Takes two to solve a water crisis

The Tibetan plateau constitutes the headwaters of many of Asia’s mighty rivers including the Brahmaputra, Mekong and Yangtze. Many of these flow into some of the most populous regions of South and Southeast Asia. The manner in which these waters are used upstream will thus decide both the quality and quantity of the flows that are received below. The Tibetan ‘‘water bank’’ is in every sense Asia’s water bank and the environmental sustainability of Tibet means the environmental sustainability of Asia.

The import of this dependence becomes immediately evident in the light of China’s looming water crisis. The scorching pace of economic growth, which has led to surging water consumption, has depleted water tables and resulted in huge water shortages. This has led to the browning of China, leaving large tracts of land arid and unfit for use. The measures China takes to alleviate its water crisis are bound to have a broader region-wide impact.

In focus will be the grand South to North Water Transfer Project, an extraordinarily complex project of mammoth proportions that seeks to divert the waters of the Yangtze to supply the water deficient northern region. As per Chinese estimates, the entire project proposes to divert 44.8 billion cubic metres of water each year to the north. A great deal of concern has been expressed at the viability of the project with even China’s State Environmental Protection Agency sounding a cautionary note. One of the three routes for the transfer of water plans to slice through the mountains near Tibet. How will this affect the region and its ecosystem from where such a large body of water is taken out? Little research has been done on how these will affect the water rights of downstream countries and their ecosystems.

The fragile ecosystem of the Tibet-Qinghai plateau is also showing other signs of stress as it copes with the furious pace of economic activity that forms part of China’s western development strategy. Many mega projects are transforming the face of Tibet. The ‘‘pillar’’ industries of mining and timber processing have fed the rapid industrialisation of Tibet, bringing in its wake deforestation, soil erosion, landslides floods, acid rain and pollution especially of the water systems. These are creating ecological imbalances in the form of rising temperatures, retreat of glaciers and droughts caused by indifferent rainfall. Much of these will find their way to parts of the extended region including India.

Water management issues including those relating to management of the ecosystem and biodiversity need to be urgently placed on the agenda of India-China talks. As the present crisis has shown, accurate and timely information is vital for successful disaster management. This calls for evolving a system of regular exchange of data and coordination between the respective national agencies in India and China.

This fact was brought home in a tragic manner during the flash floods caused from a landslide in Tibet in 2000 that ravaged the Northeast and Himachal Pradesh. The lack of an information sharing agreement between the two countries then resulted in loss of life and extensive damage to property. Both the countries have since signed an MoU on the sharing of hydrological data on the Brahmaputra’s flows, which will be vital for timely forecasting and management of floods in the Northeast. This needs to be extended further to cover all the common rivers they share. Early warning systems need to devised, coordination mechanisms perfected including visits to sites besides putting up permanent monitoring stations to enable quick transmission of information. It is important that these mechanisms are institutionalised so that such crises are not treated in an episodic manner.

For some time now, China has been advocating what it calls the ‘‘new security concept’’ as a component of its foreign policy. Chinese assessments note the need to address non-traditional security issues through cooperative security mechanisms based on the principles of mutual trust, benefit and equality. What could be a better case for advancing the spirit behind the new Chinese concept than regional water resource management issues.

The writer is associate research professor at the Centre for Policy Research