ABSTRACT
The conceptual understanding of transboundary spaces is set in multiscalar, multilayered and plural frames, with political, economic, socio-cultural and ecological perspectives and narratives informing such frames. The transboundary-ness encompasses horizontal and vertical spaces and the various connections and ruptures within and across such spaces. What constitutes the edge of one particular nation-state, and where does the edge start of the other nation-state are determined in territorial terms by boundaries and borderlines which are highlighted and accentuated by physical geographical attributes and features such as hills, valleys and rivers. The determination of such edges in the case of transboundary spaces, physicality determined by flows rather than fixity, underlining the context of ecological contiguities and ruptures is a major geopolitical challenge confronting nation-state. This feeds into the challenges of being able to broaden the narrow security agenda of the nation-state of framing transboundary spaces in strategic and geopolitical contexts, but in alternative framings of political ecology, community worldviews, and of layered human and non-human geographies.
