Farmers in the Tibetan village of Zangri try to salvage their barley crop after the
Tsang-po burst its banks.
South Asia
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River
flows
Brahmaputra
Length: 2,900
km
Source: Kailas range, Himalayas
Mouth: Merges with the Ganges, then into the Bay of Bengal
Countries: Bangladesh, China, India
Population around the basin: 300 million (including the Ganges)
Ganges
Length: 2,510
km
Source: Gangotri glacier, Himalayas
Mouth: Merges with the Brahmaputra, then into the Bay of Bengal
Countries: India, Bangladesh
Population around the basin: 300 million (including the Brahmaputra)
Indus
Length: 3,180
km
Source: Kailas range, Himalayas
Mouth: Arabian Sea
Countries: China, India, Pakistan
Population around the basin: 150 million
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Three
of the world’s mightiest rivers flow through countries of the Indian subcontinent.
Despite strife and war, several landmark agreements have been reached, but fresh
disputes are looming
Regional cooperation
appears difficult to come by in South Asia. There have been four conflicts between
India and Pakistan since 1947, clashes on the Indo-Bangladesh border and accusations
about India’s overwhelming influence. When the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) was established in the 1980s to provide a forum for discussion
primarily on trade, contentious topics like water resource negotiations were totally
excluded from its brief. Yet, South Asia has a commendable record in the realm of
water-sharing, developed through a combination of civil society presure, political
sagacity and technical co-operation.
Countries had one precedent in the field. The Indus Waters treaty, signed between
India and Pakistan in 1960, is a landmark as far as water-dispute resolutions go.
The dispute can be traced back to the Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947.
The Indus river begins in the Himalayan mountains of Kashmir on the Indian side,
flows through the arid states of Punjab and Sindh, before converging in Pakistan
and joining the Arabian Sea south of Karachi. The source rivers of the Indus basin
remained in India, leaving Pakistan concerned by the prospect of Indian control over
the main supply of water for its farmlands. The newly formed states could not agree
on how to share and manage the cohesive network of irrigation, which was impossible
to partition.
Brokered by the World Bank, the treaty, which covers the largest irrigated area (26
million acres) of any one river system in the world, has survived two wars and provides
an ongoing mechanism for consultation and conflict resolution through inspections,
exchange of data and visits. The treaty demonstrates how functional cooperation on
both sides is not impossible to achieve, though most other contentious issues remain
deadlocked.
New breakthroughs were made in the 1990s over water-sharing in the region. In December
1996, recently elected governments in both India and Bangladesh decided to resolve
decades of acrimony over the sharing of the waters from the Ganges, one of the most
culturally and economically significant rivers on earth. The breakthrough came after
years of political stalemate and bitter rhetoric at the public level, alongside quiet
work behind the scenes by water specialists, politicians and scholars on both sides
at the non-governmental level. The result was the 30-year India-Bangladesh water-sharing
agreement, signed in 1996.
Bangladesh, being in the downstream and delta portion of a huge watershed, has been
most vulnerable to the water quality and quantity that flows from upstream. The way
rivers are used in one country can indeed have far-reaching effects on nations downstream.
When India built the Farakka Barrage in the 1960s, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan
until its independence in 1971), watched helplessly as it wreaked havoc. In the dry
season, the barrage blocked the natural flow of water into the country, causing drastic
water shortages. And in the rainy season, sudden water releases caused floods and
extensive damage, including the loss of property and human lives.
Early
warning systems
The principal objective of the 30-year treaty is to determine the amount of water
released by India to Bangladesh at the Farakka Barrage. The water-sharing arrangements,
primarily for the dry season, are specified to the last drop and depend on the river’s
flow. It aims to make “optimum utilization” of the waters of the region, and relies
on the principles of “equity, fair play and no harm to either party,” with a clause
for the sharing arrangements to be reviewed every five years.
Spurred on by the success of this treaty, India resolved yet another riverine dispute,
this time with Nepal, in 1997. The Mahakali River treaty settles Nepal’s entitlement
to water flows and electricity from the Indian side, improving on a 1992 agreement.
The treaty, however, has run into opposition from various Nepali groups, who claim
it is still unfair to the country’s interests.
Although these various agreements point to steady regional cooperation on water-sharing,
another dispute may be looming on the horizon. This time, it centers on the Brahmaputra,
the other great river of this region, which flows through Tibet (China), India and
Bangladesh over a distance of nearly 3,000 kilometres. Although no dispute has broken
into the open, the issue of information sharing has strained relations between the
three countries. The problem is that even the most basic data is not disclosed.
The results have been tragic. In the summer of 2000, a landslide in Tibet caused
a dam to collapse, unleashing a 26-metre wall of water that destroyed every bridge
on the Siang, as the Brahmaputra is known in the Indian border state of Arunachal
Pradesh. The water then rushed through the Indian state of Assam and, within a week,
devastated parts of Bangladesh. Human casualties were light but damage to property
was extensive. An effective early-warning flood system is a goal that all three governments
must therefore work towards.
Tapping
the potential
According to Indian officials, the Chinese had not shared any information on the
build up of water pressure and the heavy rains in the upstream catchment area of
the river, known as the Tsang-po in Tibet.
Concern is also being voiced about purported Chinese plans to divert the waters of
the Tsang-po with the help of nuclear tunnelling. This appears to be a Chinese move
to assess international reaction to the possibility of a dam on the river to tap
its huge hydro-energy potential.
Cooperation on river waters could significantly improve the lives of millions of
people. In the case of the Brahmaputra, it is not so much a question of sharing the
waters as of tapping the waterway profitably for mutual benefit, primarily for transport,
commerce and industry.
One example: through cooperation, Assam’s famed tea could be shipped downstream to
Bangladesh and sent to other parts of the world. Oil from the Numaligarh refinery,
also in Assam, can be exported in river barges to meet Bangladesh’s energy needs.
These simple but effective measures would generate employment and revive the economies
of marginalized communities. |
