Putting Benefit Sharing into Practice: What IUCN Has Learned So Far

Over the last four years, through the BRIDGE programme, IUCN has been learning what benefit sharing actually looks like when countries try to apply it in real basins, with real institutions, real political constraints and real pressures. As with any new and evolving approach, the experience has been both challenging and deeply instructive.

Across the BRIDGE basins, benefit sharing took shape in different ways. In West Africa’s Mono Basin, shared‑benefit thinking surfaced naturally as countries strengthened joint planning and basin institutions. In Southern Africa’s Buzi‑Pungwe‑Save Basin, IUCN saw how expectations and framing influence countries’ willingness to engage. Finally, in East Africa’s Sio–Malaba–Malakisi Basin, regional leadership from NELSAP showed what is possible when institutions are mature and trust has been built over time. These examples reflect only part of the picture – the new IUCN Benefit Sharing learning brief distils these insights and explores several more.

From this wider experience, a clear pattern emerged: benefit sharing is not a fixed method but a flexible governance logic that helps countries work through shared risks, opportunities and trade‑offs in ways that reflect their political and institutional realities. The experience has shown what works, what doesn’t, and how much patience, trust and careful framing are needed to make benefit sharing meaningful in practice. Benefit sharing is still evolving, but countries are increasingly finding value in approaches that help them look beyond allocation and toward the wider benefits that cooperation can unlock, especially when multi‑level water governance structures are present or can be strengthened.
 

Read the new brief: Benefit Sharing in Practice – Learning from the IUCN BRIDGE Programme

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Launched in 2011, and currently in its fifth phase, the Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) initiative aims to build water governance capacities through learning, demonstration, leadership, and consensus-building, in transboundary river basins. Financed by the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), IUCN, with partners, have over the past decade implemented transboundary river governance and dialogue through BRIDGE in over twenty river and lake basins worldwide.

For more information on BRIDGE and the brief contact: 

Maria Lindelien, Senior Water Governance Officer: [email protected] 

Additional resources:
 

• Multi-level Water Governance Brief 

• Practitioner’s Guide to Benefit Sharing in Transboundary Basins