Emphasizing the mutual importance of process and product, we published a first of its kind multiscale integrated river basin management (IRBM) resource book based on expert inputs and field testing through a 12-day training workshop. Meant to equip researchers and practitioners working within the water sector across the HKH with clear concepts and better understanding of the multifaceted nature of river basin management, this resource book covers both theoretical and practical concepts across physical, social, institutional, and governance aspects of IRBM and its application. It provides the broad framework and basic materials required to develop a course on IRBM for trainees from the region and beyond, but particularly from river basins with strong upstream-downstream linkages.

Our approach in all of our river basin work is holistic, flexible, and inclusive, transcending scales, administrative boundaries, modalities, and disciplines. This approach is well captured in the multiscale IRBM resource book whose focus on mountain specific issues provides a means of developing solutions that address the needs of all basin water users, both upstream and downstream. This is an important antidote to the limitations of sectoral approaches, in which interventions in one sector can have negative impacts on another, leading to rejection or failure, increase in conflicts, and poor social and environmental outcomes.