as well. Hope that answers. Thanks Nera. >> Thank you Ban. We arrive to the last question that comes from Rana Camille from Egypt and the question is what mechanism can countries established to build trust in share water management? Final question. >> Yeah, that's nice one. Um although of course answer is as always in research always complicated. Um so I think there are very many different mechanisms which are being used. So I think I also uh mentioned in my last slide some of the mechanisms which can be uh which can be used as substantiation for activities to improve trust in transboundary basins that is for example reduce risks and build relationship. But I think if you are speaking here about very uh concrete mechanisms then I would say what's important is to start small and instead of you know being very ambitious and going with a with um with some mechanism or platform because what I also saw in central Asia very often there were this quite ambitious project of data sharing where a lot of money was spent um a lot of efforts went into that uh but then nothing happened. how countries didn't share data with each other which already uh lays a foundation for mistrust because there you already because trust is also based on accumulated experience right and in that sense once you see that mechanism doesn't work it can be with a country it can be with few countries in the basin or with organization this is where you already have you have learned your lesson that this with this country or within this basin things don't work that easy and therefore I think my recommendation would be always to start very little it can be just I don't know sharing data on one parameter or one station but to make it to routinize it to make it you know mundane daily activity or to say that annually we meet for discussing it can be something small non-political nonsensitive but just create this fabulized relationship where countries, you know, keep doing things that they promised instead of having this mega project super ambitious or waiting until the agreement will be signed or having another big goals. I think better still start with very very small but very practical thing even if maybe it doesn't immediately bring uh bring immediate results. But another side of sharing data is not only to have this data but also to show goodwill. Right? And in that sense I think some activities can be there just for the sake of showing openness, transparency and goodwill. >> Well, we have arrived to the end of this insightful session. I would like to state thank you very much to Ba Sharipova for this uh presentation and thank you very much to all of you for being here with us today. You will receive an email from me in the coming days with the video of this presentation and I will also add the link to the pres the paper of the if you want to read the the the paper of the the thesis of Dr. Ba research. So thank you very much. hope you to welcome you in the upcoming session that will be announced in the different channels and in social media in the web page of IIT Del and by email. Thank you very much and hope you to share a new session of this alumni online seminar with us in the future. See you. Bye-bye. Thank you.