Connecting waters: Developing a co-creation process for a comprehensive framework to measure water values in transboundary river basins.

Climate change is altering the availability of freshwater across river basins, with particularly pronounced effects in the mountainous headwaters of the Syr Darya river basin. These changes can intensify competition among uses and complicate decision-making. Co-developing strategies that integrate biophysical processes with social priorities is essential for managing these systems. 

 

Making explicit how different water uses and benefits are prioritized and understood by stakeholders can support this integration for cooperative decision making. However, valuation approaches are often discipline-specific and externally defined, limiting their relevance across diverse social, ecological, and governance contexts. Additionally, different values of water are often assessed individually and not comprehensively. Bringing together multiple values of water in one framework can provide a platform for cooperative discussion and governance over transboundary water governance. This research addresses this challenge by presenting a participatory process for co-developing a context-specific framework of indicators and methods to measure the value of water in a way that is methodologically grounded and locally meaningful. 

 

The process is developed and applied in the Syr Darya river basin, a transboundary catchment originating in mountain headwaters and characterized by strong interdependencies between upstream energy production and downstream agricultural water use. The first step identifies priorities for water use using a value-preference Q-sort survey combined with a serious game. Results indicate a dominant preference for agricultural water use, followed by energy and environmental uses, while also highlighting potential future shifts toward increased valuation of environmental and social functions of water. 

 

The second step involves a stakeholder workshop in which participants articulate the relevance of valuing water for basin management, identify basin-specific values, confirm priority rankings, spatially map values across the basin, and jointly assess which methods are most appropriate for measuring each value. Values are considered through economic, environmental, and socio-cultural lenses, allowing for the integration of diverse data types and knowledge systems. Following the workshop, researchers compile the framework in coordination with stakeholders and compile selected indicators and methods. 

Stakeholder workshops were conducted in November 2024 and 2025. Preliminary results show that the framework supports integrated assessment of water values across the basin and can inform adaptive management strategies. The paper contributes a transdisciplinary approach that integrates a comprehensive assessment of the multiple values of water into transboundary river basin governance, offering insights for sustainable water management.