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WATER POLITICS

Via the July 2013 issue of Asia Policy, an interesting article by Robert Wirsing:

No one doubts that the six mainland states of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC)—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan—harbor an abundance of varied water-resource problems, with a steadily mounting scarcity of freshwater ranking high among them. Because the South Asian region is laced with an array of transboundary rivers vital to the economies of these states, few doubt either that these problems have a geopolitical dimension. There has been vigorous argument about the scale and intensity of this dimension, fed to some extent by mass media–provoked alarm over the imminence of “water wars.” While some skepticism is unquestionably warranted in this regard, the weight of informed opinion today, encouraged by a stream of sober warnings from both official and unofficial sources, recognizes that there is a clear and present danger of serious interstate tension caused by transboundary water disputes.

Adding immeasurably to the urgency and uncertainty of deliberations on the region’s water circumstances are two further developments: the longer-term and clearly menacing consequences of climate change, and the shorter-term and worrisomely quickening pace of China’s dam construction on transboundary rivers shared with South Asia. Under these circumstances, no wonder that many water experts are questioning whether South Asia has in place bilateral and multilateral frameworks adequate to the task of managing the region’s increasing water insecurity. The record of interstate relations in this region over the past few decades offers meager assurance in this regard, but there are recent signs that governments are awakening both to the dangers of water insecurity and to the need for interstate cooperation in coping with them.

The Scarcity of Water in South Asia

Even a limited sampling of recent expert studies leaves practically no room for doubt about the magnitude of the region’s problem of freshwater scarcity. A 2009 study by the 2030 Water Resources Group estimated, for example, that demand for freshwater by 2030 in vastly more populous and urbanized India would grow to almost 1.5 trillion cubic meters—about double its current water supply. “As a result,” the group observed, “most of India’s river basins could face severe deficit by 2030 unless concerted action is taken.”1 A comprehensive 2013 tri-nation study of the water resources of the Indus Basin gave a similarly dire forecast. With India’s population expected to approach 1.7 billion by 2050, and Pakistan’s likely to reach nearly 275 million by the same date, the annual availability of renewable water per capita across the basin (with a total population by then of about 383 million) could dip below 750 cubic meters—an internationally recognized threshold for severe water scarcity.2

Water resource conditions in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin—the world’s second-largest riverine drainage basin—differ significantly from those found in the Indus Basin but are also largely discomforting. Admittedly, a major recent study of water scarcity in Bangladesh contains some encouraging news. Examining meteorological data gathered from the 1940s to the present, the study finds that annual rainfall totals have held fairly constant. It also reports that only on one of the three major transboundary rivers for which data was collected—the Padma/Ganges—have changes in upstream hydrological patterns (such as rainfall, glacial melt, and water drawing or diversion) caused significant variation over time in dry season flow. However, given the importance of that river to southwestern Bangladesh, the study’s finding of a more than 20% decline in the dry season flow since 1960 holds extremely serious consequences for the country’s groundwater recharge and agricultural productivity.3

What this study’s findings highlight is Bangladesh’s exceptionally unfavorable freshwater dependency ratio. The country draws an estimated 91.4% of its surface water from 57 out-of-country rivers feeding into it (primarily from India and China). In other words, decisions made by neighboring governments upriver about extraction and diversion are bound to have a major impact on future water security in Bangladesh, which is expected to grow from an estimated population of 161 million in 2012 to over 194 million in 2050. Extensive dam-building activity on the mainstreams and tributaries of the Ganges, Teesta, and Meghna rivers (by India) and on the Brahmaputra River (by China and India) inevitably exacerbates the extreme vulnerability of Bangladesh’s water dependence and could very well negate whatever improvements Dhaka makes in domestic water management.

The Uncertainty Wrought by Climate Change

There is considerable uncertainty about the pace of climate change, a likely villain in the region’s unfolding water insecurity drama. In May 2013 the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas had reached an average daily level in the atmosphere above 400 parts per million—a concentration not witnessed on earth for over three million years and an ominous warning that if global efforts continue to falter, the effects of climate change may become irreversible.4 However, another scientific report released within days of the NOAA report claimed that the most extreme rates of warming predicted by some models appeared increasingly less likely.5 Regardless of whether the consequences of climate change come quickly or not, there is a very strong consensus among climate scientists that the changes—higher temperatures, desertification, extreme weather events, erratic monsoons, rising sea levels, and glacial melt—will come eventually and will strike South Asia at least as harshly as any other region in the world. Taking glacial melt as an example, one of the most sober and careful studies done thus far of Himalayan glaciers maintains that the Hindu Kush–Himalayan (HKH) region’s climate is undoubtedly changing, and that the livelihoods of over a billion people dependent on the major river systems with headwaters in this region are bound to be affected. The study concedes that many uncertainties remain about the precise causes and effects of glacial melt, as well as that important subregional variations exist in the rate at which glacial melt is occurring. Nevertheless, it declares unequivocally that “scientific evidence indicates that glaciers in the HKH region are retreating at rates comparable to those in other parts of the world, and confirms that the rate has accelerated in the past century.”6 The study concludes that some parts of the climate science community believe “that the social effects of climate change are already more extensive than previously thought or recognized, and are mounting more quickly and more extensively than predicted.”

The Implications of Dam Building

Uncertainty, although of a quite different sort, also prevails in regard to China’s dam-building activities on the Brahmaputra (called the Yarlung Tsangpo in China), the principal river that China shares with its South Asian neighbors. Already China has built a dozen or more dams in the vast Tibetan Plateau on tributaries of the Brahmaputra; and sometime in 2014 the 510-megawatt Zangmu Hydroelectric Project is expected to be completed. The project is the first of four in a cascade of now formally approved major dams on the river’s mainstream. Beijing claims that these are all “run of the river” dams that have minimal water storage capacity and are thus unlikely to have any significant impact on downstream co- riparians. China also claims that it has no plans to divert water from the Brahmaputra and will always take into account the interests of downstream countries.

Other observers, however, argue that China’s dam construction on the Brahmaputra has significant strategic implications and that the country’s leadership is entirely indifferent to the downstream impact of its dams. Foremost among these critics is Brahma Chellaney, who is based in New Delhi and is the author of Water: Asia’s New Battleground. Chellaney argues that “by having its hand on Asia’s water tap, China is therefore acquiring tremendous leverage over its neighbours’ behaviour.”9 China now owns more large dams than the rest of the world combined but does not have a single water-sharing treaty with a neighboring state. If its plans for the Brahmaputra follow the pattern adopted on other transboundary rivers, Chellaney predicts that China will proceed to build a series of ever-larger dams right up to the border with India.10

Other observers see the situation differently, arguing that China’s dam-building activity is motivated overwhelmingly by the clear-headed recognition that the country’s future political and social stability are heavily dependent on continued economic growth, which is, in turn, equally dependent on overcoming the country’s mounting water and energy scarcities. China is not a water predator, in other words; its dam-building spree “has more to do with the need to power its energy-intensive economy, than with any policy of weaponisation in order to assert a hegemonic role in the region.”11

Melting the Ice? Prospects for Regional Cooperation

Whatever its motivation, Beijing’s consistently unilateral approach to dam construction on transboundary rivers—namely, its opacity in regard to future plans and strict avoidance of institutionalized water cooperation—justifiably alarms its co-riparians. There is no sign yet of any change in this approach. In April 2013, China rejected a proposal by India to create a new mechanism—for example, a water commission, an intergovernmental dialogue, or a formal treaty—for dealing with water issues between the two countries.12 For extremely water-dependent Bangladesh, this is an undeniably dire matter; but India, too, finds little comfort in its relatively advantageous water dependency ratio (about 30.5%). Even though as much as 70% of the Brahmaputra’s flow within India comes from below the Sino-Indian border, owing to the northeastern region’s extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, the fact remains that the monsoon season is brief and India possesses very modest water storage capacity. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, “a fair estimate of water resources available for use to a country should include figures of dry season low flow,” and such an estimate would yield a less sanguine reading of China’s ability to leverage its control of the Brahmaputra’s waters.

China’s apparent reluctance to move in the direction of water transparency and joint mechanisms of water management is a formidable roadblock to regional cooperation on water security. Yet there are fairly strong signs that South Asian governments themselves are increasingly inclined to cooperate on this issue. In April 2013, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh forged an important agreement to jointly exploit hydropower and manage water resources for mutual advantage, especially in the Ganges River Basin.14 Likewise, the Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina plans to visit New Delhi in December 2013 for a renewed effort to forge a water-sharing agreement over the Teesta River. The initiative was dealt a near-fatal blow in September 2011 when the chief minister of West Bengal pulled out of the treaty-making exercise at the last minute. Domestic politics in both countries—including pressures on Bangladeshi leaders not to appear subservient to New Delhi and pressures on Manmohan Singh not to rush into a controversial agreement before India’s national elections in 2014—ensures that inking a final draft will not be easy.

With respect to cooperation between India and Pakistan on water security, the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has survived over a half century, including the weathering of two major tests of its meticulously drawn conflict-resolution provisions. The first test concerned India’s Baglihar Hydroelectric Project on the Chenab River in disputed Kashmir. In 2007 an appointed “neutral expert” granted New Delhi most of what it wanted, including extensive drawdown provisions for flushing silt. The second dispute, still in progress, is over India’s Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project on a tributary of the Jhelum River, also in Kashmir. In February 2013 the Court of Arbitration in the Hague issued a “partial ruling” allowing India to proceed with construction of the dam, which will divert water from the Kishanganga River (called the Neelum River in Pakistan) to another tributary of the Jhelum. Of great importance, however, the court ruled that drawdown sediment flushing below the dead-storage level in the dam violates the IWT and that India, if it wishes to complete the project, must redesign the dam. Additionally, the court postponed until December 2013 a decision on the dam’s minimum flow in downstream Pakistan during the dry season, a stipulation uniquely protective of the riverine environment and also indicative that India may have won the battle to build the dam but lost the war over the type of dam it can build.

One may hope that the Court of Arbitration’s decision will cause Indian and Pakistani leaders to consider adopting a new approach to management of the Indus Basin’s water resources that would regard water “as a collective resource for the improvement of the entire region.”16 Similarly, in the wake of media reports that Indian expertise has been offered to Afghanistan to help in building as many as twelve hydropower projects on the Kabul River, which is a troubling prospect from Pakistan’s perspective, one may hope that Afghan and Pakistani leaders will give thought to an IWT-like agreement for this east-flowing tributary of the Indus.17

Developments of these sorts, if they happen, would signal the long- awaited and—unlike glacial melt in the Himalayas—entirely welcome melting of the geopolitical ice in South Asia. Even if we choose to disregard warnings that the region is increasingly at risk of interstate water wars, the unmistakable signs of rapidly growing water insecurity leave no room for “business as usual” complacency. Replacing deeply ingrained habits of unilateral action with cooperative bilateral and multilateral water-sharing initiatives will undoubtedly prove daunting. But ensuring a decent existence for the hundreds of millions of people dependent on the Himalayan region’s transboundary river waters demands no less.