Chellaney - Water: Asias new battleground

Water

ASIAS NEW BATTLEGROUND

Brahma Chellaney

Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C. www.press.georgetown.edu
2011 by Brahma Chellaney. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chellaney, Brahma.
Water: Asias new battleground / Brahma Chellaney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-771-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Water supplyAsia. 2. WaterGovernment policyAsia. 3. Water
rightsAsia. 4. AsiaEnvironmental conditions. I. Title.
TD299.C47 2011
333.910095dc22

2011003841

First paperback edition, 2013 ISBN: 978-1-62616-012-5. Minor updates to some of the original text and statistics have been made for this paperback edition.

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

15 14 13 12 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First printing

Printed in the United States of America

Appendixes

TABLES

MAPS

FIGURES

For this multiyear, interdisciplinary study, I received the unstinting support of many experts and institutions. The institutions stretched from Japan and South Korea to Israel and Qatar. The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a first-rate agency that was the source of valuable insights and data. I am particularly indebted to the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for its support, with Beatrice Gorawantschy and Jrg Wolff lending full backing.

I am thankful to the two anonymous reviewers who read my manuscript with care and acuity to offer constructive suggestions, which by and large have been incorporated. The book also owes much to the expert comments received from many others too numerous to name here, yet they should know that my gratitude goes out to them.

My thanks also go to Georgetown University Press, particularly Don Jacobs, for his interest in my manuscript and for overseeing the peer review process. The Georgetown University Press staff did a great deal to successfully produce this book; they are indeed an excellent team.

Water Tensions in Boom Times

Asia faces a daunting water crisis that threatens its economic and political rise and environmental sustainability. Water has emerged as a source of increasing competition and underlying discord between many Asian states striving for greater economic growth. Asia has been booming largely because it enjoys peace and stability. But the recrudescence of Cold Warera territorial disputeswith the renewed revanchism tied to resource interestshas underscored the looming dangers. Various developments are indeed highlighting the linkage between water and peace. Water scarcity is set to become Asias defining crisis by midcentury, creating obstacles in its path of continued rapid economic growth and stoking new interstate tensions over shared basin resources. Water, of course, is not the only resource that Asias rapid economic rise has brought under growing pressure. But it is the most critical one, for which there is no substitute.

Asia already is at the center of the global water challenges. Although home to three-fifths of the human population, Asia, the worlds fastest-developing continent, has less freshwater per capita than any other continent. To make matters worse, Asias water efficiency and productivity levels are among the lowest in the world. Yet the uneven availability of water within several Asian nations has given rise to grand but environmentally questionable ideasfrom Chinas Great Western Route to divert river waters from the Tibetan Plateau to its parched north and South Koreas politically divisive four-rivers project, to Indias now-stalled proposal to link up its important rivers and Jordans plan to save the dying Dead Sea by bringing water from the Red Sea through a 178-kilometer-long canal, which is also to serve as a source for desalinated drinking water.

This book, by innovatively looking at water and security issues across Asia, seeks to fill a void in the literature: There are many good studies of subregional water issues in Asia (including in Southeast Asia, China, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East), but none specifically focus on the larger Asian water picture in the context of peace and security. This is the first wide-ranging study of water and peace that examines Asia in its totality and employs this broader framework to thematically focus on critical issues and countries. The book highlights the long-term security implications of the new tensions over the resources of transnational aquifers like al-Disi and international rivers such as the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween, Indus, Jordan, Tigris-Euphrates, Irtysh-Illy, and Amur. It also brings out the unique triple role of Tibet as Asias water repository, water supplier, and rainmaker, thereby underscoring the centrality of the Tibetan Plateau on the Asian water map. It offers concrete policy suggestions on how the intensifying competition and discord on transnational water resources in Asia can be prevented from flaring into open confrontation and war. In this sense, it is a pioneering study of Asias murky water politics and the attendant security challenges.

As an interdisciplinary study written for scholars, policymakers, serving officers, upper-level students, and the educated general public, this book blends materials from geopolitics, sustainable science, hydrology, environmental studies, geology, international law, and international relations to present a holistic picture of the security implications of the growing water stress in Asia, the worlds largest and most densely populated continent. By signifying the interconnectedness of the various fields dealing with resource issues, it aims to be useful across a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. In addition to being the first comprehensive study of the larger geostrategic dimensions of Asian water issues, the book seeks to bring out the lessons that other continents can draw from Asias experiences so as to avert similar resource, environmental, and security challenges.

At a time when water is becoming increasingly tied to security across much of the world, the linkage between water and peace is particularly striking in Asia, where the per capita availability of freshwater is less than half the world average. A number of important Asian economies, especially the fastest growing, are already water stressed. These realities, along with strained inter-riparian relations and the absence of an Asian security architecture, call attention to the risks of water conflicts. Managing interstate and even intrastate water disputes in Asia is likely to become increasingly challenging.

Several disputed or occupied territories at the heart of geopolitical tensions in Asiaranging from Kashmir and Tibet to the Golan Heights and the West Bankare strategically valued because of their water wealth and advantageous location. Chinas newly assertive territorial claim to Arunachal Pradesh (or Southern Tibet, as it has been called since 2006) has been made with an eye on that remote Indian states rich water resources. Some other Asian regions that are roiled by separatist unrestKyrgyzstans southern Uzbek-influenced Fergana Valley and Turkeys Kurdish southeast, for exampleare also water rich and strategically located.