Surface water, especially rivers across political boundaries?both federal and international ?has for long fomented conflict. If there is no agreement on sharing, it becomes possible for the upstream nation/state to appropriate volumes that affect the downstream nation/state, leading to disputes. Of course, a federal conflict is easier to resolve?in India, though the four southern states have shrilly sparred over river water, there has been some or the other agreement reached or there are ongoing negotiations. But what happens when the conflict is between nations? Given that the reserves of groundwater are buckling under pressure from the growing demands from populations and industries, future conflicts centred on water bodies can?t be summarily ruled out. It is in this context that Brahma Chellaney?s Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis becomes an important read. Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, warns that the conflict over water could lead to armed violence. While the research that has gone into the book is considerable, the conclusion Chellaney draws seems a tad speculative.
He names two specific regions where, he believes, there are manifest signs of the violence that will mark such tensions in the future. He chooses to explain the turmoil in the Arab and African nations?with particularly low reserves of water?as being at least partially rooted in water-sharing. It is true that there have been conflicts over water in the Nile basin, most of which lies in Egypt, and the Tigris-Euphrates basin in West Asia, while some of the ethnic clashes that led to the war in Darfur happened over access to water for the western reaches of Sudan.
However, West Asia, an ?arc of water-crisis?, is seen by the author as an ?arc of Islam?, where the high population pressure?which, the book broadly hints, is attributable to the Sunnis in particular, for they, unlike the Shias in Iran, have no place for birth control?has led to unsustainable water extraction. He then hastily conflates water crisis and Islam, two common factors in the region, with the violence in the region. For substantiation, the violence in Yemen and the Arab Spring that marks the recent histories of many West Asian nations are offered as examples. Yemen, the author notes, has become a seat of ?jihadist terror? with the Ansar al-Sharia, an al Quaeda affiliate as the de facto government in the country?s southern parts. Chellaney notes that the country has one of the highest rates of population growth in the world and one of the lowest per capita freshwater availability. The author talks of how the ordinary Yemeni citizen has to toil for water, while the civil and military elite have drilled wells in their backyards in violation of government orders. Thus, Yemen becomes a fertile ground for popular dissent that
is chanellised by jihadist/Islamist extremist groups.
Chellaney highlights rising food prices that were, among many others, a rallying point for the popular protests that saw governments topple in Egypt and Tunisia as a trigger for the Arab Spring. Water scarcity thus becomes an obvious link in the chain as a factor that drove up the costs of food production and resulted in expensive food imports.
But with both these examples, the author seems to have missed the wood for the trees. While water is not the least important element in the tensions in West Asia, there are far more complex layers to the violence and popular uprisings. There are the strategic interests, from oil to geopolitics, to consider. It isn?t a coincidence that the most popular dissent against dictatorial regimes in the region, including that seen in the last few years, achieved critical mass with only a hint of support from global superpowers.
The other region that Chellaney identifies?China and its neighbourhood?seems to bolster his point, but only to an extent. China, which has transboundary outflows to the largest number of countries in the world, is flexing its muscle in the region, especially in the context of its relations with India, by damming in cross-border outflows. This could indeed force an adversarial engagement by the nation(s) downstream and a non-neutral engagement by other neighbours.
But as of now?and likely in the future?the front of engagement remains diplomacy; at the worst, with a multilateral forum providing the stage. Besides, the China-Saarc nations trade volume is just too high for either party to risk escalating tensions over water to actual military action that would impede such productive bilateral engagement. For example, the India-China
bilateral trade is set to rise to $150 billion by 2015.
However, the author is spot on in his observation that the potential of conflict gets exacerbated by the lack of international treaties that ration transnational water resources. The few treaties around are neither here nor there and sans any detailed water-sharing plan. Moreover, they don?t provide for current needs?all the existing treaties were signed before 2000.
The question of water as a resource is indeed an important one and needs addressing. Chellaney points us in the right direction with his suggestions in the final chapter to tackle the growing shortage internationally. He strongly backs the abandoning of the prior appropriation policy, something like upstream damming-in of water before an agreement can be reached. This, he says, would lead to neighbours racing for the control of water bodies, escalating tensions further.
