India battles the red river
dragon By Arun Bhattacharjee
NEW DELHI - India's fear of a downstream deluge
in the Sutlej River in the northwestern state of
Himachal Pradesh, should a blockage on the Peerechu
river in Tibet burst, highlights the need for trust and
comprehensive agreements between South and Southeast
Asian nations and China. It is a fear that has brought
several serious problems to light in India, including
the country's vulnerability to environmental warfare.
A lake appeared late last month after a
landslide blocked the Peerechu River, a tributary of the
Sutlej River that also flows into India, forcing the
government to evacuate at least 3,000 people from eight
downstream villages in Himachal Pradesh. In 2000, more
than 120 lives were lost and large scale damage to
property was caused by a flash flood along the same
stretch of the Sutlej River, as there was no warning.
China issued an early warning this year, but
refused to grant Indian engineers permission to visit
the site. After three weeks of cliff-hanging suspense,
China informed India through diplomatic channels that
the natural blockage on the river could not be blasted
without a proper study of possible upstream damage.
A prominent technology company, which does not
want to be named, says its experts have calculated that
a breach at the natural blockage of this lake would
affect half a million people and cause property damage
worth US$13-15 million. The Press Trust of India quotes
P Perumal, a hydrologist at the Indian Institute of
Technology in Roorkee, as saying, "The Peerechu Lake
burst will have horrific effects, as water is likely to
rush down to the hilly slope through a narrow gorge. It
will not be like floods in the plains where water can
spread out. What one expects is a huge wall of water
moving in bulk without its height getting diminished.
"It's weight, combined with gravity effect
[Himachal is just below Tibet, will flatten everything
on the route for several kilometers within a few hours,"
Perumal says. The private company study used 2001 census
data and remote sensing for the analysis, to claim the
flood water would cause damage as far away as 230
kilometers and "might extend up to 1.2 km-0.6km each
side of the river with a depth of up to 20 meters".
According to a defense analyst, the danger posed
by the lake in Tibet is just the tip of the iceberg.
India's geographical location at the foot of the
Himalayas makes it vulnerable to "environmental attacks"
from the numerous glaciers precariously perched atop the
mountain range. These mountains of ice can be "toppled"
by remote triggering with explosives or their melting
accelerated by covering them with carbon black to enable
them to absorb more sunlight. This could result in
flooding the whole Indo-Gangetic plains, the scientist
said.
Analysts say Chinese scientists have been
extensively mapping the Himalayan glaciers for nearly
three decades with the help from the International
Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu.
As most of South and Southeast Asia's 10 major rivers
originate from Tibet, China has first user rights, and
continues to use river water without comprehensive
treaties with its downstream southeastern and
southwestern countries.
India, a secondary user,
is also facing problems with neighbor Bangladesh over
its decision to connect India's major rivers through 37
links covering over 6,000 kilometers to meet the water
shortage and agricultural needs of India's water
deficient regions. Although the river-link project is
still in a conceptual stage, it signed an agreement with
Bangladesh in October 2003 to consult Dhaka before the
final project report was prepared.
Even within
India, a former government minister is heading a
12-member committee of "concerned citizens", including
environment activist Medha Patkar, to oppose the
river-link project on the grounds that "hydraulic
equality at the national level did not mean transfer of
water from water-endowed basins to dry areas for
inefficient and commercial uses through socially and
economically wasteful projects, not approved through
open professional assessments".
A Ranganathan, a
member of the committee of 12 says, "India is a
democratic country and the environment groups have a lot
of clout which is not true for China." He says this is
the principal reason why a comprehensive treaty on water
use and the rights of the downstream countries are
required. The Tibetan plateau is the principal watershed
in Asia and the source of its 10 major rivers, including
the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet), the
Sutlej and the Indus. About 90% of the Tibetan rivers'
runoff flows downstream to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and
Pakistan. Southeast Asia's water needs are met by the
Mekong, which also originates in Tibet.
India's
major concern is the diversion of the Brahmputra, which
will jeopardize its river-link project. A team of
Chinese experts was studying part of Sang Po
(Brahmaputra) as part of its plans to construct a major
hydropower project in the Tibet Autonomous Region during
the visit of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
to China. India originally planned to link 30 rivers at
a cost of $5.6 billion by 2020, but a public interest
law suit against the government for not implementing
major plans brought on an order issued by the country's
Supreme Court to implement the project by 2012. Under
Supreme Court pressure, a task force under former
minister of water resources, Suresh Prabhu, completed
the feasibility report on six links instead.
Meanwhile, last December, activist groups in
Thailand and Myanmar called on China to consult
countries downstream before building 13 large dams on
the Salween River. The dams, planned for the upper part
of the river in China's Yunnan province, would have
severely damaged the ecosystems and livelihood of people
in Thailand and Myanmar, who depend on the 1,700
mile-long river for fishing and farming, the groups
said. The Bangkok Post reported the groups had handed a
protest letter to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok. The
Salween, called Nu Jiang by the Chinese, originates high
in the Tibetan mountains and flows through Yunnan
province in China into Myanmar, forms part of Thailand's
northern border with Myanmar, before emptying into the
Andaman Sea. It is Southeast Asia's second longest river
after the Mekong.
"China is going to exploit the
Salween, which is the last free-flowing international
river in the region, the way they are already doing it
to the Mekong river," complained Chainarong Sretthachau,
director of the Southeast Asia Rivers Network.
Shui Fu, Chinese author of The River Dragon
Has Come, writes that there were virtually no
large-scale water projects in China before 1949. "It was
since the years of the Great Leap Forward [1958-60], the
Chinese Communist Party has heavily promoted dam
construction as part of a massive national campaign,"
claiming that in less than 40 years all of China's major
rivers would be dammed.
While the debate over
water harvesting and conservation and building high dams
lasted for decades and led to a political struggle, the
dam lobby supported by Mao Zedong won, although Zhou
Enlai expressed his strong reservations after the
7,000-Cadres Conference in 1962. "I've been told by
doctors that if a person goes without eating for a few
days, no major harm will result. But if one goes without
urinating for even one day, they will be poisoned. It's
the same with land. How can we accumulate water and not
discharge it?" he said.
After the accumulation
lobby won, "accumulation" was taken to the extreme.
Anhui Province built an excessively large "river
irrigation network", while people in the north took the
policy of accumulating rain water for irrigation to such
extremes that their fields became waterlogged. Thus the
"water conservancy campaign" was ultimately reduced to a
campaign to build reservoirs and dams, and by 1990,
83,387 of them had been built in China. "Three hundred
and sixty six of them had a capacity over 100 million
cubic meters, 2,499 had a capacity of 10 million to 100
million cubic meters, and more than 80,000 had
capacities below 10 million cubic meters", writes Shu
Fu. No one, not even Zhou Enlai, was able to block the
national "dam building campaign". As a result, from 1949
to 1959, 8,000 million cubic meters of earth was moved -
580 million cubic meters in 1958 alone. Before 1949,
only 23 large or medium-sized dams existed in all of
China.
One, the Fushan dam on the Huai River,
was used to block passage across the Huai during an
attack against the Wei Kingdom in AD 516. The scale and
sophistication of the Fushan dam was unprecedented for
that time, but the knowledge gained through its
construction was not passed on. It disappeared with the
collapse of the imperial autocracy. The Fushan dam also
demonstrated to the world the kind of disasters that
large dams can produce. Four months after the dam's
completion, the Huai overtopped the Fushan, releasing
10,000 million cubic meters of water, killing 10,000
people downstream.
Granted, the 80,000 dams and
reservoirs built over the past 40 years have played an
important role in flood control, electricity generation
and irrigation and have provided water for urban areas
and industry. These achievements should not be
underestimated, but dam construction, especially during
and after the Great Leap Forward, had disastrous
consequences too. By 1973, 40% (or 4,501) of the 10,000
Chinese reservoirs with capacities between 10,000 and 1
million cubic meters were found to have been built below
project specifications and were unable to control floods
effectively. Even more dams had problems relating to the
geology of the dam site, and to sedimentation.
More serious, however, were the numerous dam
collapses. By 1980, 2,796 dams had collapsed, including
two large-scale dams (the Shimantan and Banqiao dams).
One hundred and seventeen medium-sized and 2,263 small
dams had also collapsed. On average, China witnessed 110
collapses per year, with the worst year being 1973, when
554 dams collapsed. The official death toll resulting
from dam failures came to 9,937 (not including the
Banqiao and Shimantan collapses, which had a combined
estimated death toll of up to 230,000).
China
privately claims that among the more than 2,000 dam
collapses, only 181 involved fatalities; not considered
credible by the Western diplomatic community. The number
of formally recognized dam collapses had risen to 3,200
- roughly 3.7% of all dams in China. According to a
deposition before the Central Committee by Ma Shoulong,
the chief engineer of the Water Resources Bureau of
Henan Province, "The crap from that era [the Great Leap
Forward] has not yet been cleaned up." In 1958, more
than 110 dams were built in Henan; by 1966 half of them
had collapsed. Of four key dams on the Yellow River -
the Huayuankou, Wei Mountain, Luokou, and Wangwang
Village dams - two were dismantled and two were
postponed. According to experts, if the riskiest of
these dams were to fail, hundreds of thousands of people
could be killed not only in China, but in some of the
downstream countries.
But current levels of
funding are woefully inadequate to repair or reinforce
the dams. At least $45.7 million would be required for
the large and medium sized reservoirs alone. During a
1991 conference on dam collapses in Vienna,
participating countries exchanged information on
collapses in their respective countries, as is the
practice. Only the Chinese representative said that
China had no dam collapses to report. Foreign experts
attending the conference commented to China's
representative, Pan Jiazheng, that it was miraculous for
a country as big as China, a country with 80,000
reservoirs, to have had no dam collapses.
Meanwhile, as an official of India's Water
Resources Ministry points out, China is building dams
over Sang Po, known as Brahmaputra in India and Meghna
in Bangladesh. But Bangladesh only voices its complaints
with India. No protest was ever sent to China. The
Ganges flowing from India, and the Meghna, are the two
major rivers that meet the water needs of Bangladesh. He
says that dam bursts or collapses are short term
disasters compared to the long term impacts on the
downstream countries in terms of loss of irrigation
water, destruction of fish and other aquatic flora and
fauna that sustain the ecosystems of South and Southeast
Asia. For instance, the rice bowls of Southeast Asia
will suffer badly if the water flow in the Mekong River
suffers. Fifty-three percent of Vietnam's employment
comes from agriculture (mainly rice) and rice accounts
for 50% of its gross domestic product, covering 82% of
the countries farmland - or 6.3 million hectares.
Thailand exports 6.39 million tons of rice and is a net
exporter today, and that is mainly because of the
Mekong. Laos and Cambodia's economies depend entirely on
Mekong, on which 54 dams are being built (six are in
progress). Cambodia's Tone le Sap Lake, as large as Lake
Victoria in East Africa, may suffer equally with its 93
types of exotic fish species.
The World Wide
Fund (WWF) warned in June: "China's Yangtze River faces
a greater threat from dams than any other river in the
world. China has 46 large dams planned or under
construction on the Yangtze. The dams could destroy
habitats of endangered species, including the Yangtze
River dolphin, of which only a few dozen remain.
Downstream communities also suffer from the depleted
fish stocks and low water levels created by dams," said
WWF. China has more dams planned or under construction
than any other country, according to WWF. Eighty-eight
dams are being built and at least 36 more are in the
planning stages. China's Three Gorges Dam is the largest
in the world. Alarms have been sounded recently about
the country's plans for 16 new dams on the Salween
River, which runs into Myanmar and Thailand. Even some
of the country's top hydroelectric engineers have
expressed doubts, saying that most people will benefit
little from the Three Gorges Dam, as was reported by the
BBC.
But the good news is that China is slowing
taking note of global differences. According to
diplomatic sources here, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has
ordered a review of a 13-dam project on Western China's
Nu River, citing environmental concerns. The long-term
Chinese reaction to South and Southeast Asia's growing
concern has to be balanced against China's desire to
become a global economic power, which needs cheap energy
for industrialization. Besides, nearly two thirds of
China still depends on Monsoon rains. Arun
Bhatttacharjee, post graduate in Mass Communications
from the University of Calcutta and Minnesota, was South
Asia Bureau Chief for Depth News Asia and joint chief of
Bureau for Kolkata-based Amrita Bazar Patrika, to name a
few. He has authored several books, including Indian
press: From Profession to Industry, Dateline Mujibnagar,
Chasing the Missing Link, and Gender Bias in
Reporting: A journalist's Handbook.
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