By Group Captain Praveer Purohit (retd)
“Anyone who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes – one for peace and one for science.” — John F. Kennedy
More than seven decades after China’s illegal annexation of Tibet, the long-term geopolitical impact of that move is hard to escape. The Tibetan plateau and adjoining Hindu Kush mountains combined is often referred to as the world’s ‘Third Pole’ as it has the largest number of glaciers after Antarctica and the Arctic. Many crucial rivers in South Asia and SoutheastAsia such as Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween and Mekong originate from glaciers in Tibet, well making it the ‘water-tank’ of the world. By annexing Tibet, China today has control over the source of 10 major rivers, flowing through 11 countries and on which 1.6 billion people in South Asia and SoutheastAsia depend.In an ideal world, water being a common resource could have been equitably shared and used for the common good of all countries. Even in the real world, a generous, liberal, and understanding country could have done so. But, when an authoritarian, illiberal and expansionist country in the form of China controls the source and flow of water as an upper riparian, it is cause of serious concern.
China’s unilateral recourse to building large dams on Brahmaputra (known as YarlungTsangpo in China) and Mekong (known as Lancang in China) has kept the lower riparian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam on the edge. China has so far built 11 dams on the Mekong, the world’s 12th longest river, with 11 more under construction at various stages of completion. Laos has two functional dams on the river with seven more under construction, while Cambodia has two in various stages of construction. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) funds all these dams in both Laos and Cambodia and the deal includes supply of the electricity generated from these projects to be exported to China. The dams in Yunnan province of China alone, can deny water to the tune of 47 million cubic meters, from flowing downstream. The Mekong River supports the livelihoods of over 70 million people in continental Southeast Asia, all of whom are hostage to the whims and fancies of China because it has the potential to cripple their lifeline.
Regional cooperation within Southeast Asia over the Mekong River goes back more than 60 years, making it one of the first transboundary rivers governed by an international river body and according to the principles of equitable use. In 1957, the Committee for Coordination of Investigations on the Lower Mekong River Basin – often referred to as the Mekong Committee – was set up under auspices of the United Nations, comprising Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. On 5 April 1995, these countries signed the Agreement on Cooperation for Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin (the 1995 Mekong Agreement). The Mekong Agreement established the Mekong River Commission (MRC), whose mission was to promote and coordinate sustainable management and development of water and related resources for the countries’ mutual benefit and the people’s well-being. However, China has not joined the UN sanctified MRC and became only a dialogue partner in 1996. Meanwhile China had already commissioned its first few hydropower project on the Mekong in 1984 and embarked upon a frenzied spree to construct dozens more.The dams on the Chinese side could either limit the access to water for the lower riparian countries or in case of large release of water, cause floods downstream. Absence of data from the Chinese side made matters worse. Persistent efforts by the MRC resulted in China agreeing in 2003 to provide hydrological data during the flood season. This was renewed in 2008, 2013 and 2019.If the Chinese were truly ‘cooperative’, they could have joined the MRC. Instead, to undermine the MRC, in 2015 China established the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC), to help govern the shared use of the Mekong. The members included Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand. Chinese motives in establishing LMC, rather than joining MRC are not difficult to decipher. Chinese influence and control in MRC would have been very limited, and it would have been subject to international law. With a mix of incentives and veiled threats, China managed to coerce the smaller countries to join LMC, thereby not only undermining a UN sanctified body but also limiting the choices of the Southeast Asian nations. The Chinese façade of cooperation has become a deadly coercive tool.
The banks of Mekong are lined with crops, grazing livestock and pontoons for fishing villages. Chinese dams on the Mekong have resulted in irretrievable damage to the ecosystem. The MRC has estimated that the Mekong now has 40 percent fewer fish than it did a decade ago. The 11 under-construction dams could further worsen the situation. Vietnam has been very badly affected by the Chinese dams. Its per capita internal freshwater resources (mainly from the Mekong River) have declined by 65 percent since 1961. A study by MRC has brought out that Chinese dams have resulted in reduction in soil, and gravely warned that by 2040, the Mekong delta will be left with only 3 percent of its 2007 sediment level. The reduced sediment has forced farmers to increase fertilizer consumption by 40 percent in the last five years and the reduced water in the river has forced them to increase ground water extraction. Chinese actions have thus created an unsustainable and insecure future for the affected Southeast Asian nations, mainly Thailand and Vietnam.
Closer home, Chinese dam building over the Brahmaputra portends a grave security and environmental risk. China commenced damming the Brahmaputra in 2010, by constructing a dam in Zangmu, Tibet. In 2013, the Chinese government announced plans to build three more mid-size dams on the river.China has shown little interest in cooperative transboundary water management in the Brahmaputra. India pays China $125000 every year for providing data on the flow. However, during the Doklam crisis, China refused to share the data despite India having paid for it.In 2021, China announced that it was building a super dam- the world’s largest, with a capacity to generate 60-gigawatt power, barely 30 kms from the border. Located in a seismically active area, it is near the Great Bend where the Brahmaputra takes a sharp southward bend and drops by 3000 metres into India. Due to this mega dam, the occurrence of devastating flash floods in summer, turbid water, dry spell in winter and uneven flows into Assam and Arunachal Pradesh may become a reality. Bangladesh, which too depends upon Brahmaputra will also be severely affected. True to its character, China does not consult its neighbours and lower riparian states while engaging in dam building activities.
Even as China’s territorial shenanigans in Taiwan, South China Sea and Ladakh, make the world take notice, it is surreptitiously going about waging a ‘non-military’ war over water. China’s first five-year-plan for water security was made in 2021 and it is systematically going about diverting water from its South to the North, with scant regard for ecology, environment and needs of other countries. In using water as a geopolitical tool, China has sought to increase its influence and if need be, hold the downstream countries to ransom. Addressing the Chinese challenge in this sphere is difficult but not impossible. A multi-pronged approach by the affected countries is necessary. Some measures could include incentivizing China to be transparent, confronting it with evidence of water diversion/ altering course of international rivers, creating pressure on China to sign the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, greater activism and pressure from international environmental groups, inclusion of water sharing as an agenda in UN and multilateral fora and economic, scientific and technological support to the affected downstream countries.India can take the lead in generating more awareness amongst countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Thailand on the ‘disaster-in-making’ due to China’s hydro-politics. A coordinated effort by India, Bangladesh and the affected Southeast Asian countries backed by Japan, South Korea, EU and USA to call out China’s politicization and weaponization of trans-national rivers is vital. Domestically, measures to mitigate the adverse effects of Chinese dams must include educating our populace on water conservation, alternate farming and creating an efficient storage and distribution system. As part of our ‘Act East’ policy, India should actively engage with BIMSTEC and ASEAN for inclusion of water security, environmental well-being, and unhindered flow of trans-national rivers as an inviolable agenda in dealing with China. In playing out the role of a hydro-hegemon, China has proved itself to be an irresponsible and recalcitrant nation. Contesting it, countering it, and prevailing, is therefore sine qua non.
The writer served in the IAF for over three decades. He holds an M.Phil in Defence and Management.
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