[Vision2020] Whose Water Is It?

[Art Deco]

 New Scientist


<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428624.400-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html>
 China is taking control of Asia's water tower

   - 26 April 2012 by *Fred
Pearce*<http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Fred+Pearce>
   - Magazine issue 2862 <http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2862>. *Subscribe
   and save* <http://subscribe.newscientist.com/bundles.aspx>

   [image: The Xiaowan dam in China is one of many the nation is building
on the Mekong river <i>(Image: Long Yudan/Imagine China via AP Images)</i>]

The Xiaowan dam in China is one of many the nation is building on the
Mekong river *(Image: Long Yudan/Imagine China via AP Images)*

1 more image<http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg21428624.400/1-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html>

*The country's engineers are damming or diverting the five great rivers
that flow out of Tibet and into neighbouring countries*

*Editorial:* "Waterway
robbery<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428623.200-waterway-robbery.html>
"

ITS vast ice sheets and monsoon run-off make the Tibetan plateau one of the
largest sources of fresh water on an increasingly thirsty planet. It
supplies 1.3 billion people with water for irrigation and drinking, and
offers the promise of unparalleled hydropower. But who owns this water? As
China looks to claim the vast flows that emerge from the water tower of
Asia, what of the rights of its downstream neighbours?

With hydro-engineers moving in, questions like these are fast becoming
incendiary geopolitics. China is centre stage: it has plans to dam or
divert each of the five great rivers that emerge from Tibet's high plateau
before tumbling into neighbouring countries - the Indus, Brahmaputra,
Irrawaddy, Salween and Mekong (see
map)<http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2862/28624401.jpg>.
The projects have sparked simmering disputes between China and its
neighbours.

The starting gun in a race to control Tibet's rivers may have been fired
with a court order from India's Supreme Court last month, calling for work
to begin on canals that will link many of India's largest rivers. The
scheme's lynchpin is a 400-kilometre-long canal that will divert water from
the Brahmaputra to the Ganges to irrigate water-starved fields 1000
kilometres to the south (see "India redraws its river
map")<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428624.400-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html?full=true#bx286244B1>
.

The court decision is partly a reaction to nascent Chinese schemes to dam
and divert the Brahmaputra further upstream in Tibet. For now, the
Brahmaputra remains one of the planet's last great untamed rivers. That may
soon change. In addition to the Indian diversion plan, Chinese engineers
want to tap the river in the Tsangpo canyon. There they could build two
hydroelectric plants, each delivering twice the power of the Three Gorges
dam on the Yangtze, currently the world's largest dam. Even further
upstream, engineers have drawn up plans to divert up to 40 per cent of the
river's flow to irrigate crops on China's northern plains.

The plans are making Bangladesh and India, which both lie downstream on the
Brahmaputra, very nervous. India faces a water crisis, and sees the
Brahmaputra as its largest untapped water source. But the real victim could
be Bangladesh, which relies on the river for two-thirds of its water, much
of it for irrigation during the long dry season. Nearly 20 million
Bangladeshi farmers depend on the river to water their crops.

The competing projects could lead to a resource conflict between India and
China, and an environmental catastrophe for Bangladesh, Robert Wirsing of
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar warned a
conference on water security held in Oxford, UK, last week.

Until recently, China mostly dammed rivers flowing within its borders. But
to meet soaring demand for energy and irrigation, its engineers have moved
on to international rivers. Already, China has completed a series of dams
on tributaries of the Brahmaputra. The first on the river's main stem, the
$1-billion Zangmu dam, will be completed in 2014. Next up could be the
Tsangpo canyon dams: Motuo, which would deliver 38 gigawatts, and Daduqia,
at 42 gigawatts.

It is not just water flowing into India and Bangladesh that China has in
its sights. Its other neighbours are also growing restive. The latest
flashpoint is the Myitsone dam being built by China on the Irrawaddy in
northern Burma. Burmese generals approved the scheme three years ago, even
though 90 per cent of the electricity from the 6-gigawatt plant will go to
China. But late last year, the new reformist government suspended
construction after dozens of people were killed during clashes between the
army and locals, whose villages would be flooded.

The political situation in Burma makes the ultimate fate of Myitsone and 12
other dams planned by China in Burma - six on the Irrawaddy and six on the
Salween - unclear. Many of the proposed dams are in a remote area
designated a World Heritage Site because of its unique forest and
freshwater ecosystems.

Further west, Chinese construction of the 7-gigawatt Bunji dam on the Indus
in northern Pakistan has angered India, which claims the territory. Locals
are also fearful, since the dam is close to the epicentre of an earthquake
that killed more than 100,000 people in 2005.

The hydro-politics are fierce. But what is the evidence that such dams do
harm? After all, many argue that hydroelectricity is vital for countries
like China and India to develop their economies using low-carbon energy.

Published studies are thin on the ground, but after work on the Myitsone
dam was suspended, it emerged that an unpublished 900-page environmental
impact assessment commissioned by the Chinese had recommended against the
dam because it would flood important forest ecosystems.

The impact on Bangladesh of the Indian plan to divert the Brahmaputra has
been modelled by Edward Barbier of the University of Wyoming in Laramie and
Anik Bhaduri of the International Water Management Institute in Delhi,
India. They warn that "a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in the river's flow
could dry out great areas [of Bangladesh] for much of the year". Without
the flow of fresh water, salt from the Bay of Bengal would invade the large
river delta, causing "an environmental catastrophe".

The best evidence that dams can cause great ecological damage comes from
the Mekong, where Chinese damming is most advanced. China has so far built
four of eight planned hydroelectric dams on the river. They include the
Xiaowan dam, which, at 292 metres tall, is higher than the Eiffel Tower.
Another, even larger, will be finished at Nuozhadu by 2014.

The dams capture monsoon flows for release through turbines during the dry
season. The Chinese government insists that, by evening out the river's
flow, the dams are good news for its neighbours. But three years ago, the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that reducing the annual
flood pulse posed a "considerable threat" to ecosystems downstream.

In a study for UNEP, Ky Quang Vinh of Vietnam's Centre for Observation of
Natural Resources and the Environment found that the weaker flood pulse
meant salt water from the South China Sea had penetrated 70 kilometres into
the Mekong delta, destroying large areas of rice paddies in the prime
growing region of the world's second largest rice exporter.

Matti Kummu, a hydrologist at the Helsinki University of Technology in
Finland, warns that the weaker flood pulse is also destroying fish
nurseries - such as the flooded forests around Cambodia's inland lake, the
Tonle Sap - that have made the Mekong the world's second largest inland
fishery.

In a region where water supplies are stretched and nations play
hydrological hardball, the stakes are high. China was one of only three
nations to vote against a proposed UN treaty on sharing international
rivers. As Loh Su Hsing, a fellow at the foreign affairs think tank Chatham
House in London, wrote recently: "The big issue for Asia is whether China
will exploit its control of the Tibetan plateau to increasingly siphon off
for its own use the waters of the international rivers that are the
lifeblood of the [downstream] countries."
 India redraws its river map

India's National River-Linking Project has been a gleam in the eye of that
country's engineers for decades. The project's aim is to deliver water from
the great monsoon rivers of northern India to the arid south and west,
which are dangerously dependent on groundwater to grow food. This would be
done by building a network of 30 canals linking up rivers, at a cost of
hundreds of billions of dollars.

Many see the project as impossibly ambitious and a potential environmental
disaster. But following an Indian Supreme Court ruling last month, some
parts may proceed. The key element would take water from the Brahmaputra to
the Ganges, from where it could be given to the poverty-stricken states of
Bihar and Orissa. Following the ruling, the government revealed that
detailed site surveys for the 400-kilometre canal, which could carry more
than 43 cubic kilometres a year, are already under way.
  [image: Issue 2862 of New Scientist magazine]
<http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2862>

   - From issue 2862 <http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2862> of New
   Scientist magazine, page 8-9.
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
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