Is peace about to break out on the world’s rivers?
It is amazing that until now there has been no global agreement on sharing international rivers. From the Mekong to the Jordan and the Niger to the Euphrates, there has been nothing to stop upstream countries from building giant dams that cut off all flows downstream. Yet in the coming weeks we could have two such treaties.
First, the continuing bad news: Belligerent countries are still exerting their hydrological muscle. Just this month, Laos began construction of the first dam on the main stem of the lower Mekong River in Southeast Asia. It hopes that the Xayaburi dam will help it become the region’s hydroelectric powerhouse.
On the upper Mekong, China has already built four giant dams, including one taller than the Eiffel Tower. These dams are all being constructed without the approval of downstream neighbors, including the 60 million people in Cambodia and Vietnam who fear the barriers will block fish migration and deprive them of fertile silt for their rice fields.
Meanwhile in Africa, Ethiopia last year began work on the Renaissance Dam on the Nile, which will be the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa. Again, downstream nations Egypt and Sudan had no say. And in the Middle East, fears grow that Turkey could use its control of the Euphrates as a weapon in any future border conflict with war-torn Syria, a downstream nation that is heavily dependent on the river.
More than 40 percent of the world’s people live in 263 river basins that straddle international borders. The Danube, Rhine, Congo, Nile, Niger, and Zambezi rivers all pass through nine or more countries. Transboundary rivers contain 60 percent of the world’s river flows — for two-thirds of them, there are no agreements on water sharing.
This is dangerous. Guinea threatens to barricade the River Niger, which could dry out the inner Niger delta, a wetland jewel on the edge of the Sahara in neighboring Mali. In September, Vladimir Putin visited the mountain states of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, where he announced financial backing for more dams on the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers to generate hydropower in those countries. But he ignored opposition from downstream Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan who fear the dams will deprive them of summer flows to irrigate their cotton crops.
Water is today the most important global resource that does not have any international agreement, says World Bank lawyer Salman M.A. Salman. Abstractions of water from rivers have tripled in the past 50 years, mostly for irrigation. The entire flows of some rivers are now being taken for human use. And the natural flows of many others are disrupted by hydroelectric dams that only allow water to pass when the dam owners want electricity.
For the complete article, please see Yale Environment360.
