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This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a concept that is not without controversy. Taking the Anthropocene as an epistemological divergence where nature can no longer be viewed as separate from humanity, this forum asks how moving away from understanding hydraulic systems as essentially stable to understanding them as unstable and profoundly influenced by humans changes our understanding ofthe geopolitics of water. Collectively the contributions to this forum illustrate that formulating a water geopolitics of the Anthropocene requires 1) moving beyond a focus on fluvial flows to consider other forms of water; 2) broadening our understanding of the actors involved in water geopolitics; 3) examining new geopolitical tactics, particularly those grounded in law; 4) engaging critically with new and emerging forms of visualization and representation in the geopolitics of water, and; 5) examining how the notion of the Anthropocene has been used towards geopolitical ends and worked to elide different positionalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International rivers are conventionally understood as watercourses that cross national boundaries, while borders themselves are taken to be static and given – passive features over and across which riparian processes unfold. Employing such straightforward framings of international rivers and borders, academic studies and policy analyses of transboundary water governance perpetuate problematic ideas about the relevant scales and actors involved in international river conflicts and crises. Through a historical examination of the Ganges River and the Indo-Bangladeshi border, I introduce the ‘river-border complex’ as a new framework for reconceptualizing international rivers and borders as synergistic, co-constitutive and interdependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]