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Asia's potential water
fights
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
As many as 57 river basins in Asia are viewed as
potential flashpoints for conflict between riparian
neighbors as population and development pressures strain
dwindling water resources.
A landmark study
released last week by two United Nations agencies and
the US-based Oregon State University warned that
cooperation over shared waters was "inconsistent or
absent".
Compiled as part of the third World
Water Forum, which ended in Kyoto on Sunday, the Atlas
of International Freshwater Agreements identifies
conflict over drinking water, intensive irrigation,
fisheries and hydropower.
While there is a long
history of the negotiated settlement of disputes, 158 of
the world's 263 international basins, including most of
those in Asia, lack a feasible cooperative management
framework.
"We have found that cooperation
between countries over the past 50 years has outnumbered
conflicts by more than 2:1. [But] things can go wrong,"
said Professor Aaron T Wolf of Oregon State University.
There have been only 37 incidents worldwide
involving water resources since 1948 that led to actual
violence, and 30 of these were confined to Israel and
one or more its neighbors.
However, tensions are
rising in less-developed regions - especially in Asia
and Africa - as economic development feathers the growth
of intensive agriculture and imposes severe population
pressures.
International Water Management
Institute (IWMI) has predicted that 2.7 billion people,
or one-third of the world's projected population, will
not have access to enough water by 2025.
Irrigation and other forms of farm use will have
to increase by 15-20 percent in the next 25 years to
maintain food security, while water consumption needs to
be reduced by 10 percent to protect natural
watercourses.
"If current trends continue, the
shortage of water will extend well beyond the semi-arid
and arid regions. Expanding demand for water will drain
some of the world's major rivers, leaving them dry
throughout most of the year," said Professor Frank
Rijsberman, the IWMI director general. "Urban centers
will experience severe water shortages. But the rural
poor will suffer the most serious consequences."
Drier basins in Central Asia are among those
most at risk. The IWMI also lists Cambodia and Bhutan as
nations with an acute vulnerability to water shortages:
their populations already subsist on an average of less
than 10 liters a day.
Climatic changes linked to
global warming, including shorter rainy seasons and
longer droughts, will affect other areas during coming
decades, provoking new economic, social and health
crises.
In a foretaste of the climatic upheaval
that may be to come, Afghanistan has recorded an
unusually severe drought in the past year, and much of
Southeast Asia has been afflicted by intense flooding.
The countries suffering the worst shortages are
likely to be those that are already near the bottom of
the socioeconomic scale, partly because there has not
been enough development of storage facilities.
Vietnam, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Papua
New Guinea and Cambodia have Asia's most inadequate
water management, according to an index compiled by the
World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure.
All face formidable investment challenges due to
a low availability of water resources, insufficient
storage capacity and deteriorating of environmental
conditions.
About 20 percent of Asians have no
easy access to water, many located in economically
important urban areas that will experience a doubling of
their populations during over the next 25 years. "To
meet the needs of a larger world population, the area of
irrigated land will have to increase by 22 percent, and
water withdrawals by 14 percent," reported the
infrastructure panel.
Compounding the problem of
water quantity is one of quality: 19 percent of Asians
do not have safe drinking water, and 52 percent lack
sanitation facilities, even though the overall supplies
may be adequate.
Bangladesh and India generally
have enough water, but 47 percent of children in both
countries are suffering from malnutrition or are exposed
to infections, according to the United Nations
Children's Fund. Child malnutrition and hygiene levels
are also critically low in North Korea (60 percent),
Afghanistan (48 percent), Nepal (47 percent) and
Cambodia (46 percent).
Meeting supply shortages
and improving quality standards is expected to consume
the bulk of development funds in the next
quarter-century. But it may not be as simple as
harnessing more water.
While hydropower might
offer a solution to supply shortages and help mitigate
the effects of flooding, dams are often opposed on
environmental grounds, while governments are on
uncertain legal ground if they target multilateral
basins.
Only 30 percent of hydropower potential
has been exploited in Asia, compared with 70 percent in
Europe and North America and 40 percent in South
America, reflecting the ambiguous status of shared river
resources.
Even China, with its autocratic
system of government and relatively extensive access to
capital, has utilized only 20 percent of available
storage potential, though it has recently pushed ahead
with a string of dams in the Mekong basin.
There
have been attempts to set up a workable management
system, most notably with the establishment of the Indus
Water Commission between India and Pakistan in 1960 and
the Mekong River Committee in 1957.
However, the
mandate of multilateral agencies is often limited to
negotiating navigation or fishing rights, raising doubts
over their ability - or even willingness - to enter the
sensitive realm of water-sharing rights.
At a
basin level, the UN-University of Oregon study found
that few treaties had adequate reference to
"water-quality management, monitoring and evaluation,
conflict resolution, public participation and flexible
allocation methods". "As a result, most existing
international water agreements continue to lack the
tools necessary to promote long-term holistic water
management," the study reported.
Notable
exceptions include a 1996 water-sharing treaty between
India and Bangladesh on the Ganga/Ganges rivers at
Farakka and two treaties between India and Nepal in 1959
and 1966 that also touched on hydropower and irrigation.
Agreements are also in force for the Amur, An
Nahr Al Kabir, Aral, Asi/Orontes, Atrakn, Fly,
Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Har Us Nur, Indus,
Jenisej/Yenisey, Jordan, Kura-Araks, Lake Ubsa-Nur,
Mekong, Ob, Oral/Ural and Pu Lun T'o basins.
Communiques have been exchanged for the Fenney,
Helmand, Ili/Kunes Hem, Karnaphuli, Nahr El Kebir, Sepik
and Tigris- Euphrates-Shatt al Arab basins, but there
are no specific undertakings on sharing water.
A
modest 20 percent of basin agreements are viewed as
offering sufficient safeguards: most are flawed because
they involve only some of the affected riparian nations,
thus creating tensions with those left out.
South and Southeast Asia, with five and 18 river
basins respectively, have recorded the highest incidence
of water disputes, though none went beyond an outburst
of political rhetoric.
The UN-University of
Oregon study listed 231 incidents in South Asia and 134
in Southeast Asia, while East Asia had 66 "events". In
contrast, Africa and the Middle East had 531 incidents.
Paradoxically, volatile regions are also more
likely to seek a peaceful solution. There have been 237
interactions in South Asia as a result of disputes, 371
in Southeast Asia and 84 in East Asia. But four of the
six most disputed basins on a worldwide basis are
located either in Asia or the Middle East:
Ganges-Brahmaputra- Meghna, Jordan, Tigris-Euphrates and
the Mekong.
Globally, the United Nations General
Assembly has sought to establish a multilateral basis
for arbitration through the wordy 1997 Convention on the
Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International
Watercourses.
However, it failed to achieve an
equitable formula for sharing water and has been
criticized as vague and contradictory. Ratified by a
mere 12 countries, the convention has never been
activated.
As development strains become more
apparent, lobbying is underway for other international
organizations to assume a monitoring role that transcend
the patchwork of ineffective basin agreements.
"They should perhaps act as the water equivalent
of marriage guidance counselors, amicably resolving
differences between countries and communities who may be
straying apart, or act as go- between for those who are
flirting with cooperation but are too coy, too unsure,
maybe even too distrustful about how to proceed," said
United Nations Environment Program director Klaus
Toepfer.
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