Tibet’s watershed challenge

By Uttam Kumar Sinha

[The Washington Post, Monday, 14 June 2010]

While
Tibet raises a number of controversial questions, one dimension will
assume increasing political significance: its water resources. The
Tibetan Plateau, known to many as the “Third Pole,” is an enormous
storehouse of freshwater, believed by some to be the world’s largest.
It is the headwaters of many of Asia’s mighty rivers, including the
Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej. These
vast water resources are of course vulnerable to environmental
challenges, including climate change, but they are subject to an array
of political issues as well.

Should
China be the lone stakeholder to the fate of the waters in Tibet? What
happens in the downstream nations that depend heavily on these rivers?
China has exploited all but two rivers from the Tibetan Plateau; an
exception is the Nujiang River, which flows through Yunnan province and
enters Burma, where it is known as the Salween. China’s north-south
diversion plans on the Yarlung Zangbo (known in India as Brahamaputra),
the other untouched river, are bound to worry India, a downstream state.

China’s
rise in recent years has been displayed in military capability,
economic pace and, now, water diversions. By 2030, China is expected to
fall short of its water demands by 25 percent. Its increasingly
aggressive hydrobehavior is intended to secure its massive water
requirements in its northern and western regions. But control over such
a valuable natural resource gives Beijing enormous strategic latitude
with its neighbors; when one of those countries is a rival, such as
India, it becomes an effective bargaining tool and potential weapon.

Chinese
nationalism is based on its aspiration of great-power status and its
historic territorial claims. Such claims, for example, over Tibet and
Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeast India, are being driven by
China’s water needs. Mao Zedong observed in 1952, “The south has a lot
of water, the north little. . . . If possible, it is ok to lend a
little water.” China is looking to exploit the water resources of Tibet
and its hardening position on Arunachal — Beijing considers the
northeast Indian state part of its territory and made frequent military
forays there this year — is not merely rhetoric. In laying claims to
Arunachal, it is claiming almost 200 million cubic feet per second of
water resources in the state.

China,
well-accustomed to brinkmanship, is likely to maintain a strategic
silence on its river diversion plans, to keep downstream states
guessing. (China denies any activity on the Yarlung Zangbo, but
publicly reported satellite imagery shows otherwise.) And with no
legally binding international treaty on such water-sharing, there is
nothing to stop China from manipulating river flows and increasing
downstream dependency.

More
than 2 billion people in South and Southeast Asia depend on the waters
flowing out of Tibet. Building a lower riparian coalition of, say,
Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and
Vietnam would help cement recognition of Tibet’s water as a common
resource. India has a diplomatic opportunity here and, given its
downriver position, needs to take the initiative. One plus is that
India has experience dealing with river treaties. But Tibet’s
unresolved political status will affect any proposals on how to
sustainably manage its water resources and ensure its rivers’ natural
flow are not disturbed by Chinese diversion plans.

China’s
moves to encroach on Tibet’s water need to be countered by downriver
solidarity that includes agreement on multipurpose beneficial use of
these resources. Downriver states need to work through legal norms of
equitable utilization, “no-harm” policies and restricted Chinese
sovereignty over Tibet. This pressure and international attention to
defining such vital resources as common would go a long way toward
preserving and sharing the waters of Tibet. While such redefinition is
politically sensitive, as it clashes with national jurisdiction, it
merits attention now given the current and future water requirements of
South and Southeast Asia. Collective political and diplomatic pressure
over a sustained period will be needed to draw in China to regional
arrangements on “reasonable share of water” and frame treaties
accordingly.

The
concerned downstream states need to raise the issue internationally
while also supporting local Tibetans and Chinese environmental lobbies’
efforts to highlight the rampant ecological destruction of Tibet
brought by dams and artificial diversion plans. A larger debate on
basin resource management is needed; it is increasingly clear that
rivers are not merely for water provisions but also have ecological
functions. One need only look at China’s Yangtze and Yellow rivers,
both unfit for human use, to understand how important it is to follow
the laws of nature regarding Tibet’s waters rather than force economic
development.

–The
writer is a research fellow at the nonpartisan Institute for Defense
Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. The views expressed in this column
do not necessarily reflect those of the Central Tibetan Administration.