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29
September 2016
Pond(The Total Investment & Insurance
Solutions)
It is "crucial" for India
to manage domestic water concerns for enhanced regional cooperation, opine
experts, pointing to the urgent need of a "dispute-resolution
mechanism" that engages multiple stakeholders and embraces an ecological
view of the problem.
But given the scale and sensitivity
of these discords -- India has seen a spate of such water conflicts this year
-- experts lament the absence of a "proper environment" and a
structured approach to ease the friction over water. The Total Investment
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"Water issues are as much an
inter-state (country to country) problem as much as they are inter-provincial
(discord between Indian states) problems. In fact, the stress increasingly will
be more on the inter-provincial sharing of waters, triggering friction between
the Centre and the states," Uttam Sinha, an expert on climate change and
water security, told IANS.
"For India, managing the
domestic water concerns is crucial. It directly links to the regional water
cooperation," said Sinha, a fellow at New Delhi's Defence Ministry-funded
think-tank Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), stressing on a
dispute-resolution mechanism.
In the aftermath of the Uri
terrorist attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met key aides to review
provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan and to increase India's use
of the river waters. Down south, the Cauvery conflict between Karnataka and
Tamil Nadu continues to fester. In the east, the Mahanadi river is a bone of
contention between Odisha and Chhattisgarh while Bihar blames the Farakka
Barrage in West Bengal for siltation.
Compounding the dilemma is the
absence of a systematic response to emerging crises in the water sector,
ecological economist Anamika Barua highlighted.
"The biggest challenge at the
moment is lack of agency at the state, national as well as international levels
to systematically respond to emerging crises and reinforce cooperation within
the country and also at the trans-boundary level," Barua, Associate
Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-Guwahati,
told IANS.
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Advocating an "open, inclusive
and scientific platform" where states can meet regularly, and not only
during emergencies, Barua drew attention to the perils of excluding
stakeholders like scientists and civil society from closed-door political
meetings on these matters.
"Many of these conflicts are
politically motivated, so it is very difficult to say whether they are real or
political parties take advantage of opportunities when they see such
crises," said Barua, who is also associated with the SaciWATERs
Brahmaputra Dialogue project.
Earlier this year, India's water
woes pushed the country to the top among 11 nations in The Environmental
Justice Atlas, an interactive portal that maps ecological conflicts, resistances
and environmental injustices. The Total Investment & Insurance
Solutions
"It's not just in India that we
see these problems. Water has been a source of contention in the US and
throughout Europe. And they have always come to agreements about navigation,
about environment, about fisheries. It's in India that it hasn't happened. This
country doesn't seem to be involved in (the creation of) a proper environment
to settle these problems," former Foreign Secretary Kris Srinivasan told
IANS.
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"In China there is a strong
central government which can lay down the law but in India, which is a federal
country, states have to be involved," Srinivasan emphasised.
Even the National Water Framework
Bill (NWFB) drafted by the Union Ministry of Water Resources, fails to bring in
an adequate framework for dispute resolution, noted environmental economist
Nilanjan Ghosh, who recommended a river basin authority (RBA) approach for both
international and inter-state water issues. The Total Investment
& Insurance Solutions
"There is need for a
basin-level authority with greater autonomy, greater powers, and which can
initiate actions to prevent degradation of freshwater ecosystems and can
initiate actions against all kinds of stakeholders, including state
governments, for any form of violation," Ghosh, professor and head of
economics, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata Chapter, and Senior Economic
Advisor, World Wide Fund for Nature, told IANS. The Total Investment
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"We need to start at the bottom...
go for a bottom-to-top approach in the river basins which we have not done at
all... this means you start at the watershed level and involve the people at
the grassroots," Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network
on Dams, Rivers and People, told IANS.The Total Investment & Insurance
Solutions.
