Water securityWater war between Asian nuclear powers looms
A potential global catastrophe looms in Asia as rapidly rising water demand collides with a diminishing resource on which at least 300 million people depend directly, and the current political rhetoric between India and Pakistan underlines the risk of failing to manage correctly and cooperatively vital water resources shared between nations. The Indus Water Treaty governs the distribution Himalayan-origin water in the 1,120,000 km2 basin drained by the Indus River, six major tributaries, and connected waterways among India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China, but India wants to modify the treaty or walk away from it – and Pakistan announced that any Indian attempt to renege from the Treaty would be deemed an act of war.
The current political rhetoric between India and Pakistan underlines the risk of failing to manage correctly and cooperatively vital water resources shared between nations.
India’s suspension of the Indus Water Commission meeting on 26 September 2016, and its convening of a meeting to review India’s options for modifying or walking away from the Indus Water Treaty, was immediately met with sharp retorts from political leaders in Pakistan, who suggested that any Indian attempt to renege from the Treaty would be deemed an act of war.
This potential global catastrophe looms in Asia as rapidly rising water demand collides with a diminishing resource on which at least 300 million people depend directly, warns a new book from United Nations University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
UNU says that the book, Imagining Industan: Overcoming Water Insecurity in the Indus Basin, appeals to the three nuclear armed powers sharing the Indus River basin — India, Pakistan, and China — and Afghanistan to begin working together as never before to manage the precious resource.
Its editors describe the book as an effort “to kindle serious discussion of the trans-boundary cooperation needed to confront what more and more water experts believe is developing into one of the planet’s most gravely threatened river basins.”
The book’s fourteen contributing experts acknowledge the immensity of the challenges in a region prone to political and military conflict but say “much greater collective planning is essential…if the Indus basin is to escape the likely disastrous consequences of continued failure to collaborate.”
Published by Springer, the 216-page work is the culmination of a project supported by UNU-INWEH and proposes a new course for the 1,120,000 km2 basin drained by the Indus River, six major tributaries, and connected waterways covering over 65 percent of Pakistan, a significant part of India (14 percent) ,and smaller areas of Afghanistan (11 percent) and China (1 percent).
Zafar Adeel, Executive Director of the Pacific Water Research Centre at Simon Fraser University, Canada, co-edited the work with Robert G. Wirsing, recently retired Professor of Government at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar.
