Nightmare at Noon* – Water Wars
In this part of the “Nightmare at Noon” series, a look at why “Water” is the new “Oil”, the possibility of water scarcity leading to “Water Wars” in the future and China’s worrying plans in Tibet.
It was almost two years ago that I was first alerted to the gravity of this matter. The first trigger was an article by Prof. Brahma Chellaney (Jun 2007)Â in which he warned about how:
Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine whether Asia is headed toward mutually beneficial cooperation or deleterious interstate competition. No country could influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau -Â the source of most major rivers of Asia.
Prof Chellaney noted:
Tibet’s…river waters are a lifeline to the world’s two most-populous states – China and India -Â as well as to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries make up 47 percent of the global population. Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water – 3,920 cubic meters per person – than any continent besides Antarctica.
…While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries – from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China – it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern. This concern arises from Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.
…As water woes have been aggravated in its north due to environmentally unsustainable intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds…Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet (have a) bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is loath to share information.
…Control over the 2.5 million-square-km Tibetan plateau gives China tremendous leverage, besides access to vast natural resources. Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.
…The traditional Tibet is not just a distinct cultural entity but also a natural plateau, the future of whose water reserves is tied to ecological conservation. As China’s hunger for primary commodities has grown, so too has its exploitation of Tibet’s resources. And as water woes have intensified in several major Chinese cities, a group of ex-officials have championed the northward rerouting of the waters of the Brahmaputra in a book enlighteningly titled “Tibet’s Waters Will Save China.”
…As in the past, no country is going to be more affected by Chinese plans and projects in Tibet than India…In fact, Beijing has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and deepest canyon just before entering India as holding the largest untapped reserves for meeting its water and energy needs.
Prof Chellaney’s concluding sentence should have been enough to shake us out of our stupor:
The mega-rerouting (of Tibetan waters northwards) would constitute the declaration of a water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh.
This stark warning about a potential danger was predictably ignored and forgotten.
The danger of a potential conflict was also highlighted by Rohit P Singh in “The Geopolitics of the Tibetan Plateau“. Rohit wrote (emphasis mine):
In the recent past, concerns about interstate conflict have arisen from China’s attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where several major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. China is among the driest nations on earth with more than one-fourth of its land classified as desert. Rivers there are either too polluted or too filled with silt to provide all of the country’s 1.3 billion people with adequate supplies of freshwater. In its attempts to solve its water crisis, China has become a potentially dangerous nation to its neighbors. After building two dams upstream, China now has plans to divert the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas of its heartland, and to build three more dams on the Mekong, which has amplified rages in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. In sum, as China has exhausted its own resources, it is now threatening the ecological viability of nations in South and Southeast Asia.
…The countries that would be most gravely affected by China’s plans are India and Bangladesh. China seems to be intent on pursuing its water projects, and the idea of a great “south-north water transfer†project that diverts river waters descending from the Tibetan highlands has been backed by President Hu Jintao. Under the “south-north water transfer†project, water will first be drawn from the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau, by building 300 kilometers of tunnels and channels. In the second phase, water will be directed northward from the Shuomatan Point, or the “Great Bendâ€, which is found just before the water enters India and from whence it is known as the Brahmaputra. This second phase will begin when any water shortage becomes acute in China, and could provoke a water war with India and Bangladesh as these countries try to protect their riparian regions.
A shortage of water in the Ganges has already affected the lives of millions of people in Bangladesh and has driven them to illegally migrate to India. This migration has resulted in a marked demographic change in India’s Northeastern states (especially Assam) and has been the cause of several social and cultural conflicts in the region. If Bangladesh faces a shortage of water in the Brahmaputra due to China’s upstream diversion plans, this migration will likely increase to dangerous levels and threaten the lives of thousands in Assam and other states.
Image courtesy: IIT Guwahati
In May 2007, Martin Walker, UPI Editor Emeritus wrote (emphasis added):
The most dangerous place on Earth right now may not be in Iraq, nor in the Gaza Strip nor even in some underground nuclear laboratory in Iran or North Korea. It is on the roof of the world, at a place called Namcha Barwa on the eastern plateau of Tibet.
This is the cradle of the headwaters of what the Chinese call the Tsangpo River, and at over 14,000 feet above sea level, it is the world’s highest. For India and Bangladesh, this is the Brahmaputra, on which Bangladesh depends for more than half of its fresh water, and its crops need the annual gift of the fertile silt it carries.
For India, according to the Department of Environmental Science at Assam’s Gauhati University: “The Brahmaputra basin in India is most generously gifted with a fabulous water wealth that accounts for nearly 30 percent of the total water resources and about 40 percent of the total hydropower potential of the country.”
It is at this point in Tibet that China is planning to build the world’s largest dam, with 26 turbines, expected to generate 40 million kilowatts per hour of hydroelectricity. Thanks to the steep drop the river makes, this is twice the expected output of the famous Three Gorges Dam over the Yangtse.
…When India raised concerns about these plans during the last visit to New Delhi of Chinese leader Hu Jintao (himself a water engineer by training), China said no such plans existed. But something is certainly afoot, according to China’s own media, who report that a survey of river potential is now under way in Tibet.
…There is no doubt that China needs the water. But so do India and Bangladesh. In this context, water is a matter of life and death, which is why the decision to be made in Beijing whether to go ahead with damming the Brahmaputra makes this tiny corner of Tibet potentially the most dangerous place on Earth.
In Apr 2008, Sonia Jabbar talked of wake-up call in her article, “Why Tibet Mattersâ€
While one is not advocating India’s lebensraum or hostilities with China, one should be aware that China controls the headwaters of many Indian rivers that originate in the Tibetan plateau. India is already facing acute water shortages. China has already anticipated its future water problems by damming the headwaters of the Sutlej and Brahmaputra. While the ‘thirsty’ provinces of Xingjian and Gansu will undoubtedly benefit by China’s plans to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra, India needs to wake up well before our rivers begin drying up.
The various reports and my growing concern about this led to this post in Apr 2008 in which I lamented how the Government appeared to be completely oblivious to the threat posed by Chinese activity.
So what does our Government do?
Nothing. It just “watchesâ€
But then why should it do anything more? The mighty Brahma-putra does not quite leave the same imprint on national consciousness as does Ganga-Mata…and it is too far-away to bother anyways.
Besides, we don’t drink the waters of Brahmaputra, do we? So I guess it is OK if the Chinese decide to dam some of it and use it for themselves. After all, whats a little bit of water between neighbours?
Late this year, as reports of Chinese activity to build a dam across the Brahmaputra resurfaced, the PM assured Arunachal Pradesh CM that China was not building dam (across Brahmaputra) that might be “a matter of concern” for India.
…When the delegation raised the issue of Chinese incursions into the state, the Prime Minister reportedly assured them that the Centre will “tackle†the boundary question with the neighbouring country bilaterally.
“The Prime Minister told us not to worry. He said the Centre will tackle with the situation bilaterally,†said Congress MP from Arunachal West Takam Sanjoy, who was part of the delegation.
2 weeks later, on 4th Nov, Indian Express reported that remote sensing confirms China is building a Dam.
But do you think anybody is loosing sleep over this? Almost certainly not…And as for “Water Wars”, is that not something that happens on Mars?
Related Posts:
Nightmare at Noon* – What if I had no water to drink?
Now Thats What I call Music..sorry, *News*
Additional Reference: Ebb without flow: Water may be the new oil in a thirsty global economy
* With apologies to Nico Mastorakis
Some options to deal with China are in comment #8 on this post:Â https://satyameva-jayate.org/2011/10/12/inch-by-inch-3/
***
Latest Update (21st Jan ’14)
Courtesy, a tweet by Prof Brahm Chellaney dt 21st Jan ’14, this map (above) published in  the “New Scientist” reveals China’s plans to dam or divert waters from all the five rivers that flow out of Tibetan plateau. Worrying.
Here is a speech on water harvesting in ancient India.
http://www.ted.com/talks/anupam_mishra_the_ancient_ingenuity_of_water_harvesting.html
@ Harapriya: Thanks…This was recommended to me by someone else as well..I’ll include it in the concluding part of this series – to be published tomorrow.
The concluding sentence from a highly readable article by Claude Arpi on India and China:
One of the possible future scenarios is certainly a conflict with India for water which will be triggered by the nervousness of the declining empire.
Lack of any strategic thinking across India shows up time and time again – all thinking’s been mortgaged!
AML Macro Limited
Macro Themes – Water 10th February 2012
Tibet – The Most Dangerous Place in the World
At the start of the month, Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the Indian Army is strengthening itself for a limited conflict with China. “Despite public statements intended to downplay tensions between India and China, we judge that India is increasingly concerned about China’s posture along their disputed border and Beijing’s perceived aggressive posture in the Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific regionâ€. “The Indian Army believes a major Sino-Indian conflict is not imminent, but the Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Oceanâ€. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-01/news/31012988_1_india-and-china-chinese-army-sino-indian
In May 2007 Walkers World said “The most dangerous place on Earth right now may not be in Iraq, nor in the Gaza Strip nor even in some underground nuclear laboratory in Iran or North Korea. It is on the roof of the world at a place called Namcha Barwa on the eastern plateau of Tibetâ€. So whats going on?
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2007/05/14/Walkers-World-The-most-dangerous-place/UPI-87261179157455/
These warnings refer to a potential water crisis that I have previously written about. It is China’s Water Diversion project, and in particular what that means to the Brahmaputra River. Tibet is the water super power. It is the source of water for most of Asia and some of Central Europe and as such is of extreme importance, highlighting just how far ahead China was thinking when, in October 1950, under the cover of the Korean War, the People’s Liberation Army entered the Tibetan Plateau defeating the Tibetan army. Three of the world’s largest rivers by discharge originate in Tibet, and of course the third part of the South-North Water Transfer project involves rivers that flow across the border into the rest of Asia.
India’s total annual renewable water resources, ie both rivers and replacement into aquifers etc, is 1907.8 cubic kilometres a year, of which it uses 761 cubic kilometres or 40%, a figure that is growing each year. Whilst this may sound like there is significant spare capacity, 80% of the water comes in the monsoon season, and would need massive infrastructure projects to retain. The Brahmaputra is the world’s 4th largest river and the water diversion plan aims to transfer at least 200 cubic kilometres a year from it according to the book Water, Asia’s New Battleground, as well as water from the Mekong and Salween which feed into the Vietnam peninsula and Burma etc. Just focusing on India, the 200 cubic kilometres is 10% of its entire annual renewable resources or 17.4% of the excess capacity.
India is already the largest user of groundwater in the world withdrawing 230 cubic kilometres a year from aquifers according to the World Bank, which is around 2.5 times replacement. More than 60% of irrigated agriculture and 85% of drinking water supplies are dependent on aquifers, and of those 29% are semi-critical, critical, or over exploited, and the situation is deteriorating rapidly such that more than 60% will be in critical condition by 2030. “Moreover, aquifers are depleting in the most populated and economically productive areasâ€. Even before considering the implications of the Water Diversion Project, The World Bank says the depletion of aquifers will have serious implications for the sustainability of agriculture, long term food security let alone economic growth. Farms that rely on surface water alone have less than half the yield of those that are irrigated.
http://www.worldbank.org.in/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/INDIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:22489346~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:295584,00.html
A UN report Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific says that lifting waters from aquifers and irrigating fields already consumes 30% of India’s electricity. With every metre of aquifer depletion, the energy required to lift the water becomes that much larger, such that the energy intensity of agricultural production is growing. The energy intensity of desalination is on another scale altogether. Unfortunately the problem is India already has massive power shortages which are only going to get worse, with the knock on effect that the cost of water extraction will become ever larger. Like water, India drastically lacks the infrastructure necessary to access more coal. I would personally suggest that it is becoming increasingly clear that India’s miracle is already looking extremely vulnerable.
The water transfer programme goes back to Mao Zedong and probably before that, gradually moving up the agenda and through government approval. Mao recognised that China’s standard of living and economic expansion depended on Tibet’s resources. The simple reality is China needs the water if it is to support its population with its present standard of living, let alone advance to a new one. It has a stated policy of no water to reach the sea and have plans to extract 95% of the power from all their river systems which will mean a continued massive infrastructure programme. This leaves Asia, and India in particular in a real problem. The book The Politics of Water In the Middle East highlights that the Israeli water deficit, without surface water from the Golan Heights or underground water from the West Bank would be far in excess of a pricing or economic problem. It would be a strategic problem impinging on the very physical survival of the country. It seems to me that India is already starting to face the economic problem, which will mean continued high inflation, and when China does start turning the taps off, it will mean significantly more than an economic crisis. Back in 2000 General Zhao Nanqi said “Even if we do not begin this water diversion project, the next generation will. Sooner or later it will be doneâ€.
Should China turn off the water to India, the implications would not just be for India. Bangladesh receives around 97% of its water from cross border transfers, and then there is Pakistan which relies on the Indus which originates in Tibet but flows through India on the way to Pakistan. Clearly India would have no choice but to turn that tap off which would almost certainly cause an already volatile situation to get totally out of hand. We have a situation therefore where we have 3 nuclear powers whose economic and potentially physical future is increasingly dependent on these declining resources; there is simply not enough to go around.
As I highlighted in the piece The Brahmaputra – another elephant in the room back in 2010, after repeated denials China finally admitted that it was starting to build various dams on the river. India’s satellite imagery has identified 24 mainly small dams but also the building of infrastructure needed to transport materials to the various sites. It is also relocating 250,000 Tibetans (almost 10% of those living in the remote Himalayan country) from scattered settlements to new “socialist villages†clearing the ground for flooding etc that would happen, under the pretext offering them a better future.
The building of the dams will take time, and the water transfer would need a huge storage facilities referring again to the book Water Asia’s New Battleground as the scale of transfer is simply too big to release onto the Yellow River without some sort of control. That reservoir would be significantly larger than the one behind the Three Gorges Dam which measures over 600km in length, and would need to be built with PNE’s or peaceful nuclear explosions as would some of the tunnelling through the mountains, both of which could only really be done with nuclear power. Having held out signing the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) for nuclear testing, eventually in 1996 they did sign it with the proviso that PNE’s would be revisited within 10 years. In the end they never ratified the treaty.
Both Bangladesh and India are clearly anxious. They feel they have time on their side, but of course such appeasement may come back and haunt them as the further China progresses, the worse the situation will become. So going back to James Clapper’s statement that “The Indian Army believes a major Sino-Indian conflict is not imminent, but the Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed borderâ€, this sounds like he believes India may be looking to head off a problem before it becomes too big.
In no way am I saying a war, or even a limited fight is imminent, but the water situation across most of the continent is critical, and will not support the aspiration of everyone in that region, and to quote Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (then vice premier) back in 1999, “The survival of the Chinese nation is threatened by the country’s shortage of waterâ€.
http://www.grey-water.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ChinaWaterShortage.pdf
Excerpt from “India’s Mountain Strike Farce“, Posted on August 1, 2013
BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Wall Street Journal:
..After all, China is seeking to change not only the line of control but also the transboundary flows of rivers by building cascades of dams on them. As the downstream nation, India is particularly vulnerable to a water war. More than 300 billion cubic meters of surface water runs directly from Chinese territory into India each year.
India’s current China policy illustrates how meekness attracts bullying. The more timorous India has been, the more belligerent China has become. Until India gets a government willing to defend the country’s rights, China will continue to stage cross-border incursions to create new facts on the ground and build new dams to appropriate the resources of shared rivers.
Mr. Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the independent Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
Adding the link to the latest article by Sh Chellaney:
The Water Wars, 19th March 2021
A link to a useful primer/background on Tibet and China’s efforts to dominant water sources in Asia: Tibet is China’s ticket to hegemony
Some disturbing and thought-provoking excerpts from Chips and Water, by Iqbal Chand Malhotra, 01 Nov, 2022:
…
Let us look at reality as it stands. What is the natural resource in Ladakh that currently attracts the Chinese to such an extent that they have kept the PLA bunkered down in forward positions in Ladakh? These are the waters of the Galwan, Changchemo, Nubra, and Shyok rivers that all merge into the Indus. These rivers are currently swelling and surging as a result of glacial melt caused by global warming. The Chinese are completing the construction of the Diamer Bhasha Dam and Bunji Dam, respectively, upstream on the Indus near Gilgit in PoK.
Bunji is a run-of-river project. The hydro reservoir capacity is planned to be 308 million cubic metres. The project is expected to generate 26 Gwh of electricity. The project cost is expected to be around $13.5 billion. The cost of the Diamer-Bhasha dam was estimated at $14 billion and it will have a storage capacity of 10 cubic kilometres (8,100,000-acre ft) of fresh water. However, it will have a power generation capacity of 4.5 Gwh.
So, are the Chinese stupid to invest $27.5 billion in two dams?
Why build a storage capacity of 8.1-million-acre-feet of water, a capacity that is one-twelfth the size of the Siachen glacier?
….
Therefore, when Pakistan already has a surplus installed capacity of 11.5 Gwh, who is going to consume and pay for the extra 30 Gwh of electricity to be generated from the Bunji and Diamer Bhasha dams collectively?
…..
So, where is this electricity to be consumed?
Northern China, including Xinjiang, is highly populated but severely water-deficient. While China has 21 per cent of the world’s population, it only has 7 per cent of the world’s freshwater, almost all located in southern China. Thirty per cent of China’s groundwater is unfit for human consumption and 16 per cent of its groundwater is unfit for any use at all. China’s daily usage of water is 10 billion barrels. Almost $100 billion is what China spent last year on water-related projects. Because of her water crisis, hydropower plants are being shut down.
In early 2018, the State Grid Corporation of China, or SGCC, which is the world’s largest power company, began work on erecting a 1.1-million-volt transmission line in Changji near Ürümqi in Xinjiang as the nodal hub. The transmission lines will also link Changji to Kashgar and to the Khunjerab Pass in the southwest, and Korgas in western Xinjiang. Most importantly, it will extend 3,500 km to the current hub of China’s microchip centre in Hefei, in the Anhui province, west of Shanghai.
Changji is 625 km by road from Korgas aka Khorgas aka Horgos, which is emerging as the new hub of China’s microchip industry. Five thousand semiconductor chip test production lines with a total investment of $1.42 billion have begun production in Horgos, China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The Horgos Sanyou Fuxin Optoelectronic Semiconductor Industrial Park project was officially launched in the Horgos Industrial Park on July 8, 2020, barely a month after the Galwan Valley clash between the Indian Army and the PLA. After entering production, the lines will realise an annual output of 24 billion semiconductors and electronic components.
Therefore, when you integrate all these factors into a dynamic matrix, you realise why China started pushing forward into eastern Ladakh in February 2020 because of the “failed” summit talks between Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mamallapuram in October 2019, and why the incursions took the shape of non-kinetic medieval violence on June 15, 2020, in the Galwan Valley.
The three raw materials for microchip manufacture—sand, water, and electricity—will be readily available in Xinjiang provided China has physical dominion and control over the Indus and its main tributaries, namely the Nubra, Shyok, Galwan, and Changchemo rivers. These rivers hold the key to solving China’s water crisis, which in turn holds the key to its microchips, electricity, and food, particularly in northern China.
For this to happen, the PLA will have to push the Indian Army beyond the west bank of the Indus River in Ladakh and take physical control of the area west of Daulet Beg Oldie, including the Siachen glacier.
To my mind, therefore, war clouds are looming on the horizon for both India and Taiwan.