Imperatives for regional ecological cooperation

Ecological cooperation has potential for building trust to resolve long-standing territorial disputes

Pakistan has experienced another ‘super flood’ this year. Indian-held Kashmir and northeast India also experienced flooding this year, Nepal suffered major flooding during the past year as well and Bangladesh remains susceptible to increasing damage caused by flooding. Floods are not the only form of water-related disasters afflicting our part of the world. Droughts and growing water shortage are also major threats, especially within the looming prospect of climate change.

The loss in terms of human life, infrastructure and crops, suffered across South Asia due to water over the past decade or so, has been enormous. Water stress is also predicted to become a growing source of contention in already fraught relations among neighbouring countries of the region. Mitigating, and hence minimising, the damage and suffering from this prevailing threat require adopting a holistic approach, which transcends the confines of artificially created national boundaries.

Enhancing ecological cooperation is possible. Consider, for instance, a report published last year titled “Ecological cooperation in South Asia: The way forward”, which convincingly argues for the need for, and identifies preliminary means to contend with, environmental stresses in the South Asian region through a more ecologically cooperative approach.

Adopting an ecological approach to natural resource management, especially the river systems emerging out of the Himalayas, on which the lives of multitudes of Pakistani, Indian, Nepali, Bangladeshi and Bhutanese depend, requires going beyond a technocratic approach. Beyond rhetoric, this implies taking practical steps, such as reconfiguring the role of existing regional organisations, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), and even scientific organisations, like the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). International environmental treaties, such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands protection, provide useful models for institutional reform to ensure transnational cooperation to manage water resources in an environmentally efficient manner, and to be better prepared to deal with future floods or droughts.

International donor agencies also need to devise and fund projects, which enhance trust across the region. Cited examples of such cooperation include funding glacial scientific research and linking it to the need for resolving the lingering Siachen and Sir Creek dispute between the two nuclear armed countries of the region.

Rather than exacerbating tensions over water-sharing, ecological cooperation or ‘environmental diplomacy’ has the potential for building trust to resolve long-standing territorial disputes, especially between India and Pakistan. However, bilateral agreements, such as the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan has very specific terms of reference, which primarily try to divide the rivers emerging out of the Indus. The treaty was never meant to provide a mechanism for integrated ecological management of the Indus basin, which is the need of the hour, to ensure water conservation and improve the quality of this vital watershed as a whole.

The shift from unilateral or bilateral approaches to a more holistic and multilateral approach, which focuses on ecological cooperation across the Himalayan rivers system, is certainly not easy. Implementing such a shift will take time, as well as resources. But it is doable. Some potential means to ensure such cooperation across the region are identified above, and there is need to commission more research to identify further practical steps, which have the potential to secure ecologically sustainable development in South Asia, as well as to ease some of the prevailing tensions across the region.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2014.

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