ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Chinese Lake Threat Recedes, Leaves Flood of Questions

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 29 2005 (IPS) - Threats of China’s Parechu Lake bursting and deluging populations in India’s northern Himachal Pradesh state this week were declared over, but the episode has left behind a flood of unanswered questions – starting with those about a regional approach to managing Himalayan water resources.

India’s Home Secretary V.K. Duggal declared the danger over on Monday, but by then close to 5,000 people living along the banks of the Sutlej River, into which the Parechu discharges, had been evacuated, six bridges washed away and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed in the well-known tourist districts of Shimla, Kinnaur, Mandi and Bilaspur.

Yet the main concern in the Indian capital seemed focused narrowly on getting the 1,500 megawatt hydroelectric plant on the Sutlej at Nathpa Jhakri back into operation so that city dwellers would not have to put up with power cuts during a sweltering summer. The facility was shut down on Saturday to prevent damage from flooding and silt.

”This is typical. Here is a problem that concerns China, India and also Pakistan (where the Sutlej ends) and no one can think beyond getting air-conditioners in homes and offices working,” said Sudhirendra Sharma who heads the Ecological Foundation, a voluntary agency specialising in water and sanitation.

A former World Bank expert on water issues, Sharma said the situation called for immediate diplomatic initiatives with China to save vast investments that have gone into the Nathpa- Jhakri hydroelectric plant, India’s biggest, as well as safeguard the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living along the banks of the Sutlej River.

”The simple fact is that even if the threat of flash floods from the Parechu Lake has receded for now, the level of silting in the river has reached a point where the future viability of the Nathpa-Jhakri plant is under serious threat,” Sharma said.

Until 1962, when Asia’s giants fought a brief but bloody war over their long Himalayan border, India and China shared vital hydrological information with each other. Bilateral relations which went into a deep freeze as result of the armed hostilities have only just begun to thaw out.

Indeed, it was only in March this year that the two countries got around to signing in Beijing a "memorandum of understanding" on sharing hydrological data, especially that concerning the Sutlej River during the flood season when the snows in the high mountains of southern Tibet begin to melt.

The memorandum was followed by an agreement signed on Apr. 11, during a state visit by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, under which the two countries formally agreed to resolve their long-standing boundary dispute and resume friendly relations.

But despite those agreements, India still had difficulty in obtaining real-time data from Beijing when the Parechu began to overflow into the Sutlej last week in what looked like the re-run of a drama that took place in August last year when thousands of people living on the banks of the river had to be evacuated.

”India needs China’s assistance in managing the annual visitation from the Himalayan rivers but Delhi and Beijing are a long way from cooperative river management,” says Prof. C. Raja Mohan, who teaches international relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Many of Asia’s river systems originate on the "roof of the world" in Tibet. But China has begun massive development projects there that reportedly include diversion of water resources towards the arid north of the country and otherwise disturb the region’s fragile ecosystems.

Of particular concern to India (and to Bangladesh) is the Brahmaputra (Tsang Po), which sustains life in the sensitive north-eastern region but is also responsible for frequent floods and consequent deaths and devastation in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

”More than ever before India needs to have real-time information on what is happening in Tibet, but diplomatically speaking it has to begin by setting its own house in order and being sensitive to the needs of smaller neighbours like Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh and settle ongoing water disputes with them through a regional approach,” said Sharma.

Bangladesh has voiced opposition to an ambitious plan by India to link up its major neighbours through an elaborate system of canals that it says would balance a situation where the country is faced with both floods and droughts simultaneously in different parts of the vast country of more than a billion people.

Nepal, whose rivers flow into the Ganges River system, favours a trilateral approach to flood and drought management with India and Bangladesh under a "river basin" approach, but India prefers to deal bilaterally with its South Asian neighbours.

India began well by signing the World Bank mediated Indus Water Treaty in 1960 under which the waters of the Indus River and its tributaries, the Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej have been shared amicably with Pakistan and survived two full-scale wars in 1965 and 1971.

Many experts have suggested that India and China sign a water-sharing arrangement on the lines of the Indus Water Treaty, but the fact is that as Himalayan water resources dry up even this historic agreement has shown signs of coming unstuck.

Following serious disagreements on the size and scope of the Baglihar Dam being built by India across the Chenab, Pakistan invoked arbitration clauses in the treaty that provides for a World Bank-appointed neutral expert to settle disputes.

In May, the Bank announced the appointment of Raymond Lafitte, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne as neutral expert.

While India has insisted that the Baglihar does not violate the Indus treaty, some of its own experts, including Ramaswamy Aiyar, former water secretary, have suggested that Pakistan may just have a case.

”Under the provisions of the treaty if India wants to build a project on the Indus, Chenab or Jhelum it will have to provide Pakistan with designs and plans in advance and satisfy that country that these conform to conditions laid down in the Treaty," Aiyar said.