ORDEN Nº 1567 MENÚ COMBO:
IV. ESTUDIO ECONÓMICO
Water management issues stemming from population growth, rapid urbanisation, and socio-economic development are further exacerbated by the effects of climate change. The countries of the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed are less resilient to water-related disasters than other Asia-Pacific states, which creates a further challenge for transboundary water governance and climate change adaptation.375 As Hill notes, ‘[t]he phrase “too much and too little water” has been used as a shorthand for the challenges that climate presents for the Hindukush Himalayas, with droughts and floods becoming more commonplace.’376 The region is also ill-prepared institutionally for climate change. For example, none of the treaties and agreements that Nepal has with India address climate change or the uncertainty posed by potential effects of changing melt dynamics from Himalaya-Hindu-Kush glaciers.377
The effects of climate change include complications with spatial and temporal rainfall variability, evaporation rates, and temperatures in different agro-climatic zones and river basins.378 This, in turn, will affect ‘agricultural production and food security, ecology, biodiversity, river flows, floods and droughts, water security, and human and animal health’379 Changes in climatic conditions also affect diseases transmitted through water,
374 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, p. 7
375 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 12
376Hill, 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, p. 739
377 National Research Council of the National Academies 2012, Himalayan Glaciers: Climate Change,
Water Resources, and Water Security, The National Academies Press, Washington DC, p. 86 378 Asthana, V & Shukla, AC 2014, Water Security in India; Hope, Despair, and the Challenges of
Human Development, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, p. 139
379 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
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via vectors such as mosquitos.380 The compounded effects of rising temperature, flooding, sea level rise, loss of wetlands and cyclones381will leave densely populated ‘mega-deltas’, such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin particularly at risk.382 In this region, climate change will likely result in increasingly frequent and hazardous weather patterns, such as extreme temperatures, changes in average annual precipitation, irregular rainfall patterns, and intense rainfall events. These, according to research from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), ‘may in turn lead to increases in floods, landslides, and erosion, as well as an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts, with a resultant lowering of the water table, drying of natural springs, and reduced stream discharge.’383
The large number of dams in the region also poses a unique problem in light of climate change: ‘With the accelerated glacial melting, the dams are likely to see huge increases in inflows initially and then highly reduced inflows in subsequent decades. This effect is likely to threaten the safety and the economy of the dams.’384 At the same time, climate change and the priority placed internationally on reducing greenhouse gas emissions has ‘led, since the WCD [World Commission on Dams] report, to a re-awakening of interest in hydropower.’385 That means more dams – and more dams means more risk associated with climate change.
Water supply will also be affected by climate change. In the words of Evans, ‘[w]ater for irrigation and hydropower production is threatened, as is water for cooling of thermal power production. The annual mean monsoon levels will increase by 10 percent, with a 15 percent increase in variability, making the monsoon stronger and less predictable.’386
380 Werz, M., & Conley, L., 2012, 'Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict; Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century', Centre for American Progress, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, p. 20 381Evans, JW 2015, ‘The Future Is Now: Scenarios to 2025 and Beyond’ in JW Evans, & R Davies (eds),
Too Global to Fail: The World Bank at the Intersection of National and Global Public Policy in 2025,
Directions in Development, doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0307-9, World Bank, Washington DC, p. 80 382 Evans, A 2010, ‘Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict’, World Development Report 2011, Background Paper, 9 September 2010, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, p. 4
383 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 20
384 Kumar, M, & Furlong, M 2012, ‘Securing the Right to Water in India: Perspectives and Challenges’, Our Right to Water, Blue Planet Project, viewed 2 October 2016,
<http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/34030/publisher/the-blue-planet-project/>, p. 10
385 Smith, MD 2010, ‘Principles in Practice: Updating the Global Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on
Dams in 2010’, Water Alternatives, vol. 3 no. 2, p. 440
386Evans, JW 2015, ‘The Future Is Now: Scenarios to 2025 and Beyond’ in JW Evans, & R Davies (eds), Too Global to Fail: The World Bank at the Intersection of National and Global Public Policy in
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Climate change will likely affect seasonal water supplies more than annual water supplies.387 In the Ganges basin, dry season, monsoon, and post-monsoon flows are projected to increase by up to 20 per cent in the 2050s, while pre-monsoon flow is expected to decrease by 15 per cent; in the Brahmaputra and Meghna basins, flow is projected to increase in all seasons, with a marked increase in the Brahmaputra basin in the dry season (17 per cent), and in the Meghna basin in pre-monsoon (20 per cent).388 Studies also indicate that mean upstream water supply on the Ganges and Brahmaputra in the period 2046–2065 will be approximately only 80 per cent of what it had been in 2000- 2007.389
Much of the dry season flow of Himalayan rivers is from glacial meltwater, but over the last 30 years this has fallen by 11 per cent as average temperatures rise and snowlines retreat.390 In contrast to Europe and North America, however, where glacial melt contributes substantially to low summer flows, the glaciers of the greater Himalaya region melt during the monsoon season when temperatures are highest but rainfall is also heaviest. Thus, while changes in glacial melt may be an existential challenge for some melt-dependent mountain communities, it is not a major challenge for the problemshed as a whole.391
Nonetheless, a major concern is that the rapid retreat of glaciers in recent decades has resulted in the formation and growth of glacial lakes. These are held back by unstable moraine material and are prone to burst in a type of flash flood called a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). Research from ICIMOD notes that ‘[c]limate change is expected to result in an increase in the number and size of such lakes, and thus to an increase in the risk of such outbursts.’392 Regular floods are also expected to increase in frequency and
2025, Directions in Development, doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0307-9, World Bank, Washington DC, p. 80
387 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 15
388 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 17
389 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 15
390 Evans, A 2010, ‘Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict’, World Development Report 2011, Background Paper, 9 September 2010, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, p. 12
391 The World Bank 2014, Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment; A Discussion of Regional Opportunities
and Risks, Report no. 67668-SAS, The World Bank, Washington DC, p. xvii
392 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
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severity, and to alternate with drought.393 Protracted droughts combined with rising sea levels may cause inland backflow of salt water that contaminates low-lying, fertile delta regions.394
Despite these gloomy predictions, some international actors remain optimistic that the effects of climate change in the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed will be manageable, and – crucially for proponents of dam-building in the Himalayan region as a means of controlling water – that climate change will not adversely affect the hydropower potential of the region. Jeuland et al., who were all involved with the World Bank’s Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment, argue that ‘[d]espite uncertainties in predicted future flows, they are not, however, outside the range of natural variability in this basin.’ More importantly, they find that:
‘the hydropower potential associated with a set of 23 large dams in Nepal remains high across climate models, largely because annual flow in the tributary rivers greatly exceeds the storage capacities of these projects even in dry scenarios. The additional storage and smoothing of flows provided by these infrastructures translates into enhanced water availability in the dry season, but the relative value of this water for the purposes of irrigation in the Gangetic plain, and for low flow augmentation to Bangladesh under climate change, is unclear.’395
International actors, however, are not united in calling for infrastructure to regulate the vagaries of water flow in the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed. The Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment, which was made public more than a year after Jeuland et al. published their assessment of climate change on hydropower development in the region, concludes that ‘the effectiveness of large-scale infrastructure for flood control, and the reliability of existing large-scale diversions of surface water for irrigation, could prove susceptible to
393 Vaidya, RA, & Sharma, E (eds) 2014, Research Insights on Climate and Water in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, p. 9
394 Campbell, KM, Gulledge, J, McNeill, JR, Podesta, J, Ogden, P, Fuerth, L, Woolsey, RJ, Lennon, ATJ, Smith, J, Weitz, R & Mix D 2007, The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Center for a New American Security, Washington DC, p. 75
395 Jeuland, M, Harshadeep, N, Escurra, J, Blackmore, D, & Sadoff, C 2013, ‘Implications of climate change for water resources development in the Ganges basin’, Water Policy, vol. 15, p. 26
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climate change.’396 The report argues that improved policy is key to rising to the challenge of climate change:
‘A focus on managing current hydrological variability (whether or not it is attributable to climate change) is, therefore, a good place to start addressing the future climate change challenges … Regardless of changes in rainfall and hydrology, an emphasis on enhanced forecasting and warning systems, in concert with a suite of tailored, localized responses, is urgently needed.’397
Yet, this policy-centric approach to hydrological variability fell on deaf ears as the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment was rejected by Nepal, India and Bangladesh. This suggests, among other things, that supply-side, engineering solutions are deeply entrenched in this problemshed.