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<h4>New Scientist</h4>
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<p><br><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428624.400-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html"></a>
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<h1 class="instapaper_title">
China is taking control of Asia's water tower
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<ul class="markerlist"><li>
26 April 2012
by
<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Fred+Pearce"><b>Fred Pearce</b></a>
</li><li>Magazine issue <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2862">2862</a>. <a href="http://subscribe.newscientist.com/bundles.aspx"><b>Subscribe and save</b></a></li></ul>
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<img src="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg21428624.400/mg21428624.400-1_300.jpg" alt="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>" title="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>">
<p class="lowlight">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></p>
<p class="marker"><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg21428624.400/1-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html" target="ns">1 more image</a></p>
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<p><i>The country's engineers are damming or diverting the five great rivers that flow out of Tibet and into neighbouring countries</i></p>
<p class="infuse"><b>Editorial:</b> "<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428623.200-waterway-robbery.html">Waterway robbery</a>"</p>
<p class="infuse">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?</p>
<p class="infuse">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 <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2862/28624401.jpg">(see map)</a>. The projects have sparked simmering disputes between China and its neighbours.</p>
<p class="infuse">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
<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428624.400-china-is-taking-control-of-asias-water-tower.html?full=true#bx286244B1">(see "India redraws its river map")</a>.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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".</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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.</p>
<p class="infuse">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."</p>
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<h3 id="bx286244B1">India redraws its river map</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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