BLOG
Taliban Regime’s Damming of Transboundary Rivers
December 8th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a report on Afghanistan’s growing need to build dams for its water and power needs, and Pakistan’s opposition to dam building on the Kunar River and its tributaries is due to political rather than technical reasons: Afghanistan suffers from severe water and electricity shortages. This is partly because its geographic location and […]
Read more »Liquid Front Lines: South Asia’s Water Wars
November 8th, 2025
Via The Economist, a look at how climate change and rising energy demand could worsen conflict over rivers: RARELY CALM, the cross-border politics of South Asia’s great rivers have been roiling of late. In late October Afghanistan revealed plans to build dams on the Kabul river, rankling Pakistan, with which it had skirmished on the […]
Read more »The Parched Tiger: How India and Pakistan’s Cooperation Over Water Has Avoided Conflict
November 3rd, 2025
Via Vision of Humanity, a look at how India and Pakistan’s shared dependence on the Indus River has, for six decades, been governed by an agreement that has outlasted wars, political upheavals and climatic shocks: The Ecological Threat Report 2025 describes the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan as a “core conflict-resolution tool and […]
Read more »Solar-Powered Farming is Digging Pakistan into a Water Catastrophe
October 17th, 2025
Via Reuters, a report on the impact that solar-powered farming is having upon Pakistan water supply: Solar-powered tube wells drive increased irrigation, expanding fields of thirsty rice crops Development coincides with rapidly depleting water tables in Pakistan’s bread basket Farmers financially benefit from cheap Chinese-made modules despite environmental concerns Officials studying impact and trying to […]
Read more »When Rivers Become Red Lines
September 9th, 2025
Via Geopolitical Futures, a look at how scale and urgency have heightened the importance of certain water resources: Societies have tried to control resources as long as there have been resources to control. Whether precious metals, arable lands or hydrocarbon deposits, access to resources shapes military postures, influences political alliances and sets foreign policies – […]
Read more »Indus Waters Treaty: From Cooperative Vision to Calculated Confrontation
September 4th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a look at how – instead of believing that strategic patience would breed stability – the Modi government’s strategic escalation has made Indus water flows a tool of coercive diplomacy: The Indus Waters Treaty, once described as a treaty that withstood three wars between India and Pakistan, is receiving much flak after […]
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