Adopt river basin and watershed based approach beyond parochial anthropocentric nation-state framework

In the backdrop of environmental and human disasters in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima, there is a compulsion to think about the water footprint of 14, 500 nuclear weapons, 2, 000 nuclear tests and 495 nuclear reactors. Within India, the water footprint of 23 nuclear reactors in eight nuclear plants is yet to be factored in. The nuclear plant in Narora, Bulandsahar, Uttar Pradesh and the upcoming nuclear plant in Rooppur, Pabna, Bangladesh poses a threat to the residents of Ganga river basin.

UNDP’s report of 1994 introduced a new concept of human security, which equates security with people rather than territories, with development rather than arms. It recognised that water faces biggest environmental threat. It regards water scarcity as a factor in ethnic strife and political tension. It referred to the silent emergencies caused by polluted water and degraded land which puts lives and livelihoods at risk.

UNDP’s special report of 2022 on human security underlined that natural systems provide food and water provide besides ecosystem services such as watershed protection, and climate control. But in 123 countries an increase in wealth between 1990 and 2014 has been accompanied by a decline in natural capital. It recognises that cyberwarfare can disrupt electricity grids and water system.

The simile of water flow for data flow for creating data grid and water grid is remniscent of Marx’s observation regarding capitalism’s tendency towards centralisation, which ultimately overpowers the centrefugal forces of competition. Digitalisation and centralisation of data seems to entail colonisation of the ecological space and human space.  

UN Convention on Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses came into force in August 2014 after the ratification by 36 countries. None of the countries in the Himalayan watershed have ratified it because of Article 7 of the Convention which requires that States “take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm” to other States sharing an international watercourse in the upstream and downstream. The interests of upstream and downstream States do no seem to converge as far as exploitation of the water is concerned. The definition of the watercourse in the Convention is quite parochial.      

The idea of water grid by linking rivers was rejected by Prof. S. R. Hashim headed National Commission on Integrated Water Resources Development Plan in 1999. But it too re-birth because of Supreme Court’s orders in 2003 and 2012. The proposal of diversion of some 39 rivers for Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) project, the world’s biggest project is likely to give birth to water security issues because “international watercourses” like Ganga, Kosi, Mechi and Brahmaputra are involved. It can adversely impact relations with Nepal, Bangladesh and China. Under Indo-Bangladesh treaty on sharing of Ganga waters, Ganga is deemed a deficit river but as part of the ILR project it is presented as a surplus river by National Water Development Agency (NWDA), an agency whose only mandate is to link major Himalayan rivers and Peninsular rivers at any environmental and human cost. The economic rationality of ILR like projects is contrary to water cycle and biological cycle because NWDA holds that there are “surplus” rivers, “deficit” rivers and water which goes o the sea is wasted. This assumption is unscientific and contrary to folk wisdom. It treats rivers as pipelines which can be twisted, mutilated and diverted for the ILR project. The project entails re-writing the geography of South Asia. It is caught in a time warp. The data on which the project is based from the 1970s. It ignores the fact that Himalayan rivers are unpredictable. This pre-climate crisis era project does not factor in green house gas emissions due to colossal land use change. The project is unfolding despite opposition from several states. It gives birth to myriad gnawing human security concerns.     

Disregarding the approach of the UNDP, UNFCCC and the G-77 group of countries, which focuses on human security, some members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) has been unsuccessfully attempting to establish a natural security narrative for climate crisis. UNSC failed to do in 2007, 2011 and 2020 and 2021 because of opposition from Russia, China, India and G-77 countries. The natural security narrative emerged out of a report entitled “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change”, from a US government-funded national security think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses. The Military Advisory Board and the study team that authored the report received briefings from the U.S. and U.K. intelligence community, climate scientists, and business and state leaders. The US military report recommended, "Military planning should view climate change as a threat to the balance of energy access, water supplies, and a healthy environment, and it should require a response." There are attempts underway to pursue this narrative despite failure at the UNSC. In February 2023, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting took the position that "Water security is a national security issue." NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly has published a draft report entitled “Turning The Tide: Addressing the Impact of Water Insecurity on Allied Security” in May 2024.    

International financial institutions (IFIs) like World Bank Group has been promoting contradictory and inconsistent projects wherein they consider river water quality improvement projects to be different from water quantity projects like dams. These institutions do not recognise that when the flow of water in the river is depleted, water quality deteriorates. Such projects are a threat to water security in particular and the river basins in general.

The disasters in the Himalayas and Western Ghats remind that water has memory. It never forgets itS course. The military people, economists and technocrats remain deaf to the message from the rivers. The solution lies in adopting genuine river basin and watershed based approach beyond parochial anthropocentric nation-state framework, which normalises and naturalises financialization and monetisation of natural wealth.          

Dr. Gopal Krishna's lecture at a webinar on "Security at Crossroads: Land, Food, Water" organised by the Calcutta Research Group (CRG) on 13th August 2024.  The other speakers were: Dr. Rajendran Narayanan, a Data Scientist who teaches at Azim Premji University and Dr. Meenakshi Nair Ambujam, a post-doctoral fellow affiliated with the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. The webinar was chaired and moderated by Prof. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Professor, Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.