Who has the time? The temporality of tensions in the transboundary Red River basin

Journal article

We address the often absent “when” issues of governing shared rivers by focusing on timing and the challenges it creates for transboundary water management. Using the Red River basin and Chinese-Vietnamese relations as an example, this study illustrates how hydropolitical tensions are linked to the temporal scale. The politics of scale have been used widely in the Mekong region to critique particular framings of transboundary water governance and hydraulic infrastructure. These critiques are often geospatial, with less attention given to the temporal scale or the timing of water governance problems. The temporal scale is discussed in the Mekong region with regard to changes in seasonality, particularly around the arrival of monsoon rains. However, the “when” of water governance is not merely in response to natural phenomena; it is heavily mediated by social processes and infrastructure. The timing of infrastructure operations in transboundary water governance is in many cases at the core of hydropolitical tensions and risk. In the highly regulated Red River basin, the timing of hydropower operations and inherent temporal misfits create hydropolitical tensions across multiple timescales from seasons to seconds. Cooperation attempts reflect these temporal scale problems and are focused on reducing uncertainties around the timing of water governance processes. Drawing on insights from interviews in Northern Viet Nam, we analyzed the tensions caused by timing across infrastructure lifecycles and the “when” of water governance in the Red River basin between Yunnan, China and Northern Viet Nam.

Authors: Motta, S; Koehler, JKL

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Resilience Alliance
• Journal: Ecology & Society
• Volume: 30
• Issue: 4
• Publication date: 2025-12-01
• DOI: 10.5751/ES-16586-300433
• EISSN: 1708-3087
• ISSN: 1708-3087
• Language: English