INTRODUCTION
The Indus Water Treaty (IWT) is a water distribution treaty for the usage of water available in the Indus System of Rivers located in India. In 1948, in the wake of the conflict of Kashmir (1947-) between India and Pakistan, India cut off water supply to Pakistan IN 1948, ultimately, after lengthy mediation, leading to the signing of the ITW in 1960. The treaty was accomplished after eight years of negotiations between Pakistan, India and the World Bank (then known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) which operated as a broker in the process.
The treaty gave the waters of the western rivers—the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—to Pakistan and those of the eastern rivers—the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej—to India. It also provided for the funding and building of important infrastructures, such as dams —notably the Tarbela Dam on the Indus River and the Mangla Dam on the Jhelum River. These helped provide water to Pakistan in the amounts that it had previously received from the rivers now assigned to India’s exclusive use.
To implement and manage the treaty, The Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), a bilateral commission consisting of officials from India and Pakistan, was formed and has since been in operation. PIC has a commissioner from each country, and it is a tool for maintaining a channel for communication and trying to resolve questions about the implementation of the treaty. (Jamir, 2016)
Numerous disputes were peacefully settled over the years through the PIC, but its existence has not been without challenges. Especially in recent years, water competition and disputes over hydroelectric plants alongside the riparian have caused tension between the two nations. In 2017, India built the Kishanganga dam in Kashmir as well as continued the construction of a hydroelectric power station called Ratle on the river Chenab despite the ongoing negotiations (started after Pakistan’s strong opposition towards India’s projects) with the World Bank on whether India’s building of hydroelectric infrastructure endangered Pakistan’s water availability and violated the terms of the decades-old treaty over the Indus river basin. (Bauer, 2019)
Indeed, the treaty made in 1960 has faced many challenges while still being regarded as one of the most successful water-sharing treaties in the history of global politics. However, conflict seems to reoccur between India and Pakistan over the shared basin and the treaty seems to be functioning merely as a minimizer of physical violence and not so much as a bridge builder and a tool for forming positive peace between the two countries and their communities. The long life of the treaty and the PIC do not necessarily mean that the IWT and the processes it enables are successful. In addition to not being able to stimulate transparency and mutual trust between conflicting parties, I suggest that the treaty does not take into account new challenges related to shared water, such as the increasing demand for water due to the rapidly growing population in both India and Pakistan, the growing need for electricity, thus the need for hydroelectric power plants and the impact of climate change and the unpredictable effects it may have on the water availability of the region. (Jamir, 2016)
In my essay, I will consider some of the most significant possible current challenges that the treaty faces and propose an approach for utilizing the IWT for cooperation and increasing transparency, while the IWT does not take the modern challenges into account, the legislative structure of the does enable the parties to take on the measures needed for combatting the challenges the treaty faces.
THE KASHMIR CONFLICT
A central theme for the conditions and the very existence of the IWT is the conflict of Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir). The Kashmir conflict is a complex territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, which started after the partition of India in 1947, with India and Pakistan as the main parties of the conflict. Today, both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, while each controlling parts of it, dividing the area into India-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. (See: Picture 1.) Because the Indus river basin runs right through the region of Kashmir, water security is at the very centre of the conflict, thus dominating the nature of water diplomacy between India and Pakistan. (See: Picture 2.)
Thus, because of the engagement in a decades-long territory dispute over Kashmir, the IWT is not only about water as a material good but it is intertwined in the very tense, hostile and volatile relations between the countries. Unresolved problems with the IWT may lead to negative effects on the whole international co-operation between the two, not least because Pakistan and India are both nuclear nations.
Still, even though the India-Pakistan relationship is full of violent conflicts and tension, a full-blown war between these two nuclear nations seems unlikely, not least because of Prime Minister Modi’s aspiration to develop populous India into an economic powerhouse and to keep India’s international reputation good. Therefore, India would turn to other resources in its attempts to pressure Pakistan, such as water and the IWT. As India is not yet utilizing all the water running through India to Pakistan that it can use according to the ITW, India can utilize more water without precisely going against the water-sharing treaty and that way severely endangering its position in the international community.
On 18 September 2016, four armed terrorists from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir attacked an Indian army brigade headquarters in Uri, causing 23 deaths, of which 19 were Indian soldiers and four were terrorists. In the attack of Pulwama on the 14th of February 2019, a suicide bomber caused the death of 40 people who were Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan for the attack, as the suicide bomber was from Pulwama (Jammu and Kashmir) and the attack was claimed by a Pakistani Islamist militant group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. This caused India to blame Pakistan for supporting separatist entities in the Kashmir region. (Ahmed, 2018)
After these attacks and increased tension between the two antagonists, India and Pakistan, India has taken steps towards utilizing the IWT for punitive action towards Pakistan. After the Pulwama incident, Nitin Gadkari, then operating as the Union Water Resources Minister, tweeted as follows: “Our Govt. has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan. We will divert water from Eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab”. (Twitter, 2019 Feb 23) Similarly, after the 2016 attack in Uri, India threatened to cut off the water supply in Pakistan and/or further utilize the rivers with dams and hydroelectric power plants, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that “blood and water cannot flow simultaneously”. (Bagchi & Mohan, 2016 Sep 27)
HYDROPOWER PLANTS, WATER QUANTITY AND QUALITY
As mentioned earlier in this essay, India has accelerated their construction of hydropower plants within the Indus river basin. The Indus river and the water it provides are crucial for the Pakistani population, and India using more of the shared water could have serious consequences for Pakistan despite the fact that India is well within its rights to utilize more water for its own use according to the treaty.
As an agrarian economy, Pakistan is much dependent on the water provided by the Indus river, the basin providing over 60% of the water utilized for irrigation while also being the main source of both domestic and industrial water for the communities in Pakistan. (Miner, 2009) Therefore, cutting off the water could have disastrous consequences for the well-being and even the survival of the whole nation which is already one of the world’s most water-scarce countries. Even now, Pakistan does face unpleasant effects being a lower riparian nation: the agricultural and industrial pollution created in India travels across the border with the water, causing problems with the agricultural capacity of the region, as well as severe health consequences in the upper Indus basin and other environmental damage. (Ibid.)
Pakistan and India have different perceptions of the water dispute and the hydropower development programme, especially since ensuring water security is one of the key issues for both India and Pakistan. According to Briscoe (2011), ‘India may view Pakistan’s concern as a politically motivated effort to obstruct India’s hydro-electric development programme’ and that Pakistan, in turn, ‘may believe that the cumulative upstream water storage being created by India constitutes an existential threat to Pakistan’. Briscoe further argues that the lack of transparency between these two nations increases the tension. (Briscoe, 2011, 57) Here, we see present a type of uncertainty described by Susskind and Islam (2012), an uncertainty of perception, where two actors, from their position, “see” what they want to see instead of seeing what is actually there as the question of water is tied to ideological and political aspects of the Kashmir conflict as well.
Fast-growing populations (of which a significant amount’s livelihood depends on agriculture) and the demand to use the river for hydropower are putting the Indus under pressure. For India, the main question seems to be ensuring electricity through hydro-power infrastructure for its growing population in a country which has become one of the world's most significant economic powers. And as the population keeps growing, so does the need for more power. (Richey et al., 2015)
The Indus provides India and Pakistan with important groundwater for the population. In fact, more water is being taken out each year than is being replenished or recharged via other sources. According to a study conducted in 2015, Indus was the most overstressed major aquifer in the world, thanks to population growth and development issues in both India and Pakistan. (Richey et al., 2015)
CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change will negatively affect the availability of water to meet the needs of the people of both India and Pakistan, not to mention the possible unpredictable consequences climate change may have in the subcontinent. For instance, as the Indus river consists of meltwater from upstream areas of the subcontinent, the upstream snow and ice reserves that are most likely going to be affected by climate change may have results of which nature and severity yet remain unclear and hard to predict. (Jamir, 2016)
As of now, no institutional framework exists for addressing the effects of climate change on water availability in the Indus basin. (Miner, 2009) As the Indus basin is not only a very important water provider but also one of the most stressed water areas in the world, in order to ensure survival and water availability for both nations, measures must be taken on the Indus Water Treaty level. It is essential to make habitats and ecosystems less vulnerable to extremes (Dalby, 2018), and this is a plausible reason for increased and deepening water co-operation between the countries as both India and Pakistan are likely willing to ensure water availability for themselves in the long run. Here, working to increase the resilience of habitats and ecology through non-state co-operation may is not only essential in terms of climate security, but may also increase the co-operation between the parties in the ITW.
While it remains that great care has to be used when connecting climatological causes to conflict, according to Dalby (2018) climate change has been recognised to add social stress to areas of political instability for its possibility of declining state capacity in the face of climate-related crises and issues, such as droughts, floods and food shortages with the additional possibility of climate change -related social stresses leading to social radicalization, a theme not foreign to begin with for neither India nor Pakistan. As the scientific certainty of the effects, climate change will have on human life increases (Diez et al., 2016), the states may be more willing to take initiative in ensuring water security for both through co-operative methods.
THE POSSIBILITIES OF IWT
The water sharing system in the Indus basin is based on tributary locations, meaning that the water resources are neither allocated on a quantitative basis between India and Pakistan nor are they managed by an operative rule. This highlights two things. Firstly, it highlights the fact that there was a failure to broker a deal in which India and Pakistan could and would manage their water resources cooperatively and collectively, instead sharing the tributaries and legislating their divination with the waters of Sutleh, the Beqas and the Ravi left to India and the west Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab was given to Pakistan. Secondly, while clearly stating which tributaries are for which country to use, it does not create mechanisms to address issues that are not specified in the decades-old treaty, such as the increased hydropower infrastructure, growing populations and climate change. (Miner, 2009) The very system of water sharing the treaty is based on certainly does not encourage co-operation between India and Pakistan, and additionally does not stimulate or enable participants to take a proactive, cooperative stance with solving issues that cause and will cause both of the parties issues in the future.
In their article International Water Cooperation and Environmental Peacemaking, Ide and Detges, basing their claim on the liberal and functional theory of international politics as well as constructivist theory and sociological institutionalism, suggest “that a higher number of positive, water-related interactions during the previous ten years increases the likelihood of a transition toward more peaceful relations between two states”, especially so if the states are not in acute conflict with each other. (Ide & Detges, 2018, 66) Hence, environmental cooperation has the potential to enhance positive relations between states, claiming that cross-border water cooperation may increase trust and interdependence, acting as a catalyst for increased cooperation on other levels as well.
Right now, India and Pakistan have very tense international relations, which means that the current main concern is the avoidance of physical violence. Indeed, Ide and Detges also realize that the relationship between India and Pakistan includes severe rivalry, preparation for a possible future war, military involvement, unresolved key issues and diplomatic hostility. (2018, 69) The IWT and the shared basin may be a unifying tool between the states, but as the examples presented previously in this essay, the shared water resource does not stimulate positive co-operation nor does cooperation receive political support as much as it is being used for leverage in the international politics, implementing uncertainty of security for both countries.
In their article Water Diplomacy, Suskind and Islam (2012) present that in the question of shared boundary waters, parties tend to perceive that a fixed amount of water is being shared, creating a zero-sum mindset. This phenomenon is certainly present in the case of ITW as well. Here, building relationships between government is not a realistic solution and in the case of India and Pakistan, hardly possible. State centricity that surrounds the IWT is getting increasingly unsustainable in the face of modern challenges. The key to more positive co-operation may lay on, as Suskind and Islam propose, “non-state actors, such as water users, nongovernmental organizations, and networks of scientists and universities” in order to create a more comprehensive climate for trust-building efforts. (Suskind and Islam, 2012, 2) Stimulation or encouragement of transparent non-state cooperation could enable problem solving that would make it possible for both India and Pakistan to better benefit from their shared basin, say, for instance in terms of much needed hydroelectric power, long term water-availability, better water quality and lessened endangerment of ecology.
In the ITW, Article XII states: ‘The provision of this Treaty may from time to time be modified by a duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose between the two Governments’ (IWT, 1960). Furthermore, the Article VII states a protocol for “future co-operation”: “‘The two Parties recognize that they have a common interest in the optimum development of the Rivers, and to that end, they declare their intention to co-operate, by mutual agreement, to the fullest possible extent." (IWT, 1960) Thus, the treaty itself has an inherent capacity to encourage a shift to a more cooperative, engaging direction.
A statement from Wittmer et al. supports the proposal of Suskind and Islam. Wittmer claims that “a high degree of transparency seems to be the most promising measure to achieve effective and legitimate conflict resolution procedures”, proposing the inclusion of stakeholders or the public in the decision process. (2004, 2) Wittmer proposes a combination of the multi-criteria decision aid and participation, where these tools together could improve the resolution of environmental conflicts by supporting the processes of managing uncertainty and ignorance, as well as be structured in a way that is comprehensible for stakeholders as well as outsiders. This way, the activity related to the ITW could reinforce other unifying processes, such as negotiations and economic coordination through building trust and setting positive symbols. (Ide & Detges, 2018, 77) At its best, the ITW may become a water diplomacy tool which supports engagement and cooperation between the conflicting parties. Indeed, instead of being a source of conflict, water can be a unifying factor.
Ahmed, K. (20 April 2018) “World Bank vows to safeguard Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan”. Arab News. Retrieved from https://www.arabnews.com/node/1288481/world, 29.8.2020.
Bagchi I. & Mohan V. (27 Sept 2016). “‘Blood and water can’t flow together’: PM Narendra Modi gets tough in Indus treaty”. Times of India. Retrieved from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/54534135.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst, 13.8.2020.
Dalby, S. (2018). “Climate change and environmental conflicts”. 42-53.
Diez et al. (2016). “The securitisation of climate change: Actors, processes and consequences = actors, processes and consequences”.
Gadkari, N. [@nitin_gadkari]. (23 Feb 2019) Tweets [Twitter profile]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/nitin_gadkari/status/1098567044574916608, 29.8.2020.
Ide, T., & Detges, A. (2018). “International Water Cooperation and Environmental Peacemaking”. Global Environmental Politics, 18, 4, 63-84.
IWT (1960). Indus Water Treaty. Retrieved from https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTs/Volume%20419/volume-419-I-6032-English.pdf, 10.8.2020.
Jamir, O. (2016). “Understanding India-Pakistan water politics since the signing of the Indus Water Treaty”. Water Policy, 18(5), 1070-1087. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.tuni.fi/10.2166/wp.2016.185
Richey et al. (2015). “Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE”. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015WR017349
Susskind L., Islam S. (2012) “Water Diplomacy: Creating Value and Building Trust in Transboundary Water Negotiations,” Science & Diplomacy, Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2012*). http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/perspective/2012/water-diplomacy.
Miner et al. (2009). “Water sharing between India and Pakistan: a critical evaluation of the Indus Water Treaty”. Water International. Vol 34. 2009. Issue 2.
Wittmer et al. (2006). “How to select instruments for the resolution of environmental conflicts?”. Land Use Policy, 23, 1, 1-9.
Comments