The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
GRF · Diplomacy Nexus
Scientific, policy and institutional dialogue across jurisdictions and shared global concerns. Diplomacy Nexus is an established platform of The Global Risks Forum.
Diplomacy Nexus studies how states, institutions and scientific communities govern shared risks across borders: rivers and aquifers, the climate system, the oceans and other commons, conflict, technology, humanitarian access and human mobility. Its pages read each field through mandates, agreements and institutional dialogue: what the law requires, which bodies hold authority, how evidence enters negotiation and how cooperation is recorded. Indicators are named with their units and sources, never with values, and every decision belongs to the institution that holds it.
Scientific cooperation, joint fact-finding and intergovernmental assessment as channels between states, and the diplomacy that makes research cooperation possible.
Transboundary rivers, aquifers and power systems: allocation, notification, data exchange, benefit sharing and the basin institutions that hold them together.
The UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, the biodiversity and ozone regimes: pledges, transparency, stocktakes and texts negotiated by consensus.
Peaceful settlement under the UN Charter, environmental peacebuilding and conflict-sensitive dialogue where resource stress meets fragile institutions.
Norms, standards, export controls, spectrum and orbit allocation for technologies that cross borders faster than the rules that govern them.
Access, consent, humanitarian principles, disaster law and sanctions exemptions that let relief reach people in conflict and disaster.
The high seas and the deep seabed, the atmosphere, Antarctica and outer space, governed by treaty regimes beyond national jurisdiction.
Refugee, human rights and regional law, the global compacts and mobility arrangements for people displaced by conflict, disaster and climate change.
The screen a team would use to follow this field: its measures, states and decisions. Names are examples and values are illustrative.
Shared basin dialogue · Round 7
| Art. 3 | Data exchange | 1 | Agreed ad ref |
| Art. 5 | Low-flow sharing | 9 | Open |
| Art. 7 | Notification of works | 2 | Open |
| Art. 9 | Dispute avoidance | 3 | Not discussed |
International scientific cooperation methods.
TopicCross-border resource dialogue.
TopicGlobal environmental cooperation.
TopicConflict-sensitive and peace-related risk dialogue.
TopicInternational technology governance conversations.
TopicHumanitarian safeguards and institutional roles.
TopicTrust, mandates and shared work.
TopicOceans, atmosphere, polar and other commons.
TopicInstitutional cooperation and conflict-sensitive human mobility.
Three families of instruments side by side against the baseline, each with its own lag and adoption speed, under the coverage and compliance you set; effect sizes are teaching values to replace with evidence. Scenario: named assumptions about the future, not a forecast. The map on this page shows The Tigris and Euphrates Basin; the model itself is not tied to a place.
Controls
Readouts
| Year | Baseline | Regulation | Economic incentive | Information and capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 100.0 | 99.5 | 98.8 | 99.1 |
| 1 | 102.0 | 101.2 | 100.1 | 99.8 |
| 2 | 104.0 | 102.5 | 101.1 | 99.9 |
| 3 | 106.1 | 103.5 | 101.6 | 100.0 |
| 4 | 108.2 | 103.7 | 101.8 | 100.7 |
| 5 | 110.4 | 103.2 | 101.7 | 102.1 |
| 6 | 112.6 | 102.0 | 101.6 | 103.9 |
| 7 | 114.9 | 100.4 | 101.6 | 105.9 |
| 8 | 117.2 | 99.2 | 102.1 | 108.0 |
| 9 | 119.5 | 98.6 | 102.9 | 110.1 |
| 10 | 121.9 | 98.9 | 104.2 | 112.3 |
| 11 | 124.3 | 99.7 | 105.7 | 114.5 |
| 12 | 126.8 | 101.1 | 107.4 | 116.8 |
| 13 | 129.4 | 102.7 | 109.4 | 119.2 |
| 14 | 131.9 | 104.5 | 111.4 | 121.6 |
| 15 | 134.6 | 106.5 | 113.5 | 124.0 |
| 16 | 137.3 | 108.5 | 115.7 | 126.5 |
| 17 | 140.0 | 110.7 | 118.0 | 129.0 |
| 18 | 142.8 | 112.9 | 120.4 | 131.6 |
| 19 | 145.7 | 115.1 | 122.8 | 134.2 |
| 20 | 148.6 | 117.4 | 125.2 | 136.9 |
The model runs on the teaching values set by the controls. To calibrate it for a place, read it against these admitted layers and series, which this page's map can draw:
Across the six pillars, led by Nexus Consortium
How stress moves through the field under different scenarios. Real geography, example values.
Fig. 01Where stress concentrates across the Diplomacy Nexus field. Illustrative levels, not results.
The joint body meets on schedule, data flow under the agreement and notifications are acknowledged. This is the reference state against which every later change in the dialogue is read.
Low flow makes fixed shares hard to deliver. Downstream ministries ask for releases, upstream operators protect storage, and the drought and consultation clauses decide whether talks stay technical or turn political.
A flood wave from upstream needs data and warnings shared within hours. Afterwards the joint body reviews what was notified, when, and how release decisions were communicated to the other side.
Levels in the figure are examples in a design, not findings. A programme replaces them with labelled evidence it owns.
The steps an instrument takes from mandate to evaluation, each with the pillar that runs it, and the decisions that stay with the authority. Teaching model with stated illustrative values, not a prediction. The map on this page shows The Tigris and Euphrates Basin; the model itself is not tied to a place.
Across the six pillars, led by Nexus Consortium
Science diplomacy is the use of scientific cooperation and shared evidence in relations between states, and of diplomacy to make scientific cooperation possible. Diplomacy Nexus, Global Risks Forum's platform on cooperation across borders, studies how states govern shared rivers, climate and nature, conflict, technology, humanitarian access, the global commons and human mobility; it does not mediate or represent any state.
International affairs scholars; public institutions; policy diplomats; research networks.
Comparative institutional dialogue; science diplomacy; cooperation design.
Transboundary dialogue records; science diplomacy guides.
Assembled from the Nexus Standards area profile Geopolitical and security risk: the hazards it names, the systems and communities that carry the loss, the controls and institutions that dampen it and the data that observe it. Pick an initiating event and step through the cascade to see where mandates meet and which decisions fall to whom. The Map view places the run on an example geography with open data. Every weight is a stated assumption. An exercise for dialogue, not a forecast, an assessment or a position. To model a place of your own choosing, open the full System Builder.
Hazards
Systems and couplings
Controls
NS-0 Constitution and principlesNS-3 Risk record UNIs (grammar, legacy crosswalk, allocation authority)NS-9 Contextual UNIs (deployments, instances, programme instances)NS-11 Verification and monitoring (evidence, attestations, zero-trust conformance observation)NRS-P8 Security, terrorism and geopolitical riskNRS-H60 Hazard family: Supply-chain and flow disruption (NHS-1 sys.supply-chain)NRS-H62 Hazard family: Compound and multi-hazard events (NHS-1 sys.compound)NRS-H31 Hazard family: Persistent and bioaccumulative substances (NHS-1 poll.persistent)NRS-H41 Hazard family: Animal-to-human spillover (NHS-1 health.zoonotic)NRS-H59 Hazard family: Economic shocks and governance failure (NHS-1 soc.economic)Observation
Example geography
Many of the risks the Nexus Consortium studies are transboundary by nature. Rivers flow through several countries, and a dam or a drought upstream changes what is available downstream. Fish stocks, pollution and storms move across maritime boundaries. Greenhouse gases mix in a single atmosphere. Pathogens, information and financial shocks travel along the same networks that connect economies. When one jurisdiction acts alone, the costs and benefits fall partly on others.
Political science and game theory explain why cooperation on such problems is hard. Each party may gain from a shared agreement but gain more by letting others bear the cost, the classic collective action problem. Information is unequal and contested; trust is limited; and institutions designed for one era struggle with problems that are faster, more technical and more interconnected. Science can clarify the physical facts, but it does not by itself settle questions of fairness, priority or responsibility.
When cooperation fails, risks cascade. A dispute over water allocation during drought can affect food production, energy supply and migration. Weak coordination during a disaster can delay assistance. Unmanaged competition in new technologies can create security risks for all. Cooperation is therefore part of risk management, not separate from it.
Why now: the agreement on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction entered into force in January 2026, and the International Court of Justice gave its advisory opinion on states' climate obligations in July 2025; both raise practical questions about how institutions in different jurisdictions share evidence. Diplomacy Nexus convenes that exchange, and reviewed dialogue records can inform the Regional Systems series of Reports.
The sectors a policy on Diplomacy Nexus has to coordinate: a choice in one ministry lands in the others.
Signature
Water and its partners
Water gives irrigation to food (0.8), cooling water and hydropower to energy (0.6) and environmental flows to biodiversity (0.6).
W · E · I · F · H · B
Diplomacy Nexus is designed to convene and record dialogue that helps institutions understand each other's evidence, mandates and constraints. It does not negotiate on anyone's behalf.
Structured exchanges in which institutions explain their mandates, evidence and limits to one another.
Using shared scientific work to build understanding across jurisdictions. See science diplomacy.
Studying how mandates, rules and trust make shared work possible. See regional dialogue methods.
Signature outputs are designed to include transboundary dialogue records and science diplomacy guides, each published with its participants' consent and its limits.
The instruments, mandates, actors and accountability arrangements a policymaker, diplomat or development agency works with, citing the agreements that set them. Structures follow the frameworks named. Any state or progress drawn is illustrative, not a record.
The agreements that set mandates and commitments on Diplomacy Nexus, from adoption to their current horizon.
The kinds of instrument available on Diplomacy Nexus, by level of government and cooperation.
| Instrument type | Local | National | Regional | Global |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory | Zoning, building codes | Laws, standards, licensing | Harmonised rules | Conventions and treaties |
| Economic | Local levies, grants | Budget lines, taxes, insurance schemes | Risk pools, regional funds | Financing mechanisms |
| Information | Local warnings | Disclosure, early warning, statistics | Data sharing arrangements | Global monitoring and reporting |
| Institutional | Local committees | Lead agencies, coordination councils | Regional bodies and secretariats | Multilateral mandates |
| Cooperative | Community agreements | Partnership compacts | Memoranda and joint programmes | Agreements and joint commitments |
Resources and environment: shared water and energy systems, climate and nature diplomacy and global commons. Human security: peace and human security, humanitarian cooperation and migration and displacement. Methods and emerging issues: science diplomacy, regional dialogue methods and technology diplomacy.
Four chapters bring together specialist communities: Peace and Human Security, Migration and Displacement Governance, Science Diplomacy and Global Commons Governance.
The discipline overview defines the field, and the decision-rights context sets out who holds authority over the matters the platform discusses.
Each topic page states which institutions hold decisions on its subject, what dialogue can add and what it cannot. That structure keeps the platform's convening role distinct from the mandates of the states and bodies that decide.
Rain, flood water, root-zone soil moisture and population density over the Tigris and Euphrates Basin, from NASA GIBS. Each layer carries its own date.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 4
Water now, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
Water now, framed on the Tigris and Euphrates Basin.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.
Layers and dates
Every claim on Diplomacy Nexus rests on methods with a canonical page in the STEM Commons, so readers can see what a finding depends on and where its limits lie.
A question becomes evidence, a governed build, an organised community, a controlled test, a reviewed publication and, finally, a decision taken by the competent authority under its own rules.
Each step of the cycle in the pillar it runs in; the decision stays with the competent authority, outside the programme.
Diplomacy Nexus works through six pillars of one annual programme, led by the Nexus Consortium, with the Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), GRF and the Global Risks Alliance (GRA) each contributing in its role: explore, experiment and prototype in Labs, build, simulate and prepare in Foundry, convene and test in Universe, codify, correct and apply in Nexus Standards, publish in every format in Reports, teach in the open in Risk Academy.
Programme yearAll phases
Route
The whole programme
Every pillar hands its work to another; together they close the year's feedback loops.
L · F · U · S · R · A
and 14 more
The platform does not set standards. It reads its evidence against the frameworks that competent bodies have adopted, so a finding can be placed where a decision-maker already works.
| Framework or standard | Body | What it sets |
|---|---|---|
| Charter of the United Nations, Chapter VI | United Nations | The duty to settle disputes by peaceful means: negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement and regional arrangements |
| Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties | United Nations | How treaties are concluded, interpreted, amended, suspended and terminated, including the narrow rule on fundamental change of circumstances |
| UN Watercourses Convention | United Nations General Assembly | Equitable and reasonable utilisation, the obligation not to cause significant harm, regular data exchange and notification of planned measures |
| UNECE Water Convention | UNECE, open to all UN member states | Prevention of transboundary impact, agreements and joint bodies between riparians, regular reporting and an Implementation Committee |
| Helsinki Rules and Berlin Rules | International Law Association | Non-binding codifications of international water law; the Berlin Rules extend to all waters and to environmental and human rights considerations |
| SDG indicator 6.5.2 | UNECE and UNESCO as custodian agencies | How the share of transboundary basin area under an operational arrangement for water cooperation is defined and reported |
| Paris Agreement | UNFCCC | Nationally determined contributions, the enhanced transparency framework, the global stocktake and a facilitative compliance committee |
| Espoo Convention | UNECE | Environmental impact assessment of proposed activities likely to cause significant adverse transboundary impact, with notification and consultation of affected parties |
| Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction | UNDRR | Priorities for understanding and governing disaster risk, including international cooperation and transboundary early warning |
| UN Convention on the Law of the Sea | United Nations | Maritime zones, freedom of the high seas, the deep seabed as common heritage of mankind and compulsory dispute settlement |
GCRI studies a field as science, GRF governs it and GRA builds shared financial understanding of it. Diplomacy Nexus links to its counterparts so that work on one side is visible on the others.
Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.
Never send personal data, sensitive infrastructure detail or anything you have no right to share. A contribution is reviewed before use; sending it confers no authorship or editorial rights, and sponsorship never buys a finding.
Choose a view and press Play to follow the platform's process, its programme year, the standards it applies and how its findings are published. The outline shows how the work is designed to run, not the status of any decision.
Diplomacy Nexus
Platforms · Programme year · Standards · Reports
A platform joins a field to named methods, labelled evidence and the outputs it publishes, without becoming the authority it serves.
Diplomacy Nexus home · Platforms · Shared methodsAn outline of how the work is designed to run; it does not report the status of any decision or record.
Start from who you are. Answer an open call. Or form and lead a competence cell on the Diplomacy Nexus platform.
Ministries, statistics offices and agencies: a national desk and chapter, and a seat in the working groups. National chapters
Operators, regulators, banks, insurers and professional bodies whose work touches Diplomacy Nexus. Participate
Courses and practice, with a record of every course completed. Free to study. Open learning
Draft, review and adopt the methods and data standards with the working groups. Working groups
Universities, civil society and individual experts: projects, data and review. Write to the team
| Open call | Seeks | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| Founding call for experts to the working groups CALL-FOUNDING-EXPERTS | expert, editor, chair | 2026-12-15 |
| Open nomination for the three independent expert seats of the Global Standards Council CALL-GSC-IND | council-member | 2026-12-01 |
| Nominations of interim regional members (applies only if the transitional provision is decided) CALL-GSC-REG | council-member | 2026-12-15 |
| Review of the wave-1 risk core outlines (C1, C2, C3, C4, C8, C10, C11) CALL-REVIEW-WAVE1 | contributor | 2027-01-31 |
| Experts for the core standards of risk science: uncertainty and evidence grading, scales, structured expert judgement, tolerability, extremes and compound events, catastrophic and existential risk, ethics and equity, units and measurement (NRS-C17 to NRS-C24) CALL-CORE-SCIENCE | expert, editor, chair | 2027-01-31 |
| Independent reviewers for the families of the hazard atlas, three from at least two regions for each family (NHS2-R19), priority families first CALL-ATLAS-REVIEW | expert | 2027-03-31 |
| Members of the interim Frontier Safety Review Panel and red-team reviewers (biosafety and biosecurity, AI safety and security, critical-infrastructure security); applications treated in confidence CALL-FRONTIER-SAFETY-REVIEW | expert | 2026-11-30 |
| Experts in ontology, metrology, software verification and conformity assessment for the requirement register, the NHS-2 machine representation, the conformance test suites and the conformity assessment scheme CALL-CONFORMANCE-ONTOLOGY | expert, editor | 2027-01-31 |
Calls past their closing date are hidden automatically. Every call, proposal and route: open areas and calls.
Bring together three to seven people with complementary skills: data, field practice, policy and communication.
Write to the team with the cell's name, members, area and region. You receive a reference and a contact. Write to the team
Pick one focus: research and evidence, data and maps, standards review, or community preparedness.
Follow shared study paths at Risk Academy, with practice and a record of every course completed. Hazards and resilience
Hold regular sessions. Publish what the cell learns through Reports. Bring findings to the working groups. Working groups
What a national team or a local community can do on The Global Risks Index (NXS-GRX) today.
Open risk profiles for 195 countries, with sources and licences on every value. Open the Index
Correct a value or reply for your country. The change is logged with its effect. Open the Index
Offer a dataset. It enters through the licence gate, with your credit. Open the Index
The Index is the Consortium's indexing system for risk data. Every indicator, hazard, series and country profile carries its Nexus Standards identifier, its source and its licence, so what this page shows can be traced, corrected and reused.
Every country profile carries the source and licence of each value. Correct a value or reply
Open layers on an equal-area hexagon grid, shown as densities per km² or as symbols: People · GHSL 2025People · WorldPop 2025Built-up areaPortsAirportsRoadsRailwaysRivers and lake centrelines
/api/v1/public/grix · https://nexustandards.com/uni/{uni}
Developers · Data · Made with Natural Earth, Public domain; GHSL and WorldPop, CC BY 4.0
Snapshot of the Index registries pinned 2026-10-23 · 22c6eed. Research and risk-analytics information: not a rating, an official classification, a warning, a benchmark or advice.
Information and enquiries are open today. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.
Maps, data and figures on this site are shown for context and general information. They are not advice, forecasts or warnings; the limits of the information are set out in the Disclaimers and Data Notices.
Our articles, maps and twins are free to read and free to republish. Readers and partners keep it that way.
GRF is a not-for-profit institution. To ask who funds a piece of work, use the funding questions form.
Editors and the expert reviewers named on each article decide what we publish. Funders and partners do not review or approve articles before publication.
Articles: CC BY 4.0. Figures, maps, twins and data: CC BY 4.0. Other uses: ask through the permissions form.