The South Asia Water Governance Programme (SAWGP) aims to promote the better transboundary management of the three primary Himalayan rivers (the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra) shared by seven countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan). A key component of the SAWGP programme was to provide support to regional media to strengthen their capacity to report on transboundary water issues in a balanced and evidenced manner. The evaluation to explore how SAWGP’s support to media has influenced the volume and tone of coverage of this issue in print media, particularly focusing on three geographies – the Indus Basin, the Brahmaputra Basin and the Sundarban Landscape is one of the component of a larger assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of the intervention.
CMS conducted content analysis of news reports on transboundary water issues from 24 newspapers from 5 countries around the geographies to identify detect any trends in the volume and tone of coverage.