Indus River Basin: Common Concerns and the Roadmap to Resolution

Abstract

Indus water is the lifeblood of the billions of people who live in the river basin shared between India (29%), Pakistan (63%), China and Afghaistan (8%) and supports multitude of ecosystem services essential to sustain economic growth, alleviate poverty and support prosperity, secure food supplies, fuel energy demand and aboveall a guarantee to political stability in th eregion. Arising from the Tibetan Plateau in western China, the Indus River and its tributaries travel northwest through the Himalayan valleys and after crossing into the Kashmir region and traversing Pakistan, flows out into the Arabian Sea. The mountainous Himalayan upper catchments host large reserves of water in the form of glacial ice and permenant snow which sustain one of the world’s largest integrated irrigation networks downstreams. The Indus waters from five rivers are shared between two main stakeholders; India and Pakistan, occupying 92% of the basin through the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960. The treaty is often cited as a success story for transboundary sharing of river waters, as it has survived three wars, the coldest of the relations between India and Pakistan and the ill-will over the festering conflict on Kashmir. During the last two decades diverge national views have emerged about the interpretations of different clauses of the Indus Water Treaty. Further some differences have cropped up recently over the hydropower projects planned by India in the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) and have the potential to further spoil the relations between the two countries. Many regions in the two countries are beginning to experience moderate to severe water shortages, brought on by the simultaneous effects of agricultural growth, industrialization, urbanization, population growth and climate change. Particularly, with increasing demands of water for irrigation, drinking water and industrail use, there is likelihood that many regions in the downstream may become water scarce under changing climate and rapid socio-economic and demographic changes. In the future, diminishing and degraded freshwater resources could lead to internal instability across the south Asian region. Besides the many issues of water sharing, several water and energy related issues are critically affecting the food security, environment and agriculture in the basin. It is, in this context that water security is emerging as an increasingly important and vital issue for both India and Pakistan. The indicators of climate change are quite loud and clear in the Indus basin. The receding glaciers, scanty snowfall, the changing land system patterns, increasing demands for water to meet irrigation, industrial and domestic water demands, all are impacting the water availability in the basin. This is evident from the significant stream flows decline observed in most of the tributories draining the Indus basin. The lack of effective sharing of the hyrological information in a transparent and cooperative manner has led credence to wrong notions and attibutions to the declining stream flows in Pakistan.. Again, the linking up of security concerns to the management and sharing of Indus waters has further complicated the water discourse over the sharing of Indus waters between the two countries. This is setting off a spiral of discontent and mistrust between the two countries. Therefore, there is urgent need to rebuild cooperation and trust over the water issues at various levels involving all the stakeholders from the two countries. It is heartening that there have been several initiatives under Track-II, involving stakeholders with diverse background from both the countries, to make the two countries to synergize their concerns on the sharing of Indus waters. Therefore, it is hoped that the cooperation that builds on existing frameworks over the sharing of Indus waters could not only present opportunities for better water management between those two countries, but may also offer pathways to confidence and peace building between the two countries to amicably settle political and other issues. This report is the outcome of a series of deliberation on water issues between the countries organized under the auspices of Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR), New Delhi and Jinnah Institute, Pakistan. It was felt that there are more common interests than aversions between the two countries to ensure the sustainability of water resources in the Indus basin. The two countries share common concerns ailing the Indus water system. Out of all the concerns, explicitly and otherwise expressed by the stakeholder in the two countries, the genuine concerns about climate change and its impacts on cryosphere and other resources, dwindling limited water resources in the upstream part of the basin, increasing water needs of the growing population downstream, shrinking per capita water availability in both the countries, excessive pumping of groundwater resources and the dwindling groundwater levels, inefficient water usage, cumulative impacts of the cascade of proposed hydropower projects in the upper Indus basin, food security concerns and the increasing frequency of flooding and associated problems are among the major concerns shared by a wide cross-section of the people in both the countries. All these issues have been deliberated at length in various chapters of the report highlighting their causes and consequences at different spatial and time scales. It was a concensus among the participants of these meetings that the two countries should agree to develop a time-bound robust strategy and a framework to address these common concerns through a modular basin wide approach that could help to generate the required information and knowledge for guiding the policy for better and sustainable management of the dwindling water resources in the basin. This report, comprising of four chapters, therefore makes an indepth survey and analysis of various aspects of the Indus water system based on primary and secondary data sources. The Chapter one discusses; emerging tensions on water use globally with special reference to history and mechanism of Indus water sharing between India and Pakistan, deliberates on perceived water concerns in the two countries and finally identifies the interest groups linked to specific concerns, and how are they defined? The chapter two describes the defined concerns between the two countries and specifically discusses; Observed historical changes in the water flows in the Upper Indus Basin (UIB); demographic changes in the UIB basin and their impacts on water demand; the historical changes in the land use and land cover in the UIB and its impacts on the water resources (including irrigation); technical and managerial issues related to the sharing of trans-boundary Indus waters; depletion of groundwater resources in the Indus basin. The chapter three discusses the new, emerging and anticipated conerns over the sharing of Indus waters under; climate change impact on the various water sources; impact of proposed hydroelectric projects on water sources; any other concerns about water by any of the stakeholders. Finally, the chapter four deliberates on the common concerns ad the roadmap to resolution. The chapter specifically discusses; common concerns in both the countries (and in Kashmir); proposed roadmap for addressing the common concerns; involvement of academia, government and non-governmental actors to address “common concerns” and ; informed diplomacy to deal with policy issues. It is hoped that this report will become an important milestone for devloping a cooperative framework between the two countries to address common concerns so that a mutually agreed upon vision for integrated and joint management of the water resources is implemented in the basin for sustainable development of the waters shared between the two countries.