China, India, and War over Water

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines likelihood of insecurity causing between China and India. Water insecurity itself will not likely lead to armed conflict. But when coupled with other international and domestic factors, it could increase likelihood of war. China's scarcity and its widening north-south gap have increased pressure to execute controversial diversion plans. These plans will threaten India, especially since Brahmaputra River flows through a disputed area. These factors, plus changing domestic conditions in China, may increase likelihood of war. Over past decade, numerous analysts and scholars have speculated about likelihood of India and China going to over water. Some maintain a future water war will occur--and others call such fears overblown. (1) These arguments focus on how is unevenly distributed and how China's upstream behaviors, such as its damming activities, could instigate conflict with its downstream neighbor. To determine if scarcity could cause military conflict between these two states, an extensive analysis of factors affecting relations between India and China, as well as domestic conditions within China, are needed. Such analyses suggest scarcity itself will not likely lead to war. However, coupled with other factors such as increasing scarcity in China, linkages between scarcity and national sovereignty, and decreasing political stability in upstream state, may become more likely. The glaciers in China's Tibet are melting at a faster rate, and coupled with growing scarcity and a widening north-south regional gap, China will face increasing pressure to implement a controversial upstream diversion plan in its western provinces. This plan will threaten India since downstream portion of Brahmaputra River flows through a disputed area with strong implications for national sovereignty. Both states will then increase their security postures in an already heavily militarized border region. As China's economic growth continues its downward trajectory, popular nationalism will threaten Chinese Communist Party's ability to pursue a foreign policy uninfluenced by populism and public opinion. The likely net result: a likely between two states. Water Scarcity and Conflict The idea of security has gained traction over years, and is defined as the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of for health, livelihoods, ecosystems, and production, coupled with an acceptable amount of water-related risks to people, environment, and economies. This idea includes negative effects of having too little water, or water scarcity, and damage from having too much such as floods, contamination, erosion, and epidemics. (2) This article focuses on scarcity component of insecurity and assesses six driving factors that make it more likely China and India will fight over in future. But, first, let us discuss how scarcity is related to conflict. People can survive plague, war, and natural catastrophes, but they cannot survive without water. Unfortunately, fresh is an increasingly scarce and precious resource. Less than 2.5 percent of all on earth is fresh water, and more than half of it is trapped in polar ice and high-altitude glaciers around world. This precious-little amount is declining due to increasing consumption, pollution, and climate change. Global per capita freshwater availability has unstoppably declined for more than a century, plummeting more than 60 percent since 1950 alone. (3) At turn of millennium in 2000, more than one billion people could not access clean drinking water. (4) According to a recent article co-authored by chair of Department of Water Engineering at University of Twente in Netherlands and a scarcity expert from Johns Hopkins Water Institute, approximately 66 percent of world's population, or more than four billion people, live in areas under severe scarcity. …