One river, two countries, too many dams

၂၁ ရာစုမွာလူသားေတြအတြက္ လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြပိုမိုျမင့္မားမဲ့ အဓိက သဘာဝအရင္းအျမစ္ဟာ ေရခ်ိဳျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ဆိုတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္တခ်ိဳ႕နိုင္ငံေတြမွာဆို ေရအရင္းအရင္းျမစ္ဆိုင္ဌာန ( Ministry of Water Resources) ဆိုျပီး ဝန္ၾကီးဌာနတခုသီျခားဖြဲ႔ျပီး ေနာင္အႏွစ္ငါးဆယ္ေခာက္အထိေမွ်ာ္မွန္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေနၾကတယ္။ ဗမာျပည္မွာေတာ့ ပုခံုးႏွစ္ဖက္ၾကားေခါင္းပါလာယံုနဲ႔ လူျဖစ္လာၾကတဲ့ စစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြနဲ႔ ဝိသမခရိုနီေတြေပါင္းျပီး ဗမာ့ မီခင္ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီးအပါအဝင္ သဘာဝေတာေတာင္ျမစ္ေခ်ာင္းေတြ သူတို႔သာရမဲ့ မျဖစ္စေလာက္အက်ိဳးအျမတ္အတါက္ဖ်က္ဆိးေနၾကတယ္။ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ အဖ်က္လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို အဓိက အားေပးအားေျမာက္လုပ္ေနတာကေတာ့တရုတ္ပါပဲ။ ခုလဲနိုင္ငံစံုျဖတ္သန္းသြာတဲ့ ျဗဟၼပုတၱရျမစ္ၾကီးကို ျမစ္ေၾကာင္းလြဲဖိုပလုပ္ေနျပန္ျပီ။ ဒါကို အေမွ်ာ္အျမင္ၾကီးၾကတဲ့ အိႏၵိယေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ ပညာရွင္ေတြကိုင္းဝန္းကန္႔ကြက္ေနၾကတယ္။ သူတို႔အေတြး သူတို႔အျမင္ကို ဒီေဆာင္းပါးနဲ႔ ေအာက္က မွတ္ခ်က္တိုေတြမွာေတြ႔နိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဗမာျပည္နဲ႔ေတာ့တျခားစီေပါ့။

One river, two countries, too many dams

Sandeep Dikshit April 2, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/one-river-two-countries-too-many-dams/article4570590.ece

PTI Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

 

Chinese reticence about projects on its stretch of the Brahmaputra do not assuage Indian fears about diversion of the river’s waters

By raising the Brahmaputra dams construction issue during his first meeting with the new Chinese President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was following a two-pronged strategy.

On the one hand, Dr. Singh wanted to bring India’s unease with Chinese construction on Brahmaputra’s main channel to the world’s notice. On the other, by saying publicly that most Chinese projects might not store water, he was trying to ensure that any ensuing debate in the country does not snowball into one more round of panic-stricken news reports.

The Chinese government has been reticent about dams being constructed on transborder rivers. India is not alone in seeking these details. Many lower riparian South East Asian countries and even Kazakhstan in Central Asia want China to be more forthcoming about plans to build dams or divert water from transborder rivers.

Even though some of the dams India is concerned about have recently figured in the Chinese government’s plan documents, for a long time open source literature, satellite reconnaissance and source reports were unable to confirm their actual impact on river flows, thus raising anxiety levels here.

During a press conference on his way back from Durban where he met the Chinese President and sought a joint mechanism, Dr. Singh was careful to add a caveat. While confirming that he had asked for greater transparency from China, the Prime Minister added that the projects on the main channel of the Brahmaputra appeared to be run-of-the-river, that is, they would not have significant storage.

Perhaps he was keen to avoid the alarm of media reports on China’s plans to divert 40 billion cubic metres of water from the Brahmaputra (known as Yarlong Tsangpo in China) in 2003. The Chinese have put the brakes on the project or perhaps shelved it, but India’s apprehensions found another outlet when, a few years later, a massive landslip blocked portions of the river at an area known as the Great Bend. The misgivings were quelled after water cut a course through the blockade and flows returned to normal.

In both cases, the Chinese shared little information about the developments. India kept hoping that its diplomatic notes and media exposure of Beijing’s aversion to sharing details would make the problem go away. It was only a couple of years back that China agreed with the Indian request (and separately to that of some Asean states) to share hydrological data.

But another concern had arisen by then. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first raised it with then Chinese President Hu Jintao in March, 2012. The Chinese were already aware of India’s concerns as then Foreign Ministers S.M. Krishna and Yang Jiechi had discussed it in their preparatory meeting before Mr. Hu’s visit.

When Dr. Singh and Mr. Krishna spoke about dams on the main channel of the Brahmaputra, only one was at the active-construction stage and information was still coming in about the others. Since then, India has got a firmer fix on a series of three dams on the main channel of the Brahmaputra.

The three dams — Jiexu, Zangmu and Jiacha — are within 25 km of each other. More ominously for strategic experts fixated on the China threat, they are 550 km from the Indian border. But the first one, Jiexu, has been independently confirmed to be a run-of-the-river project which will not impound water in a large reservoir. Construction on the second in the series, Zangmu, began in 2010 and Indian authorities are not sure if this will be a pure RoR variety. The third, a 320 MW dam, will be built at Jiacha, about a dozen km downstream of Zangmu, and even this is more or less confirmed to be run-of-the-river.

These are not the only ones about which India has not been adequately informed. A dam near Zhongda and another near Phudo Zong, as well as 30 other projects were planned and executed with Beijing disclosing little to India.

India’s fears about diversion of waters of the Brahmaputra have not been completely assuaged. It deploys high-end technology and spends considerable money on keeping a keen eye on water conductor systems and basins adjacent to Brahmaputra for clues on constructions of canals to take the water away to China’s north-western provinces.

Added worry

The dams have added another area of worry, more so because there was an increase of eight sites in August last year since the previous assessment was made in 2011. Mr. Xi’s reply was a near copy of the answer given by his predecessor three years back. Both had assured all projects were of the run-of-the-river variety. By adding that Beijing would examine the proposal, Mr. Xi has given hope for movement on a joint mechanism to share information about construction activities on the Brahmaputra.

Due to the low level of political trust, it has been tough for countries of the region to be forthcoming about their plans for hydroelectric projects. The India-Pakistan skirmishing over dams in north Kashmir is well known. Two cases went for international arbitration. Experts are still sorting out what a recent award means for the viability of a dam being built by India.

With Bangladesh, India was coy for years about parting with information. Things changed after Sheikh Hasina set about quelling India’s security related fears by extraditing militants from North Eastern outfits and discouraging anti-India activity by third-country intelligence agencies. Today India has offered Bangladesh an equity stake in the Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur. It was lack of information on this dam that earlier led to a public agitation in Bangladesh and for a time made the High Commissioner the most unpopular Indian in Dhaka. Bangladesh has now sought joint participation in nine more projects.

China would be wary of conceding the demand for a joint mechanism precisely to avoid just such an escalation of demands by India. On the other hand, as the border issue is unlikely to be settled in the near future, this limited cooperation on water — without prejudice to the upper riparian state on any further demands — would be an easy way to increase political capital between the two countries.

Till then, Dr. Singh’s second prong — of not raising unnecessary alarm that may spill over to other areas of discord — must be put in operation. The first step would be to accept the Brahmaputra Inter Ministerial Expert Group’s recommendation for an informed public debate to ensure that discussions veer to the possibility of joint management of river basins common to several countries.

Comments(4) Recommended Post a comment

Recommendations of Brahmaputra Inter Ministerial Expert Group can be
highly commendable at this point of time.Why not India take into
confidence the other small states like
Bangladesh,Bhutan,Nepal,Myammmar and then put a Pressure on China
taking the views of the small Reparian nation of forming a Tans
Himalayan River commission.
It can have a three pronged outcome:
1) Since china is having greater interest in Bangladesh,Myammar,
Bhutan to contain India it can agree to share greater information
after all smallest of activity on rivers like
Brahmaputra,Irrawady,Shaleen,Mekong etc. will affect these states.
2)Secondly why not india makes a multilateral talks with china etc. to
give the stake in its northeastern hydro projects like Subanshiri
lower & upper, Siang valley,etc. which in turn may compel china to
give a consideration in its own upper reparian projects to the lower
reparian countries.(Taipaimukh is a good example of cooperation)
3)66000MW hydro potential in NE will be utilised

from:  Jitendra Tiwari

Posted on: Apr 3, 2013 at 15:44 IST

No doubt, the PM has highlighted timely India's apprehensions on the
clandestine dam construction activities of China across Brahmaputra to
the Chinese Premier during his first meet itself. He should have been
still more assertive enough in getting clear picture from China on
river-side activities of past and present. India should have focused
attention in bringing China's dam construction activities to the
notice of highest world level forum. The present run-of-the-river
project may turn out later to full fledged mega size dams.India can
take cue from China. We do not have the required infrastructural
facilities in the States of Assam or Arunachal to store run-off water
of Brahmaputra during flood seasons. Whenever the river is in spate,
we loose human lives and cattle and spend crores of rupees to restore
normality in flood affected region. Why can't we go in for mini dams
along side Brahmaputra on Indian side ? For, Brahmaputra should not
become India's 'River of Sorrow'.

from:  BASKARAN R V

Posted on: Apr 3, 2013 at 14:04 IST

It is appropriate that our Prime Minister has taken up with China the issue of China damming’ Brahmaputra river. This issue is as vital an issue as the border issue. Keep before us the way China has over-dammed Mekong river; this has caused the lower riparian states a great loss. In Cambodia its unique river Tonle Sap which flows in the reverse direction for a portion of the year and is a bonanza for their fishing community is greatly harmed because the river’s reverse flow has now been halved ruining its agricultural and fishing economy. It is necessary for our government to seek periodical inspections by Indian irrigation engineers to see for themselves how the Chinese are using the Brahmaputra in their territory. Thus it will be seen that this issue affects several nations in south-east Asia.

from:  s subramanyan

Posted on: Apr 2, 2013 at 07:47 IST

The people of India are not stupid to be taken in by anyone- Chinese
or Indian Government.Over the last ten years reports in the
newspapers have shown that floods have repeatedly occurred on
Bramhaputra river.People, villages,livestock and rare fauna have
repeatedly been threatened and some have even been wiped out.The
Indian Government should place a report of this in Parliament on
what steps have been taken and future steps India is taking to
prevent this recurring disaster.On what basis(total quantum of water
flow,yearly and maximum and minimum flow should be projected.)It is
only then we can evaluate whether the Chinese are giving us a helping
hand or reducing flow by diversion.

from:  Prof.Paul.V.John

Posted on: Apr 2, 2013 at 05:49 IST