Damming the Rivers — III: The Diversion Imperative

Abstract

To continue with our examination of the problem of reaching amicable interstate agreement on water resource exploitation among co-riparian states, we explore in this chapter the diversion imperative. By this we refer specifically to the drive in two countries of Himalayan Asia — China and India — to overcome marked regional disparities in freshwater availability by tapping into river waters in water-surplus parts of the country and redistributing these waters via massive infrastructural diversion schemes to water-scarce, drought-stricken areas of the country. If the schemes drew exclusively upon domestic water supplies, there would be little requirement to discuss them in this book. The fact of the matter, of course, is that the two schemes we consider — India’s River Linking Project (RLP) and China’s South-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) — either do already include plans for tapping extensively into transboundary waters (the RLP) or are being considered for proposed expansion that would entail drawing upon transboundary waters (the SNWDP). As will be shown, these two schemes (or their potential extensions) have generated enormous and variously motivated controversy, both in the countries giving birth to the scheme and between them and lower riparian neighbors. The controversy’s intensity has derived in considerable part from the inevitable distortion, obfuscation, and exaggeration of facts inevitable where actual consequences of the yet-to-be-implemented schemes can only be guessed; but it has also come from the reasonable conviction of many observers that the consequences could very well be highly injurious — and not only to the lower riparians.