Enamul Choudhury and Shafiqul Islam bring an entirely new perspective to the study of transboundary water conflict. It is not possible, they argue, to identify the common causes of conflict between countries or parts of countries that must share water resources. Whatever commonalities appear to exist, and whatever general theories seem to hold, are likely to be swamped by the underlying dynamics in each situation. The key features of the underlying context—what they call enabling conditions—are crucial to understanding what's happening in each water conflict. Whatever causeeffect model or general explanation analysts think they have found, regardless of how many conflicts they study, complexity science suggests that every transboundary water conflict is, in fact, emergent. That is, it will continuously evolve as the unique underlying features in each case interact and fold back on each other in dynamic and unpredictable ways.

So whatever might have caused a dispute—countries seeking to assert their sovereignty, rapid urbanization demanding a redistribution of potable water, construction of new energy infrastructure, changing environmental conditions affecting agricultural production and so on—the presenting features in each conflict and the opportunities to intervene will keep evolving. The ebb and flow of political, economic, ecological and other forces are almost impossible to forecast with confidence. Therefore, those who seek to intervene have no choice but to proceed on a contingent basis. That is, they must generate a wide range of scenarios describing what might happen as underlying conditions interact with proximate causes and effects in surprising ways, and they must be inventive with regard to the efforts they formulate to intervene in the hope of resolving a dispute, or moving it in a less contentious direction. There cannot possibly be a “best” method of resolving transboundary water disputes that is likely to work in all situations, or even promise to provide a good starting point. The stakeholders and decision makers in each situation have to share their concerns, collect information together, consult with scientists and engineers to formulate possible courses of action, perhaps undertake experiments and certainly arrange for close monitoring of changing conditions if they want to have any hope of achieving their interests.