Our members and partner organizations provide ISET with key capabilities uncommon for small organizations. These include the following:

An established publication capacity: ISET is closely linked with Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF). NWCF publishes Water Nepal, a peer reviewed journal that enables widespread dissemination of project and research results internationally and in South Asia at a very low cost. Recent international quality publications also produced through their facility include Rethinking the Mosaic: Investigations into Local Water Management and Fluid Mosaic: Water Governance in the Context of Variability, Uncertainty and Change. Publication in Nepal is now both high quality and relatively inexpensive.

Established links with field action NGOs: All core members have worked closely with and, in many cases, assisted in the establishment of or serve on the board of local NGOs.

Substantial experience and an established stature to influence policy in their respective countries and fields: Members have served on high-level governmental committees and are familiar with the operation of large development organizations such as the World Bank and UN agencies. They play an active role reviewing and catalyzing issues that define the ongoing debates over natural resource management within their respective countries.

Solid training and experience in interdisciplinary analysis: Most core members have both technical and social science degrees. Basic science degrees in geology, hydrology, forestry, botany, water resource and power engineering are combined with graduate training in institutional economics, anthropology, sociology and political science. All core members have substantial experience working at the field level in a variety of country contexts.

Large collections of data and documents that are often inaccessible to researchers and other groups: Each core member has been working in his or her field for many years. In the process, they have collected much of the local and regional 'gray' literature: project documents, basic data, etc. These pools of data will be shared and made accessible through computerization. Core members in Nepal have already started this process and have developed a large database.