Water-Sharing in the Indus Basin: A Peaceful, Sustainable Future Is Possible

Douglas Hill is senior lecturer in development studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

There is no question that significant challenges lie ahead in how India and Pakistan share the waters of the Indus Basin. On both sides of the border, declining water availability and decreasing food-grain per capita, urbanisation and a changing climate all add biophysical stressors to what is already a complex and strained geopolitical environment. Indeed, given the history of conflict between the two countries, not least over the disputed Kashmir region where many of the rivers of the Indus Basin originate, it is understandable why it is frequently asserted that water may be a trigger to a future war. While dams can provide a range of benefits, including storage, flood protection, irrigation and electricity, recent plans by both countries to build large-scale dams in those parts of the basin within their respective territories reinforce the sense of a heightened security environment; each new announcement of a planned construction has generated international protest by the respective governments and fanned domestic outrage. A long-standing trust deficit between the two countries makes constructive dialogue on these issues problematic and the sharing of information over future scenarios difficult.

Conflict or Cooperation?

However, while the challenges are clearly daunting, does this necessarily mean that water-related conflict between India and Pakistan is inevitable, or even likely? To some extent, we see a divergence between popular and academic opinion on this matter. On the one hand, the possibility of “water wars” between India and Pakistan has been raised by a number of current affairs publications and newspapers in recent years, including National Geographic, the Guardian, and the Economist, much of the coverage spurred on by the release in 2011 of a report by the United States Senate which expressed concern over the future of water-sharing in the Indus Basin against a backdrop of increased dam construction and a changing climate.¹ Examining the domestic political sphere as it relates to the waters of the Indus produces even more pessimism regarding the likelihood of conflict. Within both countries there are frequently heated debates over water-sharing with the estranged neighbour, a situation recently heightened by several high-profile disputes over proposals to build dams, such as Kishenganga and Baglihar, both in the Indian-held state of Jammu and Kashmir, that eventually went to international arbitration. In Pakistan, the sharing of the Indus waters is particularly controversial because, unlike the much larger India, it is almost entirely dependent upon this single basin for the vast majority of its agricultural and textile industries. There, groups such as Jamaat-u-Dawa, the charity wing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organisation, fuel extremist nationalism with claims that India is “stealing” Pakistan’s water.² In India, hawkish security intellectuals frequently appear on television and write op-ed pieces to suggest that the Pakistani establishment cannot be trusted on water-sharing, while at the same time asserting that India bears no responsibility for the troubles occurring to the west of its borders. Such expressions of popular opinion in both countries would suggest that the likelihood of a water war in the Indian subcontinent is increasing exponentially.

In contrast, much of the broader academic research on transboundary water relations indicates that outright conflict over shared water resources is extremely rare. Indeed, regarding the 263 basins shared between more than one country, research suggests that cooperation is far more likely than conflict.³ Further, a significant proportion of this literature is devoted specifically to the success of the Indus Waters Treaty (1960), which regulates the use of Pakistan and India’s shared rivers. Scholars point out that this treaty has remained in force even during those times when India and Pakistan were at war.⁴ The Indus Waters Treaty is widely seen as evidence that robust institutional design can serve as a bulwark against international conflict. Some assessments of the India–Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (1972), which was set up to oversee water-sharing between the two countries, are similarly positive, since it has continued to hold regular meetings and has worked as effectively as might reasonably be expected.⁵ An academic perspective, therefore, would suggest that despite appearances to the contrary war over water is unlikely to occur in the near future in the Indian subcontinent.

Political Imponderables

In assessing these contrasting perspectives, we are left with a few possible future scenarios for the Indus Basin. Will water serve as a mechanism for greater dialogue and constructive engagement, and will this in turn provide a platform for broader peace-building? Or will disagreements over water instead prove to be a trigger for conflict, which even if it is not fought explicitly about water will nevertheless have the control of water resources as one of its central objectives? There are, of course, a few difficult variables to predict in this latter scenario, some of which are political and institutional and others that are related to the biophysical characteristics of the resource itself.

The political uncertainty surrounding the possibility of conflict over water in the Indus Basin relates to the future configuration of national and provincial governments and the extent to which non-state actors pursue political violence. Having moved between military and civilian governments since independence, Pakistan has just completed the first full term of a democratically elected government in its history, followed by an election that most observers consider to be reasonably fair and free. This is an extremely positive portent for the future, although there can be no doubt that even now the military remains highly influential—including in the economy—and that Islamic militancy remains a significant issue. The Directorate of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (the intelligence service of Pakistan, more commonly known as the ISI) is a disruptive force for any government trying to normalise relations with India, with an established and documented history of support for terrorist groups in the Indian-held state of Jammu and Kashmir. Further, it must be remembered that inter-provincial tensions are significant in Pakistan, not least when it comes to the allocation of water, with Punjab, the country’s most populous and prosperous province, often at loggerheads