China can push ‘strategic flooding’ into India with proposed Brahmaputra Great Bend Dam, report warns
China’s proposed Great Bend Dam on the Brahmaputra River will expand the country’s capacity to store and withhold or release water in India, a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) — ‘The geopolitics of water: How the Brahmaputra River could shape India-China security competition’ — has said.
Brahmaputra River’s greatest point of hydropower potential is the Great Bend, a point on the Chinese side where the water takes a sharp turn, dropping 3,000 metres through a gorge before gushing into India’s Arunachal Pradesh.
Given its scale and location, the proposed Great Bend would create four likely strategic effects, the report notes.
“It would very likely consolidate Beijing’s political control over its distant borderlands; it may affect human settlement and economic settlement and economic patterns on the Indian side of the border, downstream; and it would give Beijing water and data that it could withhold from India as bargaining leverage in unrelated negotiations,” it said.
India-China water data-sharing arrangement
India and China signed their first water data-sharing agreement on Brahmaputra in 2002 for five years. The agreement, under which China periodically shared “hydrological information on Yaluzangbu/Brahmaputra River during flood season”, was renewed in 2008, 2013, and 2018.
The ASPI report noted that in 2017, and again in 2020, during the LAC clashes between the troops of two sides, Beijing temporarily stopped sharing water data with New Delhi.
The Memorandum of Understanding expired in June 2023 and has not been renewed since.
According to an official Indian readout, while the MoU is “under process of renewal through diplomatic channels”, the ASPI report points out that the primary issue is the fact that the document isn’t legally binding.
China’s proposed Great Bend dam: What are its strategic implications?
From New Delhi’s national security perspective, China’s capacity to pursue strategic flooding in India’s northeast also translates into a notable threat to Indian access to the Line of Actual Control.
“China’s aggressive hydropower construction intrinsically has significant downstream ecological and demographic effects; in the Brahmaputra basin, too, the construction of another massive dam at the Great Bend would exacerbate those effects in lower riparian states, India and Bangladesh,” the ASPI report said.
On the negotiation table, “water issues serve as another political lever for China to use in managing its relations with India.”
Ways to deter China-led strategic flooding in India
According to the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, the upper riparian nation (which in this case is China) is required to provide prior notice of intention of intervention, and full detailed technical information, have due regard for the concerns of the lower riparian states, advance consultations, and accept the principle of avoidance of ‘substantial harm’ or ‘significant injury’ to the lower riparian area.
“The US and other partners could use international legal arguments suggesting that China must act with greater cooperation and transparency to safeguard India and Bangladesh,” the ASPI report said.
Also watch | Assam floods | China’s ‘Super Dam’ on Brahmaputra river to cause future floods?
The ASPI report also proposed forming an open-source and publicly available satellite-based data repository, much like the Mekong Dam Monitor in Southeast Asia, that aims to protect Vietnam from Chinese hydropower belligerence on the Mekong River.
“For India, the information will put it in a better position to navigate negotiations on the border and engineer water management to protect military assets and downstream communities. For Bangladesh, it will help to identify the root of its water problems, giving Dhaka a more informed perspective when engaging with China on water projects.”
Mukul Sharma
viewMore
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.