4. Descripción del conjunto mesa
4.1. Definicion del conjunto mesa
Of all the South Asian states, Bangladesh is in the weakest negotiating position with India. It is downstream of the hydro-hegemon, has little material power relative to India, and is low on what Cascão and Zeitoun call bargaining and ideational power.598 Moreover, Bangladesh does not seem inclined to use the negotiation tactics that may improve its outcomes. One such tactic is issue linkage. Zeitoun and Warner point out that a weak negotiation position in one sector may be somewhat compensated for by relatively high issue power in another sector; this is the essence of issue linkage.599 Tiwary explains that:
‘[n]ations negotiating over international water resources (quantity, quality, hydroelectric energy, etc.) may demand/expect benefits which are neither of the same kind/value nor of immediate nature. They can accommodate vast deviations from stated claims based on prospective and diffused benefits like cooperation in regional security, trade benefits, transit routes, energy cooperation, resolution of boundary disputes, etc.’600
In the case of Bangladesh’s weak negotiating position vis-à-vis India over transboundary water governance, Bangladesh could link the resolution of specific concerns to benefits to India from a new Bangladeshi deep sea port at Chittagong. Bangladesh could also impress upon India the potentially dire consequences of a mass migration into India of Bangladeshi farmers and fisher folk displaced by environmental degradation caused in part by changed conditions on shared rivers. This is, to some extent, occurring slowly and relatively quietly at high level negotiations between the two countries, but it may be many years before this process results in tangible outcomes.
596 Iyer, RR 2007, Towards Water Wisdom: Limits, Justice, Harmony, Sage, New Delhi, p. 189 597 Iyer, RR 2008, ‘National and Regional Water Concerns: Setting the Scene’ in K Lahiri-Dutt, & RJ Wasson (eds), Water First: Issues and Challenges for Nations and Communities in South Asia, Sage, New Delhi, pp. 16-17
598 Cascão, AE, & Zeitoun, M 2010, ‘Power, Hegemony and Critical Hydropolitics’ in A Earle, A Jägerskog & J Öjendal (eds), Transboundary Water Management: Principles and Practice, Earthscan, London, pp. 31-32
599 Zeitoun, M, & Warner, J 2006, ‘Hydro-hegemony - a framework for analysis of trans-boundary
water conflicts’, Water Policy, vol. 8, p. 442
600 Tiwary, R 2006, Conflicts over International Waters, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 17, p. 1686
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Yet, there are many issues in Bangladesh that take priority over addressing transboundary water issues. Bangladesh does not, for example, systematically gather data on transboundary rivers. Instead, a frequent complaint from within Bangladesh is that India withholds this type of information and that it should be shared. A sort of learned helplessness pervades Bangladesh’s attitude to India in regards to transboundary water governance. The dominant narrative is that India deliberately and consistently ignores Bangladeshi interests, and that it is up to India – not Bangladesh – to take active steps to rectify the souring relationship. There is nothing in the narrative about Bangladesh resolving its own problems, either through its own data gathering, its own water diversion, or finding ways to leverage issue-linkage to get the outcomes it wants from India.
Bangladesh, despite this passive stance on transboundary water issues and its weak negotiation position vis-à-vis India, is also the riparian in the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed that faces the most serious consequences of river diversions upstream and transboundary water resource mismanagement. Bangladesh’s external water dependency (the percentage of water that originates outside a country’s political borders) is 91.33 per cent and thus one of the highest in the world. Yet, its per capita freshwater availability (7,569 cubic metres per year) is almost five times higher than India’s.601 This, however, is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Bangladesh’s low elevation makes it prone to flooding during the monsoon season, and also prone to drought during the dry season between January and May. Management of shared river resources is therefore particularly critical for Bangladesh.602
Bangladesh is criss-crossed by 230 major rivers, with 54 of them (including the largest ones) flowing in from India. Watercourses cover seven per cent of the country’s total land area. The Brahmaputra is the most important river of Bangladesh, but the Ganges and Meghna are also significant.603 The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin sustains approximately 10 per cent of the world’s population, but is also one of the poorest regions
601 Chellaney, B 2011, Water: Asia's New Battleground, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, p. 172
602 Condon, E, Hillman, P, King, J, Lang, K, & Patz, A 2009, ‘Resource Disputes in south Asia: Water Scarcity and the Potential for Interstate Conflict’, prepared for the Office of South Asia Analysis, US Central Intelligence Agency, Workshop in International Public Affairs, 1 June 2009, Robert M La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, p. 8
603 Chellaney, B 2011, Water: Asia's New Battleground, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, p. 172
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in the world.604 This poverty makes Bangladesh particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of upstream water engineering, such as large hydropower dams in the Himalayas and numerous diversions and water-storage dams in the middle and lower portions of the Ganges. These have had significant side effects on Bangladesh, including dislocation of human communities, through loss of resources such as fishery stocks, and increased hazards from flooding, to saltwater incursions and erosion of the Ganges delta.605 Bangladesh is always on the receiving end of these disasters, and so it is all the more important for it to reach agreements that affect water flow upstream. It is also a high priority for Bangladesh in developing a constructive domestic water policy and attaining development goals associated with this.606
There is much criticism of the water-sharing arrangements between India and Bangladesh, which are, argues Hill, inequitable and symptomatic of the broader relationship between the two countries.607 Singh points out that there is also a perception within Bangladesh that India secretly diverts a portion of the Ganges upstream during dry months, causing acute water stress and environmental damage to Bangladesh. The Indian External Ministry counter-claims that it releases more water than is Bangladesh’s genuine requirement and that Bangladesh exaggerates its needs.608
Hill argues that ‘India’s modification of rivers in the Brahmaputra – Meghna continues to be a source of tension within Bangladesh and a significant feature in the relationship between the two countries.’609 One specific source of tension is the 1996 Ganges Treaty. The Ganges Treaty610 is an agreement about surface water allocation at the Farakka Barrage. India constructed the Farakka Barrage in the 1970s in the state of West Bengal
604 Shah, RB 2001, ‘Ganges-Brahmaputra: the outlook for the twenty-first century’ in AK Biswas, & JI Uitto (eds), Sustainable development of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 17-22
605 Wohl, E 2012, ‘The Ganga - Eternally pure?’, GWF Discussion Paper 1208, Global Water Forum, Canberra, p. 3
606 Condon, E, Hillman, P, King, J, Lang, K, & Patz, A 2009, ‘Resource Disputes in south Asia: Water Scarcity and the Potential for Interstate Conflict’, prepared for the Office of South Asia Analysis, US Central Intelligence Agency, Workshop in International Public Affairs, 1 June 2009, Robert M La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, p. 41
607 Hill, D 2009, ‘Boundaries, Scale and Power in South Asia’ in D Ghosh, H Goodall, & S Hemelryk- Donald (eds), Water, Sovereignty and Borders in Asia and Oceania, Routledge, New York, p. 92 608 Singh, R 2008, ‘Trans-boundary Water Politics and Conflicts in South Asia: Towards Water for
Peace’, Centre for Democracy and Social Action, New Delhi, p. 35
609Hill, D 2015, ‘Where Hawks Dwell on Water and Bankers Build Power Poles: Transboundary Water, Environmental Security and the Frontiers of Neo-liberalism’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 39 no. 6, DOI: 10.1080/09700161.2015.1090679, pp. 739-740
610Treaty Between the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Government of the Republic of India on Sharing of the Ganges/Ganges Waters at Farakka, 1996
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near the border with Bangladesh to divert dry season flow away from the Ganges main trunk and into an offshoot, the Hooghly River, to increase flows – and therefore ease river transport – into the port of Kolkata. The Ganges Treaty provides for a volumetric allocation; it divides water flow without sharing the value and uses of the river between the two countries. It does not include the uppermost riparian, Nepal.
The Ganges Treaty takes neither a whole-of-basin approach to river management, nor does it factor in the effects of India’s consumptive water uses on the Ganges upstream of the Farakka Barrage.611 Instead, the allocation is determined by water availability at the barrage itself, and based on flow averages from between 1949 and 1988.612 Since then, the dry season discharge of the Ganges at Farakka has declined due to increased upstream uses for agriculture and other purposes,613 and this has led on several occasions to Bangladesh not receiving the treaty apportioned flow.614 By focussing exclusively on dividing water flow, the Ganges Treaty has not taken into account how current and future uses further upstream are likely to affect availability at Farakka.
The apportioning of dry season flows between India and Bangladesh at the Farakka Barrage means not only that Bangladesh sometimes receives less water than it needs when it needs it most, but also that there is no mechanism to alleviate dangerously high flows during the monsoon. Because India is allowed to withdraw a maximum of 40,000 cusecs irrespective of the overall flow of the river, when the flow reaches 2,000,000 cusecs – the point at which the Ganges River within Bangladesh breaches its banks – there is no recourse in the Ganges Treaty for flood alleviation through diverting excess flows at Farakka Barrage into the Hooghly River. The flood risk is compounded by the rapid rise in silt deposition rates occurring since the Farakka Barrage was erected.615
611Hanasz, P 2014, ‘Sharing waters vs sharing rivers: The 1996 Ganges Treaty’, Global Water Forum, 28 July 2014, Canberra, viewed 2 October 2016,
<http://www.globalwaterforum.org/2014/07/28/sharing-waters-vs-sharing-rivers-the-1996-ganges- treaty/>.
612 Article II (ii) of the Treaty Between the Government Of The People's Republic Of Bangladesh And The Government Of The Republic Of India On Sharing Of The Ganges/Ganges Waters At Farakka, 1996
613Mirza, M.Q., 2002, ‘The Ganges water-sharing treaty: risk analysis of the negotiated discharge’,
International Journal of Water, Vol.2, No.1, pp.57-74
614Khalequzzaman, Md., and Islam. Z., 2012, ‘Success and Failure of the Ganges Water-sharing
Treaty’ on WRE Forum http://wreforum.org/khaleq/blog/5689 [Accessed 1 July 2014]
615Thomas, K 2012, ‘Water Under the Bridge? International Resource Conflict and Post-Treaty
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Bangladesh has argued that the Farakka Barrage harms the agro-ecological and economic wellbeing of southern Bangladesh.616 It disregards Bangladesh’s ecology, water needs and the survival of its people, claims Singh, and is therefore seen as unfair treatment meted out to a smaller country by a ‘big brother’. He argues that the Ganges Treaty embodies all that is wrong in the water relationship between Bangladesh and India.617 Hill too shows that ‘almost every negative development in rural Bangladesh is linked to the Farakka barrage’ but points out that ‘[t]he Indian perspective, in contrast, asserts that Bangladesh has been unwilling to compromise and has expected that its share of water resources will always remain undiminished.’618
From the Indian perspective, the Ganges Treaty is fair and even invokes the principle of reasonable use.619The principle of ‘equitable and reasonable utilisation and participation’ is enshrined in the Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Waterways,620 which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1997 – one year after the Ganges Treaty (and also the 1996 Mahakali Treaty between India and Nepal). Although India is not a signatory to the UN Watercourses Convention, the appeal to the internationally accepted norms of transboundary water governance (the draft of the UN Watercourses Convention had been debated for years prior to its adoption in 1997) is deliberate. India’s interest lies in minimising the perception of taking advantage of a weaker neighbour while maximising benefits. In the case of the Ganges Treaty, the principle of reasonable use applies only to an approximately 20km stretch of river between the Farakka Barrage and the border with Bangladesh – a stretch so short as to make the application of this principle meaningless in practice.621 Overall, the Ganges Treaty
616 Condon, E, Hillman, P, King, J, Lang, K, & Patz, A 2009, ‘Resource Disputes in south Asia: Water Scarcity and the Potential for Interstate Conflict’, prepared for the Office of South Asia Analysis, US Central Intelligence Agency, Workshop in International Public Affairs, 1 June 2009, Robert M La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, p. 10
617 Singh, R 2008, ‘Trans-boundary Water Politics and Conflicts in South Asia: Towards Water for
Peace’, Centre for Democracy and Social Action, New Delhi, p. 20
618 Hill, D 2008, ‘The Regional Politics of Water Sharing: Contemporary Issues in South Asia’ in K Lahiri-Dutt, & RJ Wasson (eds), Water First: Issues and Challenges for Nations and Communities in South Asia, Sage, New Delhi, p. 72
619Treaty Between the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Government of the
Republic of India on Sharing of the Ganga/Ganges Waters at Farakka, signed 12 December 1996, Article III.
620 United Nations 1997, Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International
Watercourses, General Assembly Resolution A/RES/51/229, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 21 May 1997, Article 5.
621Hanasz, P 2014, ‘Sharing waters vs sharing rivers: The 1996 Ganges Treaty’, Global Water Forum, 28 July 2014, Canberra, viewed 2 October 2016,
<http://www.globalwaterforum.org/2014/07/28/sharing-waters-vs-sharing-rivers-the-1996-ganges- treaty/>.
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illustrates that a legally binding agreement is not the same as meaningful cooperation between the parties. The treaty favours the hydro-hegemonic state (India) and solidifies the status quo. It does not create a community of interest in the shared management of the river and has left Bangladesh with numerous concerns and unresolved issues.622
Another unresolved issue between Bangladesh and India is that of the proposed agreement over the Teesta River. As with the Ganges Treaty, the point of contention over the Teesta River is the quantity of water to be allocated to each country during the lean season.623 The Teesta begins in the Indian state of Sikkim, flows through the state of West Bengal, and joins the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh.624 The flow of the Teesta into Bangladesh is controlled by a barrage at Gazaldoba, which India constructed to provide water to northern parts of West Bengal. Bangladesh also has a barrage on the Teesta. It is the Dalia Barrage in downstream Lalmonirhat District, and supplies water for agriculture and irrigation to drought prone areas of northern Bangladesh. According to Prasai and Surie, Bangladesh argues that the construction and diversion of water from the Gazaldoba Barrage has drastically reduced water availability at the Dalia Barrage, particularly in the dry season. 625 This is the crux of the dispute.
Negotiations between India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) over the Teesta River date back to the 1950s and 1960, but it was not until the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 that the Indo-Bangladesh Joint River Commission was established. In 1983, India and Bangladesh agreed to an ad hoc arrangement to share 75 per cent of the Teesta waters; India was entitled to 39 per cent and Bangladesh to 36 per cent, with the remaining 25 per cent to be allocated following further study.626 But this temporary arrangement was not satisfactory. In 2005, the Joint River Commission found that ‘the lean season flows in [the] Teesta will not meet the needs of both the countries and hence any sharing formula for the lean season flows should be based on shared sacrifices’ and by 2010, the Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh issued a Joint Communiqué calling for the Teesta issue to be
622Hanasz, P 2014, ‘Sharing waters vs sharing rivers: The 1996 Ganges Treaty’, Global Water Forum, 28 July 2014, Canberra, viewed 2 October 2016,
<http://www.globalwaterforum.org/2014/07/28/sharing-waters-vs-sharing-rivers-the-1996-ganges- treaty/>.
623 Prasai, S, & Surie, M 2013, Political Economy Analysis of the Teesta River Basin, The Asia Foundation, New Delhi, p. 27
624Chellaney, B 2014, ‘Water, Power, and Competition in Asia’, Asian Survey, vol. 54, no. 4, p. 640 625 Prasai, S, & Surie, M 2013, Political Economy Analysis of the Teesta River Basin, The Asia Foundation, New Delhi, pp. 12-13
626 Prasai, S, & Surie, M 2013, Political Economy Analysis of the Teesta River Basin, The Asia Foundation, New Delhi, pp. 12-13
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resolved expeditiously.627 Soon after a draft of the Teesta agreement was written up, including a statement of principles for sharing the river waters in the lean season. India and Bangladesh were scheduled to sign the final agreement in 2011 and again in 2013, but both times the state government of West Bengal stood in the way.628
The terms of the proposed Teesta agreement are largely focused on fixing the lean season share of the river water and the hydrological structures required to regulate the sharing. But, argue Prasai and Surie, the politics around the agreement extend far beyond the waters of the Teesta; ‘the Teesta negotiations are first and foremost about politics, yet rarely about the politics of the basin alone.’629 The 2011 attempt to reach agreement was largely stymied by public outcry within Bangladesh over perceived concessions to India regarding transit routes through Bangladesh to India’s north-eastern states.630 Meanwhile, in 2013 the ‘West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s refusal to endorse the proposed Teesta agreement on the grounds that her government had not been adequately consulted demonstrates the exclusive nature of the discourse even at the national level.’631 Since then, the political situation in Bangladesh has remained unstable, due in part to the fallout in 2013-2014 between ruling and opposition parties over the war crimes trial against Jamaat-e-Islami, although ‘Dhaka has reiterated its commitment and interest in expediting the treaty as soon as possible.’632
Hill shows that the Teesta Agreement is problematic within India, too. He argues that framing the dispute in terms of one Indian states versus all of Bangladesh obfuscates more problematic aspects of the issue:
‘What is lost in this description is that the modification of the Teesta is also a significant issue of domestic politics within India, and arguably demonstrates once again how marginal people, in this case indigenous people in Sikkim, are frequently disregarded and rendered invisible in
627 Prasai, S, & Surie, M 2013, Political Economy Analysis of the Teesta River Basin, The Asia