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WATER POLITICS

As reported in China Dialogue, water has always been a flash point between India and Pakistan. The two neighbours compete over use of the waters of the Indus River, the backbone of agriculture and industry in both states. As the Indian subcontinent was partied in 1947 to create the new state of Pakistan, the rivers were partitioned in 1960 through the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Five decades on, the radically altered landscape of Asia’s water resources has put the agreement at risk, and oth India and Pakistan face a deepening water crisis, driven by population growth, industrial demand and gross mismanagement of water resources. Climate change has added fuel to the flames. Melting Himalayan glaciers are projected to reduce the flow of water in the Indus Basin, particularly for Pakistan, which is now calling for an urgent revision of the treaty.

Here are two articles that take a look at the crisis and possible ways to move forward.  The first notes:

As Pakistan went to the Court of Arbitration in The Hague once again in mid-August 2011, seeking an order for India to put on hold construction of the Kishanganga dam until the final decision of the court, the overwhelming response among Indian policymakers was: “Oh, not again.”

The project on the Jhelum River, one of the main tributaries of the Indus, has been opposed by Pakistan since it got off the drawing board. But India has steadfastly maintained that the run-of-the-river project follows the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between the two countries to the letter. Just about everybody in India feels that the treaty is the best basis for apportioning the waters of the giant Indus river basin, that India as the upper riparian country has stuck to the treaty through war and peace, and that Indians are unfairly blamed for Pakistan’s water woes to cover up the inefficiency or worse of the water policymakers in Pakistan.

Given the near-unanimity of this view in India, and the near-constant rhetoric in Pakistan that “India is stealing our waters”, there is very little space for any level-headed, rational and scientific conversation on the subject. The trust deficit is so high – especially in India since many of the country’s terrorist attacks over the last three decades have been traced back to Pakistan – that anybody advocating a dialogue would be lucky not to be dubbed a spy. Anyway, Indian officials firmly hold, there is nothing to talk about: there is a treaty, India is sticking to it, that’s the end of the matter. And if it is not, the officials in New Delhi add, both governments have a permanent Indus Water Commission that is meant to sort out all issues, so why is there any need for anybody else to get involved?

Expectedly, this line of argument does not go down at all well in a water-stressed country like Pakistan, especially when the average Pakistani sees in the media that India is building structures upstream that can potentially choke off a part of the river flow. Knowing the extent to which it is under international scrutiny, India has not and is unlikely to build any structure that will reduce by even one cubic metre the volume of water it is supposed to supply to Pakistan under the treaty. But thanks to the trust deficit, few Pakistanis feel reassured.

Recent projects like the Kishanganga dam have no doubt added to the worry in Pakistan, though Indians are going blue in the face assuring the Pakistanis that the hydroelectricity project will not hold back any water at all, and that the project is being carried out as per the 1960 treaty. Indian planners point out that they cannot really go further and scrap the projects altogether – the parts of Indian-administered Kashmir through which the Indus and its western tributaries flow are chronically starved of electricity, and there are few economically viable options to meet the need other than hydropower.

It looks to be a situation where only open dialogue between India and Pakistan at every level – government, media, civil society – can clear the air. The chances of such a dialogue do not seem high at the moment, but it is nonetheless vital to keep striving for this. It is vital not only to build trust, but also because now there are two factors in the water-sharing puzzle that were not taken into account by the Indus Waters Treaty: deforestation and climate change.

The Indus and its main tributaries rise in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China, and flow through India on their way to Pakistan and then the Arabian Sea. When the Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960, the volume of water was apportioned between India and Pakistan on the basis of the assumption that the flow of the water in the rivers would remain constant. This assumption is now in question due to these two factors.

While there are few official reports about the extent of deforestation in western TAR through which these rivers flow, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the already-sparse tree cover of the Tibetan Plateau is being rapidly denuded. Indian hydrologists have reported an increase in the silt load in the rivers as a result. They are expecting an effect on the water flow, but are uncertain of what the effect would be. The same goes for the effects of climate change. While some of the large glaciers of the Karakoram Range that feed these rivers are expanding, most of the glaciers in the western Himalayas – including the Karakoram Range – are receding due to global warming. The net effect on water flow is unpredictable, but likely to be negative, the hydrologists say.

So there is a treaty that apportions a certain amount of water between India and Pakistan. What happens to the treaty if that amount is no longer certain? How will the two countries amend the treaty – for which it does have a provision – for a fair water-sharing arrangement in the future? It requires a cool-headed, civilised dialogue to even start to answer this question. Then it requires a lot of scientific research in both countries to reduce uncertainties in the water flow projections. And it definitely requires close cooperation from the authorities in China, where the rivers originate.

Anybody advocating these steps would be considered dangerously naïve by most people in India and Pakistan today. But not to take these steps may prove even more naïve in the long run.

The second article reports

A typical Pakistani newspaper article on the Indus Waters Treaty begins by explaining the essential elements of the 1960 agreement with India – allocation of western rivers to Pakistan and the eastern rivers to India, restrictions on building water storage infrastructure, and the underlying dispute resolution mechanism – before citing a few examples of finger-pointing across the border, and concluding in the classically paranoid tones of a lower riparian.

Cases such as the Baglihar Dam, the Kishenganga Dam and the Wullar Barrage, where Pakistan claims violations of the Indus treaty terms, are brought up time and time again, and their outcomes are monotonous: the two nations are unable to reach an agreement, and the case is taken to a neutral expert for mediation, or to the International Court of Arbitration. Although these issues may be important for Pakistan’s sustainability, it seems the resulting discourse has left little, if any, space for cooperation.

The Indus Basin was developed by the British to function as a single system; but the enormous water works built to control and to use the river’s water for certain limited ends, has since been split in two. The boundary that now separates Pakistan and India – the Radcliffe Line – was crudely drawn up in 1947 to divide an area shared by competing nation states.  It was not chosen with the impacts it would have on the river basin in mind.

For 13 years after the division, the two countries maintained the system. This was a period of inefficient water management, continued hostilities and a wider anticipation of a final settlement. The Radcliffe Line, that not only divided the land but also the water of Punjab, received condemnation from both countries. Finally, in 1960, the two nations signed a water treaty under the auspices of the World Bank.

Some might argue that the Indus Waters Treaty has performed very well for the past 50 years. After all, it has survived three wars. But there is an underlying reason why this treaty has been so popular on both sides: it promotes a passive aggressive stance between the two nations, which is precisely what the establishment requires to maintain its status quo. It creates fear among the Pakistani population, based on the idea that India is “stealing our water”. The rhetoric becomes uncontrollable when it gets into the hands of non-state actors, right-wing religious hard-liners whose purpose is to depict an India driven by cruel intentions.

When it comes to managing trans-boundary waters, change is the only constant. Change management requires a shift in the paradigm: the way we understand the river basin, its people and their livelihoods. Water is a finite, freely flowing resource that should not be divided by geopolitical boundaries. Environmental and ecological concerns are extremely important. A regional approach is required to maintain the prosperity and dominance of the mighty Indus.

Article seven of the Indus Waters Treaty mentions “future cooperation”, which points to future efforts to jointly optimise the potential of the Indus River system. But very little attention has been paid to cooperative projects: the joint observation of discharge which enables correct measurement of water entering into Pakistan along with the environmental flows and earthquake risks; and the potential of joint engineering works to augment storage, produce power and better moderate floods.

Certainly, a trust deficit exists between the two countries. Experts suggest that advance information to the lower riparian – Pakistan – about planned interventions such as dams and barrages, and when reservoirs will be filled, can bridge these issues. However, this seems hopelessly unlikely given cases such as Wullar Barrage, a stalemate case, which has been in its negotiation stage for 26 years.

We cannot depend on a few state-actors to determine the fate of relations between the two countries, and instead should work towards a more informal diplomacy that involves non-officials in transboundary water management. By bringing together state and non-state actors, such diplomacy also provides a way for poor and marginalised communities to voice their concerns, which should be reflected in national and sub-national decisions on water management projects in the region.

One area where collaborative work should be urgently undertaken is on ground-water aquifers, especially near the border areas of Pakistan and India. The Indus Waters Treaty only considers sharing of surface water discharge from the rivers and overlooks groundwater abstraction. A study conducted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), using analysis from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, found that the aquifers of Pakistan will be affected by the disproportionate abstraction of groundwater in India. It concludes that “the issue of transboundary groundwater with India has to be addressed and an addendum has to be negotiated between basin states for inclusion in the Indus Waters Treaty.”

The 1994 Jordan-Israel Treaty can help us learn manageable ways of dealing with both ground and surface transboundary water. Moreover, there are global laws governing transboundary aquifers, such as Article 42 of International Water Law. Any effective water-sharing agreement must be extended to include groundwater.

First it was the territorial dispute over Kashmir, now it is water: tension in this part of the world is nothing new. The difference between these conflicts is that the latter is an existential issue. Pakistan has survived without Kashmir for 60 years; it will not survive without water for even 60 days. Bringing water to the forefront of Indo-Pakistani relations could have a devastating effect on regional security and prosperity.

It is pertinent to Pakistan’s growth that we form our water policy based on a holistic approach. We need to work closely with our neighbours in order to share this resource, rather than divide it. I find it necessary to cite the views of Indian water policy expert Ramaswamy Iyer, who has called for a new approach to national water policy: “The best way of avoiding conflicts is for the upper riparian (India) to adopt a cautious and minimalist approach to such interventions; undertake them where absolutely necessary with due regard to the interests of the lower riparians (Pakistan); provide advance information to the latter about plans for intervention; consult them at all stages on possible impacts; and take care to avoid significant harm or injury to them.”

Other Indian policymakers are also becoming more sensitive to the anxieties of Pakistan. In order to improve water cooperation, concerns of the downstream country need to be addressed through initiatives that build trust and share knowledge across borders.