South Asian hydro-politics

The rationale put forward by India for embarking on this decade old concept of river linking is based on two premises. First, there are floods in parts of India while other parts suffer from drought; hence, water from flood prone areas could be transferred to drought-prone areas. Second, surplus water from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) system could be transferred to deficit areas within that system as well to southern India. Both the premises are ethically flawed and are a gross misrepresentation of reality. Floods in the Indian sections of the GBM system do not occur in isolation or in a closed system, rather they are hydrologically related to all the stakeholders in the system, especially Bangladesh as a downstream country. And the concept of 'surplus' water along a particular reach of the GBM system is untenable because the river is an open system, and withdrawal or diversion of so-called 'surplus' water from one section will create deficit conditions in the downstream sections. The logical and desirable solution could be a transparent basin-wide cooperation in planning the utilisation and management of the river basins. The genuine expression of intent for cooperation in basin-wide management among all riparian countries could be the first confidence building endeavour.

It seems that, in recent days, information on the current status of the progress on the project -- even within India -- is not generally available in the public domain. However, unofficial reports indicate that pre-feasibility studies of all the 30 links and feasibility reports of at least two links have been completed, and that they are all found 'viable'. This 120 billion dollar (higher than the country's GDP) project is not included in India's current and forthcoming 5-year plans. Although the Task Force (constituted for the planning and implementation of the project) chief dismissed the idea of external funding for the project, reports filtered from several sources hint that discrete lobbying by some non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the USA to raise funds are already in progress. Media sources from India also report that the Task Force is encouraging the private sector to come forward and finance this expensive venture. Needless to say that the involvement of industry or the private sector in construction might require leasing out sections of water courses and canals to them, depriving their access to the people living in those areas. The proponents of the river-linking plan argue that it would help irrigate an additional 35 million hectares of land, thus ensuring food security and serving as a major tool in poverty reduction strategy. Along the same vein, Bangladesh should argue in international forums that this unilateral diversion of water in India would devastate the agricultural potential in Bangladesh, thus causing unimaginable food insecurity and putting our poverty reduction efforts in the reverse gear.

It is interesting that none of the political parties in India -- from extreme left to extreme right -- have voiced any concern about this gargantuan project, costing billions of dollars and (according to preliminary estimates by environmentalists) displacing over three million people through submerging about 7,700 square kilometres. Their silence is perhaps due to a perceived apprehension of being portrayed as anti-people, if any scheme to supply water is criticised. Undoubtedly, water supply measures provide to all of them an opportunity to score political mileage! Nonetheless, some professionals and academics (who are not contesting elections!) have been sharply critical of this river-linking plan, and have outlined its potentially disastrous environmental fallout. One such critic (Sudhirendar Sharma of the Delhi-based Ecological Foundation) termed the plan as 'pipe dream' and an 'environmental nightmare'. He also alluded to the fact that, since China is going ahead with a 59 billion dollar project to transfer water from the Yangtze river to the arid north, Indian proponents of the river-linking plan are under the spell of "if China can do it, why not us" syndrome. (It should be noted here that China's water diversion is not affecting any downstream country).

In recent months, civil society members and professionals in Bangladesh have been actively monitoring the developments related to the upstream river diversion scheme, and helping to disseminate information and sensitize the people on the probable predicament the country might face from such diversion. The government also needs to undertake a more proactive and persuasive role in lobbying, advocacy and argumentation against water diversion (in the GBM basins) without any transparent consultation with Bangladesh. It could also initiate an exercise in model-based projections of potential impacts in Bangladesh in such sectors as ecology, crop production, fisheries, navigation, water quality and channel morphology. Such projections could take into consideration three scenarios of upstream water withdrawal: low, medium and high; and these projected estimates could be used for negotiation with India in reaching a basin-wide arrangement as well as for in-house adaptation planning.

Acute and seemingly irreconcilable differences often divide many of the countries sharing 261 transboundary rivers around the world. But in most instances, if inter-country disputes are looked through the prism of equity, trust and mutual respect, the danger of conflict can be removed or minimised and replaced with the potential of cooperation where no riparian is a loser. The rhetoric that one often hears that the next war will be fought on water is somewhat overblown. Indeed, two US environmental researchers (Aaron Wolf and Sandra Postel) who had studied extensively transboundary water disputes, have found only one outright war over water in the past 4,500 years -- between two city states, Lagash and Umma in modern day Iraq. On the other hand, over 3,600 water treaties have been signed between states and communities during the past 12 centuries. Hence, given a cooperative ambience between the upper and lower riparians, conflicts can be avoided and even converted into cooperative management.

UNESCO has established a global programme called PC-CP -- "From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential" in collaboration with Green Cross International to examine "the potential for shared water resources to become a catalyst for regional peace and development through dialogue, cooperation and participative management of river basins." One such recent example of 'cooperation potential' is offered by the 10-country Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), formed in 1999 with a view to providing an all-inclusive format for basin-wide cooperation. The NBI has offered Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia as well as other seven Nile riparians a glimmer of hope in coming up with a basin-wide framework for equitable water sharing and management. Bangladesh, as the lowest riparian in the GBM system, could take lead in evolving a 5-country (Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal) institutional framework along the lines of the NBI, with the vision for an equitable and demand-driven water utilisation among all the five GBM riparians. The first and foremost task toward achieving that goal and getting out of the river-linking induced hydropolitical quagmire is to continue the process of dialogue, information exchange and transparency in negotiations.

Dr Rasheed is Professor of Geography and Environment at the University of Dhaka.