Billions of futures

Some of the less optimistic analysts tend towards the view that a war about water is ahead on the subcontinent

Some of the less optimistic analysts and commentators tend towards the view that a war about water is ahead on the subcontinent. Both India and Pakistan have rising water needs as populations expand and creeping urbanisation and industrialisation suck up available supplies. The problem was recognised 57 years ago and the Indus Waters Treaty between the two countries came into being and has held together ever since. But times are changing, as is the climate. The World Bank which was the original broker of the IWT has remained as the moderator, and is currently engaged in a round of talks with both parties that are thus far inconclusive.

Given the eternally fractious Indo-Pak relationship there does appear to be a willingness on both sides to continue the dialogue, and India has dropped its earlier objections and agreed to participate in a ‘Bank brokered dialogue.’ Considering the intractability of our neighbour this is a welcome development. The water issue is one of the few truly existential threats facing both countries, and the unalterable reality is that with Himalayan glacier-melt and extreme weather events threatening both a surfeit and a deficit of precipitation to both countries, surface water management is of primary importance.

Pakistan is the ‘downstream’ partner in the IWT and has a real fear that India may use water as a weapon, cutting or reducing flows from key dams or building dams that limit the flow of key sources that feed into the Indus flood plain in Pakistan. This is not the paranoid fantasy of conspiracy theorists; this is a clear and present danger. The current dispute over India’s construction of two hydroelectric projects on the Chenab and the Jhelum rivers in the view of Pakistan violates the fundamentals of the IWT. They are vital sources, literally the backbone, and some steely negotiation is needed by the Pakistan team if they are to retrieve the slippage that governmental neglect has allowed in this most essential of matters.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2017.

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