Bharat Rakshak

……………. The anxieties about Iranian and Pakistani meddling are exemplified by the speculation around the long-stalled Salma dam, being built by India in the province of Herat in western Afghanistan, which borders Iran. The dam has the potential to irrigate nearly 75,000 hectares and produce 42 MW of electricity. However, the project is already four years behind schedule. Its cost has doubled and is expected to rise by another 50%. Some Afghan officials are astonished that Indian engineers, who have built highways in Afghanistan in record time, are taking so long to complete the dam. They hypothesize that Iranian diplomatic meddling has caused the delays.

The Indians, however, deny it. “Afghans tell us that Iran has created issues, but we haven’t had to talk to Iran about it because we haven’t had evidence linking them to insecurity there,” says Gautam Mukhopadhaya, the Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, blaming the delay on cost escalation. “The Salma dam will be completed, no question about that.” ………………

Water is power
My travels in South Asia were a reminder of an ancient truth, often lost at the magical turn of a tap: A society's fate turns on its water supply. Water is power.
Covering global water issues, I've seen up close how the gap between the water rich and the water poor is often the line between life and death. In Haiti, I met people who took their water from rivers or nearby wells. Since the outbreak of cholera, those very water sources threaten their lives.In Bangladesh, I saw how too much water creates problems: More intense rain deluges, that one scientist with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told me might already reflect climate change, had increased flooding and river erosion. I met people whose homes, crops, and water supplies were repeatedly wiped out. In a country with a population roughly half that of the United States packed into an area about the size of Idaho, they had few options but to move to low-lying, vulnerable coastal lands. Or they joined the nearly 1 billion slum dwellers worldwide trying to ascend the economic ladder and increasing demand for water in all its forms.
In Pakistan, I saw how water crises are not self-contained. Several analysts and historians I talked to that summer believe the initial spark of the region's most enduring conflict – the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan over the Muslim region – was perhaps less about religious differences and more about control of the region's vital water resources.Kashmir is home to the headwaters of the Indus River, Pakistan's primary water lifeline. India also harnesses some of the river's flow for hydropower. But the fragile status quo that governs sharing of the river is under threat from booming population demands and the impacts of climate change. Both nations are racing to complete hydroelectric dams along the Kashmir rivers, elevating tensions. India's projects are of such size and scope to worry Pakistan about water shortages at critical times and massive deluges at other times.Water stress has triggered unrest in both countries. In India, competition for water has set communities against each other. When I visited Pakistan in 2009, water stress had recently triggered food riots, bringing the military out to guard grain elevators; and it stoked protest and sectarian grievances in one region that some feared was on the verge of revolt. Water stolen from public pipes and then resold from tankers is a lucrative industry in Karachi, which depends on the Indus. And upstream elites divert large quantities of water before it reaches the city. But most Pakistanis blame their water problems on Indian dams – part of an alleged strategy to "make Pakistan into a desert."The fear is an example of water's psychological impact. "If there is a war here in the future, it will be over water," the former chairman of Pakistan's Securities and Exchange Commission, Tariq Hassan, told me. International water disputes worried him, but so did domestic water conflict. "That could be tomorrow."More recently, militant groups have used water to mobilize anti-India sentiment: Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Pakistani militant group allegedly behind the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, accused India of "water terrorism

Studies have recognized dam building as the most substantial human impact on riverine ecosystems (3). But most studies of ecological effects of river regulation have been carried out in the developed northern hemisphere; such work is largely unknown in India. We assessed impacts and trends of land-use changes from proposed dam building on terrestrial biodiversity in the Indian Himalaya (4). Of 292 proposed dams, the study assessed 132 for which public data were available, ranging from 7 to 11,000 MW in size. Of these, 90% would be run-of-the-river dams without storage reservoirs, yet this would not change the impacts highlighted below. If all dams are constructed as proposed, in 28 of 32 major river valleys, the Indian Himalaya would have one of the highest average dam densities in the world, with one dam for every 32 km of river channel. Proposed locations of dams correlate with zones of species richness for angiosperms, birds, fishes, and butterflies. In the Indian Himalaya, subtropical and temperate forests are most vulnerable to species losses driven by land-use changes (5), yet 88% of proposed dams are located in these ecosystems (see the figure). Over half of the dams would be in dense, relatively undisturbed forests. Forest loss due to direct submergence and habitat degradation from dam building could lead to loss of 22 angiosperm and 7 vertebrate taxa by 2025 (4). This conservative estimate did not consider effects of habitat fragmentation or isolation on multiple endemic species, general infrastructure development (such as smaller hydro projects and roads), or climate change.
Beyond specific project concerns, there are political reasons to strengthen India's energy planning, EIA, and resettlement laws. The two most important basins for hydropower development in the country, the Brahmaputra and the Indus, are transboundary rivers that begin on the Tibetan Plateau (China) and flow into Bangladesh and Pakistan, respectively. Every neighbor of India with undeveloped hydropower sites is building or planning to build multiple dams, totaling at minimum 129 projects (22). There has been little coordination between nations; India is not unique as it appears ready to expedite environmental review of hydropower projects on these rivers to gain “prior appropriation” of water resources before neighbors develop dams (23). Without negotiations to create integrated transboundary river basin planning, it is unlikely that any single nation's development can be optimized. This concern is underlined when projected climate change impacts on Indian Himalaya rivers are considered. Out to 2050 (well within the average lifetime of dams being built today), modeled decreases in mean upstream water supply from the Brahmaputra and Indus are 19.6 and 8.4%, respectively (24). Decreases of this magnitude may lead to reduction in a river's capacity to produce electricity, exacerbating regional political tensions over water-based energy production. In this context, improved assessment of hydropower development in the Indian Himalaya assumes international significance. Given the large number of regional hydropower projects, it is essential to encourage transboundary river basin management throughout the Indian Himalaya and beyond (25). Multilateral energy partnerships between countries may eventually replace current state-focused development behavior. For India's proposed Himalaya dams, at minimum, it would be desirable to prioritize projects located in degraded forests, whereas construction around biodiversity-rich, dense forests and sites with thorny resettlement issues should be subject to integrated scientific and social review before final development decisions are made.

the government proposed constructing 292 dams throughout the Indian Himalayas — roughly a dam every 20 miles. If completed, the 7,000- to 11,000-megawatt dams would double the country’s hydropower capacity and meet about 6 percent of the national energy needs projected for 2030 (based upon 8 percent annual growth of the nation’s domestic product). The dams, the reasoning goes, would provide electricity to needy people as well as offset carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Scientists and citizens alike are crying foul, however, pointing out that the dams will probably displace millions and wreck ecosystems throughout the Himalayas.No binding provisions are in place to ensure that displaced people receive adequate compensation and help with resettlement — and most of the projects are proceeding without adequate environmental impact surveys.“The key issue is that there’s no requirement in India’s law to do cumulative impact assessments,” said R. Edward Grumbine, a senior international scientist at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Kunming Institute of Botany. Dr. Grumbine and his colleague, Mahara Pandit at the University of Delhi, wrote one of the first scientific papers discussing the dams, recently published in Science.“We’re projecting into the future based on studies that are scarce and projects that haven’t begun yet,” Dr. Grumbine said. “No one in the scientific or policy communities would suggest that we have enough of an understanding of the situation to nail down specifics yet, but right now it doesn’t look good.”Climate change offers a further strike against the projects. By 2050, scientists predict, the water supply from the Brahmaputra and Indus — two major rivers among the 28 that would receive dams — will decrease by about 20 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Those reductions would in turn cut the rivers’ capacity to produce electricity, undermining the dams’ purpose.Alternative options exist. As a result of poor grid transmission and energy theft, for example, India loses about 20 to 30 percent of the total power it generates annually — an amount that is greater than current hydropower production. If those losses could be reduced, the imperative for building more dams would lessen.“India should pick the low-hanging fruit and create more efficiencies in their current delivery system,” Dr. Grumbine suggested. “By doing so, they wouldn’t have to build any dams or coal-fired power plants, at least for the next decade, which would buy the country some time.”

China has given the go-ahead for the construction of three new hydropower dams on the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra river, ending a two-year halt in approving new projects on the river amid concerns from India and environmental groups.

The three new dams have been approved by the State Council, or Cabinet, under a new energy development plan for 2015 that was released on January 23, according to a copy of the plan available with The Hindu .

China has, so far, only begun construction on one major hydropower dam on the main stream of the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra or Yarlung Zangbo as it is known in China – a 510 MW project in Zangmu in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which began to be built in 2010.

One of the three approved new dams is bigger than the Zangmu project.

A 640 MW dam will be built in Dagu, which lies 18 km upstream of Zangmu. Another 320 MW dam will be built at Jiacha, also on the middle reaches of the Brahmaputura downstream of Zangmu. A third dam will be built at Jiexu, 11 km upstream of Zangmu. The capacity of the Jiexu dam is, as yet, unconfirmed.

The three projects were listed in the State Council’s energy plan for the Twelfth Five Year Plan period (2011-15), which was released on January 23.

Vigorous push

The plan said the government “will push forward vigorously the hydropower base construction” on the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo. In the Twelfth Five Year plan period (2011-15), the government will begin construction of 120 million kilowatt of conventional hydropower.

Feasibility study

A pre-feasibility study report for the 640 MW Dagu dam passed review in November, according to the Huadong Engineering Corporation, a hydropower company that was tasked with conducting the study by the local government.

A notice posted on its website said a two-day review conference for the pre-feasibility study of the dam was held in November, organised by the Tibet Autonomous Region government’s Development and Reform Commission. The notice said the study successfully passed review, adding that the dam would be located 18 km upstream of the already in-construction Zangmu dam.

The catchment area at the dam site, according to the Huadong Engineering Corporation, is 157,400 square kilometres, and the average annual discharge is 1010 cubic metres per second.

The dam will be built with a height of 124 metres and 640 MW capacity. The construction of the Zangmu dam in 2010 triggered concerns in India regarding possible impact on downstream flows. Chinese officials, however, assured their Indian counterparts that the project was only a run-of-the-river hydropower station, which would not divert the Brahmaputra’s waters. The government has also built at least six smaller hydropower projects on the Yarlung Zangbo’s tributaries, which, officials say, will have no impact on downstream flows.

Diversion plan shelved

The government has, for now, shelved a long-discussed plan to divert the Yarlung Zangbo’s waters to the arid north, citing technical difficulties. The plan is part of the proposed Western route of the massive South-to-North diversion project, on which construction is yet to begin. Chinese officials and analysts say a diversion plan is very unlikely, considering the difficult terrain and technical problems.

However, with the three new approvals under the energy plan, four hydropower projects will now be built — all located within a few dozen kilometres of each other — on the main stream of the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra.

Fresh concerns likely in India

While they are run-of-the-river projects, they will be required to store large volumes of water for generating power. Their construction is likely to trigger fresh concerns in India on how the flows of the Brahmaputra downstream will be impacted.

In contrast to China’s unilateral move to construct dams on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra, India has taken a different route with respect to dams on rivers it shares with Bangladesh.

India and Bangladesh have identified several projects including the controversial Tipaimukh hydel project in which Dhaka could have equity participation. Over time, some portion of the electricity generated by projects on common rivers could accrue to Bangladesh, said official sources.

“We have identified the projects and Bangladesh can come and participate in them, including the Tipaimukh project. They had raised some queries to which we replied. We are waiting to hear from them,” added the sources.

According to the proposal, a copy of which is with The Hindu , the Ministry of External Affairs has informed Indian power companies about adverse reactions in Bangladesh over the Tipaimukh project on River Barak and advised them that any development, however insignificant, should be taken up after taking Dhaka into confidence.

The sources said that after the power companies decided to share technical details and the environment plan with Bangladesh, National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon advised them to take the extra step by inviting Dhaka to participate in the Tipaimukh project.

Subsequently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh felt that as a first step, a delegation could be invited to India to discuss the possibility of Bangladesh taking a stake in the project.

Bangladesh has now shown interest in jointly developing nine hydroelectric projects in the North East and Sikkim. Of them, three are under construction — Subansiri (2000 MW), Myntdu (84 MW) and Teesta-III (1200 MW). Dhaka is also interested in six other projects that are at the planning stage including Jadukata (345 MW), Tipaimukh (1500 MW) and Teesta-IV (495MW).

The offer of a joint stake in Tipaimukh, which is located in India on the Manipur-Mizoram border but on a river common to Bangladesh, will be the first move to test the waters in terms of various wrinkles that are likely to appear in a joint hydel project with a huge capital outlay. The project had led to agitations in Bangladesh where people feared that the dam would lead to floods during monsoons and lean flows during the rest of the year.

Public reactions in Bangladesh became more adverse after a promoters’ agreement was signed between two public sector companies and the Government of Manipur.

With the Prime Minister cracking the whip, the three original partners in the Tipaimukh project are ready to re-work their equity holding to accommodate Bangladesh as a stake holder.

Sources said a part of the electricity that would be generated could be transferred to Bangladesh. India has a similar arrangement with Bhutan which is working satisfactorily — India buys about 1,200 MW of power from Bhutan and pays for it. India is constructing projects in Bhutan that are expected to yield an additional 10,000 MW provided funds don’t fall short.

India has already taken small steps in this regard with Bangladesh. A transmission line is nearing completion and, by this summer, India should be supplying 500 MW to her eastern neighbour.

The two sides are now working on an East-West connectivity project under which electricity generated in the North-East will be evacuated to eastern India by taking transmission lines across Bangladesh. If all goes according to plan, officials say Bangladesh’s share from the projects could be transferred from this grid.

Amid concern in India over China’s plans to construct dams upstream on the Brahmaputra, a senior government official said here on Wednesday that the run-of-the-river projects would not affect inflows into India.

Reacting to the news that China plans to construct three new hydropower dams in the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Zangbo as it is known in China), Union Water Resources Secretary Dhruv Vijay Singh told The Hindu that the Indian governmentwas aware of the dams being constructed/proposed by China. “We are keeping a close watch. These are run-of-the-river dams with no storage and will not affect inflows into India,” he said. {He should have said, "We hope these dams would not affect flows to India" rather than categorically giving a green signal to PRC. How does he know they are merely run-of-the-river projects ? Has China shared technical details with us ?}

However, the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an NGO, said these being run-of-the-river projects, there may not be any change in the annual flows of the river, but the flow patterns may change and concern about flooding and erosion could not be overlooked.

The Hindu reported on Tuesday that the Chinese State Council had approved the construction of three new dams on the Brahmaputra under a new energy development plan for 2015.

In India, the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation is constructing the Upper Siang Hydroelectric Project on the Siang tributary of the Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh and the 2000 MW Lower Subansiri project on Subansiri, another tributary of the Brahmaputra on the Arunachal Pradesh, Assam border.

The Chinese government said on Wednesday it would take into consideration the interests of lower riparian — or downstream lying — countries as it goes ahead with new hydropower projects on the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra river or Yarlung Zangbo, as it is known in China.

“Any new projects have to go through scientific planning and study, with the consideration of the interests of both lower and upper stream [riparian] countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said at a press briefing, in response to questions about the government’s approval for the construction of three new hydropower projects on the Brahmaputra, first reported by The Hindu on January 30.

The Chinese government, Mr. Hong said, had “always taken a responsible attitude towards the utilisation and development of cross-border rivers.”

The Chinese State Council, or Cabinet, has given the green light to three new hydropower projects on the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo in an energy plan for 2011-15 announced on January 23. The plan specifically listed Dagu, Jiacha, and Jiexu as sites for new hydropower bases, and stated that the government “will push forward vigorously” hydropower projects on the middle reaches of the river.

The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) government has also accepted a pre-feasibility study report, prepared by the Huadong Engineering Corporation, for a 640 MW dam at Dagu. China has, so far, begun construction on one 510 MW dam on the main stream on the middle reaches of the river, at Zangmu, which lies 18 km downstream of Dagu. Chinese officials have said the Zangmu dam, which triggered concerns in India, was only a run of the river project which would not impact downstream flows. Top Chinese officials have assured their Indian counterparts even as recently as last month that they would not take any steps that would affect downstream flows.

China has, however, shared little specific information about the status of approved or proposed new projects. While India and China do not have any water-sharing agreement, they have instituted a mechanism to exchange data on transborder rivers through a working group, including on the measurement of flows. The issue also figured in recent talks between National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo here last month.

“We mentioned the fact that we have a forum, we are exchanging data on transborder rivers, and that we would like to expand what we are doing,” Mr. Menon said here last month. “We are also measuring flows,” he said. “So far so good; so far, the flows are what they were. The question is, if they have a structure which can control flows. So far, it doesn’t exist. They say nothing that they are doing is going to affect the flows. They are sharing data with us, and we will keep working with them”.

Large Chinese dams on the Mekong River have been blamed for disrupting water flows into countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, while Chinese dam-building projects in places such as Burma and Cambodia have been criticized for displacing people and causing environmental havoc.

As its demand for power soars, China has become the world’s largest dam builder, and its latest five-year energy plan, announced last month, laid out proposals for more hydroelectric plants, including three medium-size dams on the Yarlung Zangbo, as the Brahmaputra is known there.

But the fact that the Indian government learned of the plans through Chinese media reports has raised hackles here. With one eye on public opinion, New Delhi issued an unusually testy statement last week, reminding Beijing of India’s “considerable established user rights to the waters of the river.” India has “conveyed its views and concerns at the highest levels” of the Chinese government, Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said.

Nevertheless, critics here say the developments are typical of China’s secrecy-shrouded dam program, especially in Tibet, and of its lack of regard for downstream neighbors. Indian media have frequently blamed flash floods on unannounced discharges of water from Chinese dams elsewhere in the Himalayas.

“They should give us all the information, the height of the dam, how much water it will hold and how much it is going to divert . . . and then decide how to proceed,” said Yashwant Sinha, who was India’s foreign minister from 2002 to 2004 and is a leading figure in the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. “Instead we hear about it through the media. They do things very, very stealthily.”

The latest plans also have provided more ammunition for the likes of Brahma Chellaney, who is with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and who has been warning for years that Chinese dams on the Brahmaputra pose a serious long-term threat to the livelihoods of farmers, not only in India but even more so farther downstream in Bangladesh.

Chellaney argues that the country has an established policy of trying to corner the natural resources that its growing economy needs — whether from its own back yard or from as far afield as Africa or Latin America.

From the Yangtze to the Mekong and now the Brahmaputra, Chinese dam-building follows a well-established pattern that starts with small dams on a river’s upper reaches and eventually moves to mega-dams downstream, Chellaney said. There are 12 small dams on the Brahmaputra’s upper reaches and tributaries and one medium-size dam under construction on the river, said Chellaney, predicting that the next step will be larger dams in spots where the river picks up huge amounts of water and momentum nearer the Indian border.

Those dams could not only affect water flows but also remove nutrient-rich silt that helps nourish agriculture downstream, he said.

The nightmare scenario for India is that China would one day have the engineering expertise to divert the river at its Great Bend, where it makes a hairpin turn through a gorge many times as deep as the Grand Canyon before rushing into India.

Such an idea has circulated in China for some time, but it is a practical impossibility even for the Chinese, said Mohan Guruswamy of the Center for Policy Alternatives in New Delhi. He said such a project would potentially require nuclear explosions to blow up mountains and the construction of a string of nuclear power plants to haul the water over the higher reaches of the Tibetan plateau.

Guruswamy said many of India’s popular concerns are born of ignorance and a strong dose of jingoism. The Brahmaputra picks up the vast majority of its water a long way downstream from the proposed dams, he said, and India uses only 5 percent of the waters as the river, six miles wide in some places, glides by on its way to Bangladesh.

New Delhi is monitoring the river’s flow as it enters Indian territory but is not overly concerned, said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject.

As a rising global power, China has shrinking incentive to unilaterally dam rivers to its neighbors’ disadvantage, the official said.

“This sort of thing wouldn’t behoove a country that aspires to be a major player,” he said.

Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington said tensions could rise as climate change melts the Himalayan glaciers and changes the patterns of water distribution in Asia. The risk is that China then takes a larger share of diminished rivers, magnifying the effects of climate change on downstream nations such as India.

And because the upstream power also has military, strategic and economic advantages, many observers say India has minimal bargaining power.

“India has very little leverage over China, and this is just one more lever that China is acquiring,” said Harsh Pant of the defense studies department at King’s College London.

Water is emerging as a new possible irritant between China and India, which has proposed a bilateral mechanism to deal with it.

In a significant move, India is pressing China to have either a water commission or an inter-governmental dialogue or a treaty to deal with water issues between the two countries.

This comes in the wake of Chinese move to approve the construction of three more dams on Brahmaputra river in Tibet, in addition to the one being built without informing New Delhi.

Following the Chinese move, a high-level inter-ministerial committee, comprising officials from External Affairs Ministry, Defence Ministry, Department of Space, among others met here to take stock of the situation and decided to take it up with China.

The issue was once again taken up when a senior Chinese embassy official met MEA officials to give details on the construction proposal.

“Though, the issue (of having a bilateral mechanism) has been part of our discussions earlier also, the recent move by Beijing has further pushed the matter. There is a need for some mechanism to deal with water issues between the two countries on the lines of what India has with other countries like Pakistan,” sources told PTI.

Indus water treaty

While India has a Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan under which the two countries share information and cooperate on the matter, a Ganges Treaty with Bangladesh establishes a 30-year water-sharing arrangement and recognises the neighbouring country’s rights as a lower-level riparian.

Recently, the Chinese Cabinet had approved a document which mentions the construction of three dams at Dagu, Jiacha and Jiexu on Brahmaputra.

Reacting to the Chinese move, the official spokesperson in MEA has said India carefully monitors all developments on the Brahmaputra river.

“As a lower riparian state with considerable established user rights to the waters of the river, India has conveyed its views and concerns to the Chinese authorities, including at the highest levels.”

The official spokesperson also stressed the need for China to ensure that the interests of downstream states are not harmed by any activities in upstream areas.

Cross-border river issues

Maintaining that its move to build three more dams on Brahmaputra river in Tibet will not affect the flows to downstream areas, China has said it is in “communication and cooperation” with India over cross-border river issues.

“China has always taken a responsible attitude towards cross-border river development. China and India are maintaining communication and cooperation on the cross-border river issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had told reporters in Beijing.

However, Hua did not specify whether the two countries are in communication regarding the new dams which it proposes to build by 2015. Brahmaputra river is known as as Yarlung Zangbo in China.

Beijing’s decision comes at a time when India-China relations have improved considerably in all areas of cooperation.

The two countries held lengthy rounds of bilateral exchanges during National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo’s visit to Beijing and New Delhi, respectively.

The Chinese government's recent decision to build an array of new dams on rivers flowing to other countries is set to roil inter-riparian relations in Asia and make it more difficult to establish rules-based water cooperation and sharing. The longterm implications for India are particularly stark because several major rivers flow south from Tibet. Just the Brahmaputra's annual crossborder runoff volume, according to UN data, is greater than the combined flow of three rivers that run from Tibet into south-east Asia: the Mekong, Salween and Irrawaddy.

China's dam programme is following a well-established pattern on international rivers: build modest-size dams on a river's difficult uppermost reaches, then construct larger dams in the upper-middle sections as the river picks up greater water and momentum, before embarking on mega-dams in the border area facing another country. China already has a dozen dams in the Brahmaputra basin and one each on the Indus and the Sutlej. It is close to completing one dam and has just cleared work on three others on the Brahmaputra. Two more are planned in this cascade before the dam-building moves to the water-rich border segment as the river makes a U-turn to enter India.

Asia, not Africa, is the world's driest continent. China, which already boasts more large dams than the rest of the world combined, has emerged as the key impediment to building institutionalised collaboration on shared water resources. In contrast to the bilateral water treaties between many of its neighbours, China rejects water-sharing arrangement or joint, rules-based management of common resources.

India has water-sharing treaties with both the countries located downstream to it: the Indus pact with Pakistan guarantees the world's largest cross-border flows of any treaty regime, while the Ganges accord has set a new principle in international water law by assuring Bangladesh an equal share of downriver flows in the dry season. China, by contrast, does not have a single water-sharing treaty with any neighbour.

Yet, most of Asia's international rivers originate in territories that China annexed after the 1949 communist takeover there. Tibet, for example, is the world's largest freshwater repository and the source of Asia's greatest rivers, including those that are the lifeblood of mainland China and south and south-east Asia. Other Chinese-held homelands of ethnic minorities contain the headwaters of rivers such as the Irtysh, Illy and Amur, which flow to Russia and central Asia.

Most of the 54 new dam projects announced recently by China's state council, or cabinet, are concentrated in the seismically-active southwest, covering parts of the Tibetan plateau. The restart of dam-building on the Salween after an eightyear moratorium is in keeping with a pattern seen on other river systems: Beijing temporarily suspends acontroversial plan after major protests flare so as to buy time, before resurrecting the same plan. In fact, according to a 2008 report in Time, work on laying the foundation of four Salween dams continued during the moratorium by reclassifying them as transportation projects.

Whereas the newly-unveiled projects on the Salween and the Mekong are mega-dams with big reservoirs, China claims its dam-building on the Brahmaputra involves only runof-river plants — a type that generates hydropower without reservoir storage by using a river's natural flow and elevation drop. However, unlike India vis-a-vis Pakistan or Bangladesh, Beijing is neither willing to share with New Delhi the technical designs nor permit on-site scrutiny. The relatively large projects at Dagu, Jiexu and Zangmu indeed raise the spectre of storage. Such is the lack of Chinese transparency that the flash-floods that ravaged Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh between 2000 and 2005 were linked to unannounced releases from Chinese dams.

Asia awaits a future made hotter and drier by climate and environmental change and resource depletion. The continent's water challenges have been exacerbated by consumption growth, unsustainable irrigation practices, rapid industrialisation, pollution, environmental degradation and geopolitical shifts.

If Asia is to prevent water wars, it must build institutionalised cooperation in trans-boundary basins that co-opts all riparian neighbours. If a dominant riparian state refuses to join, such institutional arrangements — as in the Mekong basin — will be ineffective. The arrangements must be centred on transparency, unhindered information flow, equitable sharing, dispute settlement, pollution control and a commitment to refrain from any project that could materially diminish trans-boundary flows. International dispute-settlement mechanisms, as in the Indus treaty, help stem the risk that water wrangles could escalate to open conflict.

China — with its hold over Asia's transnational water resources and boasting over half of the world's 50,000 large dams — has made the control and manipulation of river flows a pivot of its power and economic progress. Unless it is willing to play a leadership role to develop a rules-based system, the economic and security risks arising from the Asian water competition can scarcely be mitigated.

The Inter-Ministerial Expert Group (IMEG) on the Brahmaputra has said China is carrying out a series of cascading Run-of-the-River (ROR) projects in the middle reaches of the river and the same may be replicated in the Great Bend Area as a viable alternative to a single mega project, and called for further monitoring.

The IMEG is of the opinion that Jiacha could be the next power project on the mainstream of the Brahmaputra. It may be followed by projects at Lengda, Zhongda, Langzhen, where dam-related peripheral infrastructural activity, including four new bridges, has gathered speed.

The ninth report of the IMEG, submitted to the Committee of Secretaries (COS) in February, expressed apprehension that Dagu and Jiexu, which are also in the main course of the Brahmaputra, may see considerable development activity in future. It said such activity was discerned at Nangxian, as well as upgrade of the Bome-Medog Road that passes through the Great Bend Area.

The report noted that the 12{+t}{+h}Five-Year Plan mentions the establishment of hydro-power bases in the middle stream of the river to “strengthen exploration and development of domestic resources.” However, it said there was no information about any change in China’s position vis-à-vis the Brahmaputra over the proposed South-North Water Diversion Project.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had raised the dams construction issue, during his first meeting with the new President Xi Jinping in Durban last month on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

The three dams — Jiexu, Zangmu and Jiacha — are within 25 km of each other and are 550 km from the Indian border. The one at Jiexu has been independently confirmed to be an ROR project, which will not impound water in a large reservoir.

The IMEG said the activities at Jiexu, Dagu, Lengda, Zhongda, Langzhen and Nangxian may be taken up with China at the appropriate level. As decided in the earlier IMEG report, the area on the other side of the basin, including Tongia, Changxu, Qilong, Xierga and Renda, would be monitored once the Chinese side finished the work on the middle route of the South-North Diversion Project, it said.

The report took note of the view of the Water Resources Ministry, which said that it was necessary to explore and study options to resort to the provisions of the existing environmental treaties and conventions.

It said Indian agencies have identified and reported a total of 39 projects/sites on the Brahmaputra and its tributaries for construction of reservoirs/power projects, showing an increase of three sites over 36 sites reported in the previous IMEG report. However, these projects are mainly ROR projects, catering to electricity or irrigational requirement.

Durban, March 28 -- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh raised India's concerns over Beijing's plans to construct three dams across the Brahmaputra river during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Durban on the sidelines of the BRICS summit late on Wednesday night.

This was first high-level interaction between Singh and the new Chinese leadership and the 45-minute meeting between the leaders also affirmed their intent to take the bilateral ties to a new level and "higher growth trajectory."

"The bilateral relationship with China is of great importance. As Prime Minister of India, it has been my great privilege to interact regularly with the Chinese relationship over the last decade. I hope to intensify such dialogue and communications with you and the new leadership of China to put our relations on an even higher growth trajectory," Singh said.

The leaders touched upon the entire gamut of bilateral ties but there was no discussion on the South China sea issue, official sources said.

China's recent approval for three new dams on the Brahmaputra on the middle reaches of the river early this year raised concerns in India.

Beijing had thus ended a two-year halt in approving new projects on the river. India, the lower-riparian state has been closely watching Beijing's plans as it can affect the water flow of the Brahmaputra in the country.

China has been maintaining that these run-of-the-river projects. The entire expanse of the bilateral relationship was discussed and the meeting was very positive, the sources said.

The two leaders expressed regards for each other. They include New Delhi's concerns about growing trade imbalance with China and the border talks.

However, due to the paucity of time both leaders couldn't go into details about each issue, official sources said.

New Delhi, April 5:

The Government today allayed apprehensions about the three dams being built by China on the Brahmaputra, saying the projects will not affect India as most of the water in the river comes from Arunachal Pradesh.

“The issue has been taken up by India at the highest level. Our Prime Minister discussed it with the President of China when they met recently,” the Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat told reporters. He maintained that the three dams being constructed by China will not affect India’s use of the river.

“Most of the water to the Brahmaputra comes from Arunachal Pradesh and other places,” Rawat said. That is correct

He was speaking at a press conference held to announce the commencement of India Water Week from April 8—12.

Prime Minister Singh and Chinese President Xi Jinping had discussed the issue on March 8 on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Durban. While China maintains these constructions are run of the river projects, India has emphasised that there should be prior confabulations to build greater confidence.

The India Water Week will be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee on April 8. Around 1,758 registrations from 64 countries have been made so far for the conclave. Around 200 papers are likely to be presented at the five-day meet.

Rawat highlighted some of the major concerns of his ministry including growing pollution of rivers, drought in Maharashtra and other States, and sharing of water between States. He said National Water Policy-2012 is aimed at dealing with these challenges.

Asked about the controversy over use of huge quantities of water for maintaining the grounds for IPL matches in drought-hit Maharashtra, Rawat said this issues comes under state jurisdiction. “We can only advise the States that water is precious and should be used judiciously,” he said.

While India is seeking a joint mechanism with China for better transparency on the 39 project sites that the latter has identified on the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, what was signed on Monday during the visit of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was a “renewal” of the pact on sharing of flood data during the north-west monsoon season. The agreement, inked five years ago, expires on June 4.

At a joint press conference, Mr. Li and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced their willingness to expand cooperation on trans-boundary rivers. Mr. Li said he was ready to share more information on hydrology and rivers, but there was no word on setting up a joint mechanism to address India’s concerns on dams coming up on the Brahmaputra on the Chinese side.

The renewed pact that was signed on Monday by Chinese Ambassador Wei Wei and Water Resources Secretary S.K. Sarkar, in the presence of Dr. Singh and Mr. Li, will last till June 5, 2018.

As per the pact, China will provide India hydrological data of the Brahmaputra twice a day during the flood season (June 1 to October 15) at hydrological stations Nugesha, Yangcun and Nuxia, which lie on the mainstream of the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra). It will also provide data if water levels exceed mutually agreed levels during the non-flood season.

In return, India will give information about data utilisation in flood forecasting and mitigation.

The pact will be followed by the signing of an Implementation Plan of Hydrological Information, under which China has agreed to provide information on any abnormal rise-or-fall in water levels/discharge, which might lead to sudden floods in the Brahmaputra, on the basis of monitoring and data collection on real-time basis.

A Memorandum of Understanding was also signed between the Ministry of Water Resources and China’s National Development and Reform Commission on cooperation in “ensuring water efficient irrigation.” It aims at enhancing bilateral cooperation water efficient technology with applicability in agriculture and exchange of best practices.

Concern over new dams

India has frequently expressed its concern at the proposed seven dams on the main channel of the Brahmaputra, particularly the 510 MW Zangmu project over which there are apprehensions that water may be diverted. If water is diverted, then the Indian projects on the Brahmaputra, particularly the Upper Siang and the Lower Suhansri projects in Arunachal Pradesh, will be affected.

Even if Zangmu is a run-of-the-river (no permanent storage) dam, there are apprehensions about the “pondage” planned for power generation, although China has said it will not affect downstream flows.

Other Chinese projects that are proposed on the Brahmaputra include Dagu, Jiexu, Jiacha, Lengda, Zhongda and Langzhen. Developmental activities have been observed on the Jiacha project, which may be taken up next.

In the absence of a river water-sharing treaty between the two countries, a joint mechanism will allow India to seek specific information about China’s upstream projects, their construction schedule, the likely impact on people, environment and downstream river flows.

Dr. Singh raised need for a joint mechanism for sharing information on trans-boundary projects during his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Durban last month on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

If India succeeds in building the Kishanganga dam on River Jhelum, Pakistan is likely to face 13 percent shortage of water, incurring a loss of $141 million to the national exchequer.

This was stated by the CEO of the Neelum-Jehlum Hydro Electric Project Lieutenant General Zubair Ahmed (Retd) while briefing the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Economic Affairs Division (EAD) ………..

…………… The project's CEO also said: "Neelum Jehlum Hydro Electric Project has not been able to open Letter of Credit (LC) worth $113 million for Islamic Development Bank (IDB) financed equipment. This issue has also been taken up with Neelum Jehlum Hydro Company," the CEO said, adding that loan agreement worth $100 million with Abu Dhabi Fund is pending because the Fund linked it with the issue of Etisalat payments regarding PTCL privatisation process.

He informed the committee that a loan agreement worth $448 million with Exim Bank China was also pending as China's State Council is yet to approve it. " …………….

BANGALORE, India—Amidst the doomsday scenario presented by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) there is one silver lining, at least the glaciers in the Himalayas are not disappearing for at least a couple of centuries. The billion plus people who inhabit the fertile flood plains of the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra can breathe easy that the rivers which nurture them are not drying up anytime soon.
The Himalayas are considered the 'Third Pole’ since outside the polar regions they contain the largest amount of freshwater that is frozen into snow and ice The IPCC had earlier asserted that the glaciers in the high Himalayas—also dubbed the “third pole”—would disappear by 2035. Now in its latest report, released in Yokohama, Japan on Sunday, it says “it is virtually certain that these projections [the current glacier melt rates] are more reliable than an earlier erroneous assessment of complete disappearance by 2035.”What a climb down from the highly alarmist situation that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in another eleven years to a point where it acknowledges they will be around much more than our lifetimes! I am not a climate change denialist but am certainly against the trumpeting of exaggerated claims that are often made only on the basis of extrapolations from dodgy mathematical models.The flood plain of the massive River Brahmaputra from eastern India. The river originates in the high Himalayas in the Tibetan region and if the waters were to dry up due to climate change it could become a point of tension between India and ChinaThe 2007 Himalayan glacier error had badly tarnished the reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC. Now Chris Field, one of the lead authors of the latest report, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the Himalayan glacier error was “really serious.” According to the French news agency AFP, in the massive Fifth Assessment Report on climate impacts the IPCC said Himalayan glaciers would shrink by 45 percent by 2100, if Earth’s average surface temperature rose by 1.8 degrees Celsius. Under a far warmer scenario of 3.7 C, the reduction would be 68 percent. Field told the ABC, “we’ve tried to double check and triple check and quadruple check everything in this report.”In its Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, the IPCC had committed what came to be known as the `Himalayan Blunder’ or ‘Glacier-gate’ when it asserted that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.” It had then relied on un-published “grey literature.”In 2009, against odds I had pursued an investigation that the IPCC had got its facts very wrong on the state of glaciers in the Himalayas. That was a heady time for climate change, all eyes were on the Copenhagen climate summit and there I was, researching a story that went totally against the prevailing tide. Believe me it was tough, very tough to even conceive a story that would question the claims of that `holy cow’ of climate change, the IPCC.
Glaicers in the Himalayas are mostly at high altitudes usually accessible after a very hard to trek so only a dozen or so have been extensively studied.I had heard subdued murmurs since 2007 that IPCC’s Himalayan glacier claim was absurd, but like glaciers, glaciologists also move slowly in publishing their results and it was an explosive Indian government report that gave me the right peg on which to hang the story that I had been researching for almost two years!In 2009, India’s then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh released a study on Himalayan glaciers that suggested that they may not be melting as much due to global warming as it was widely feared. Ramesh accused the IPCC of being “alarmist” in an article that I wrote for Science, saying, “We don’t need to write the epitaph for the glaciers, but we need a concentrated scientific and policy focus on the Himalayan ecosystem since the truth is incredibly complex.”Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, dismissed the Indian government report, prepared by seasoned glaciologist V. K. Raina, as “voodoo science” and said the IPCC was a “sober body” whose work was verified by governments. Subsequently as part of the major reform process the IPCC `strengthened’ its procedures and was even subjected to an extended probe by the Inter Academy Council from Netherlands.It was not easy and as a journalist I was attacked for what I had written. Richard Stone, then Asia Editor for Science said in 2010, “In the weeks that followed, Pallava’s coverage did indeed draw criticism. IPCC chair Rajendra K. Pachauri ( Chamcha)xpressed ‘disappointment,’ while far less polite remarks came from scientists who seemed to believe that the IPCC report was sacrosanct.

China is unlikely to fund Diamer Bhasha because it doesn’t want to get involved in a water dispute between India and Pakistan, said a senior Chinese water resources official, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public.

Afghanistan’s authorities with the help of Indian experts have completed the feasibilities and detailed engineering of 12 hydro-power projects with capacity to generate 1,177MW of electricity to be built on the river Kabul.

If the 12 projects get completed, they will store 4.7 million acre feet of water squeezing the flow in the river reaching Pakistan.

India, …………………….. is now active to squeeze the water artery coming from Afghanistan.

India plans dam on Brahmaputra to offset Chinese construction upstream
By Neha Arora and Devjyot Ghoshal
ReutersTue, 1 December, 2020, 5:30 pm IST
By Neha Arora and Devjyot Ghoshal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is considering a plan to build a 10 gigawatts (GW) hydropower project in a remote eastern state, an Indian official said on Tuesday, following reports that China could construct dams on a section of the Brahmaputra river.

The river, also known as the Yarlung Tsangbo in China, flows from Tibet into India's Arunachal Pradesh state and down through Assam to Bangladesh. Indian authorities are concerned Chinese projects could trigger flash floods or create water scarcity.

"The need of the hour is to have a big dam in Arunachal Pradesh to mitigate the adverse impact of the Chinese dam projects," T.S. Mehra, a senior official in India's federal water ministry, told Reuters.

"Our proposal is under consideration at the highest level in the government," Mehra said, adding the Indian plan would create a large water storage capacity to offset the impact of Chinese dams on flows.

Diplomatic relations between India and China are at a nadir, with troops locked in a border face-off in the western Himalayas for months.

Some analysts warned that damming the Brahmaputra could potentially develop into another flashpoint, as Beijing's dam building activities moved closer to the Indian border.

"India is facing China's terrestrial aggression in the Himalayas, maritime encroachments on its backyard and, as the latest news is a reminder, even water wars," Brahma Chellaney, a specialist on India-China ties, said in a tweet.

On Monday, Chinese state media reported the country could build up to 60 GW of hydropower capacity on a section of the Brahmaputra, citing a senior executive.

Yan Zhiyong, chairman of state-owned Power Construction Corporation of China, speaking at an industry conference, said plans to dam the river were a "historic opportunity".

"Formally, we are telling them (the Chinese) that any project you undertake, should not cause an adverse impact on India. They have given an assurance, but we don't know how long their assurance will last," Mehra said.

Hydro projects on Asia's great rivers have been a growing source of regional tensions in recent years. In Southeast Asia, China has faced accusations a series of dams it has built on the Mekong have worsened drought in downstream countries, which Beijing denies.

India would be concerned if the Chinese built a dam around a so-called "great bend", where the Yarlung curves southward before entering India and where the river gains substantial volume of water, said Sayanangshu Modak, a researcher at the New-Delhi based Observer Research Foundation think-tank.

This region, however, is also geologically unstable, making potential dam construction challenging, he said.

In Bangladesh, Sheikh Rokon, secretary general of environment campaigners Riverine People, said multilateral discussion should be held before China builds any dams.

"China's downstream neighbours have a legitimate cause for concern. Water flow will be disrupted," he said.