Dams, treaties, India and water

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) dates from 1960, long before climate change and global warming were almost daily headline news. A lot of water has flowed under many bridges both literal and metaphorical but the IWT has managed to endure, and Pakistan and India have not fought a war over water. With the IWT almost 60 years old now it is showing its age and events on the ground are moving faster than the treaty can be revised, which anyway is a complicated process involving global entities such as the World Bank.

The IWT is once again to the fore as the Indian minister for transport and water resources said on Monday, March 26^th that India is proposing to dam the three Uttarakhand rivers in order to curb the flow into Pakistan, and has triggered some of Pakistan’s darker fears in doing so. The Indian aim is to increase storage to overcome difficulties associated with lowered levels of precipitation (Pakistan also has issues/concerns about storage and is going ahead with the disputed Bhasha dam as a result) — but inevitably less water is going to flow into the irrigation systems and fields of Pakistan.

The Indian argument is that it has a right to dam these rivers on the grounds that it is imperative for national development. It had not hitherto been able to utilise water from the three rivers for its own needs and that Pakistan was ‘benefitting’ from the ‘extra’ water contrary to the spirit of the IWT. Given the bellicose and confrontational position of the Indian government under Mr Modi, it may be that this proposal is little more than a rattling of watery sabres. Dams are large projects that take years to finance, plan and build and there is going to be no quick fix to the Uttarakhand rivers issue, but Pakistan needs to move fast on the diplomatic front and energise the arbitration mechanisms that exist within the IWT if it is not to be wrong-footed. There is now a heightened urgency for a root-and-branch review of the IWT and Pakistan cannot afford to dither at the water’s edge.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2018.

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