Futuro desarrollo

In the absence of a constructive dialogue between riparians about water storage in the Ganges-Brahmaputra problemshed, the World Bank has begun to tease out the relevant issues and to separate myth from reality. The Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment identifies water storage as one of the most important issues for water governance in the Ganges basin, and one that could be the basis for creating positive-sum outcomes over other pressing issues – hydropower development, flood control, irrigation. Of the Assessment’s ten key questions, five refer directly to water storage:

‘1. Is there substantial potential for upstream reservoir storage in the Himalayan headwaters of the basin? 2. Can upstream water storage control basin wide flooding? 3. Can upstream water storage augment low flows downstream? 4. Are there good alternatives or complements

426 _{South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People 2012, Press Release: ‘Not the Farmers, Not the} Environment Draft National Policy 2012 seems to help only vested interests’, press release 2

February 2012, South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People, New Delhi

427 _{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/>, pp. 12-13

428 _{Hill, D 2013, ‘Trans-Boundary Water Resources and Uneven Development: Crisis Within and}

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to reservoir storage? ...7. What are the cost- and benefit-sharing dynamics of upstream water storage development?’429

At the same time, the study interrogates the assumption that there is potential for large water storage in the Himalayan rivers and that ‘this potential could be harnessed through large multipurpose dams to produce hydropower, deliver more timely irrigation water, and regulate the extreme flows of the Ganges River.’430 _{The findings of the Ganges Strategic} Basin Assessment

‘refute the broadly held view that upstream water storage (i.e., reservoirs) in Nepal can control basinwide flooding; however, at the same time it finds that such dams could potentially double low flows in the dry months. The value of doing so, however, is surprisingly unclear and similar storage volumes could be attained through better groundwater management.’431

The analysis of the World Bank team suggests that very little water can in fact be stored in the steep terrain and mountain gorges of the region, even behind high dams; developing all the structures currently proposed ‘would provide additional active storage equivalent to only about 18 percent of the basin’s annual average flow. This is very little storage on a basinwide scale.’432

Flood control is also shown to be a negligible benefit of increased water storage in the Himalayas. Large dams in the region are, according to the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment, ‘commonly seen as the answer to the flooding that plagues the Ganges plains and delta, especially in areas of Bangladesh, Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh’ yet ‘[o]n a basinwide scale, the potential to control floods using upstream storage is very limited’ and this ‘severely constrains riparians’ ability to ever truly regulate this river system, even assuming an aggressive development of system storage.’433 _{On the other hand, the lack of} substantial regulation and water storage ‘will preserve a more natural hydrology in the

429 _{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. 49

430 _{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. xiv

431 _{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. xiv

432 _{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. xiv

433 _{The World Bank 2014, Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment; A Discussion of Regional Opportunities}

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river system, which provides a wide variety of services that have not been quantified in this report, such as ecosystem services and navigation.’434

A further assumption about water storage is that it could be used to retain wet season rainfall upstream for use in the dry season downstream. The Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment largely confirms this logic, albeit with some caveats. The construction of all currently planned dams could almost double flows during the months with the lowest flows, but while this may be large relative to current low flow, it is negligible compared to peak flow. Thus dry season flow augmentation through increased water storage is unlikely to significantly alter the integrity of the Ganges basin hydrological system as it currently stands.435 _{Moreover, ‘the economic value of this low-flow augmentation is unclear because} of low agricultural productivity and localized waterlogging.’436 _{In other words, agricultural} modernisation will be required to increase productivity, and this modernisation will be beneficial irrespective of upstream dam construction.437

The point that other strategies will have to complement or maximise the benefits of water storage in the Himalayas is strongly made in the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment. The study also puts forth the argument that there are many attractive alternatives to meeting the region’s water needs; constructing new water storage infrastructure is not the only option. This is a novel and important argument in a water governance context dominated, as discussed above, by the prevailing preference in the region for engineering solutions to water supply policy problems. It is not one, however, that has (yet?) been embraced by riparian states (the reasons for this are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6).

The Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment shows that contrary to the prevailing command- and-control paradigm, there are numerous forms of water storage already present in the Ganges basin that are not human-constructed, namely underground aquifers, lakes, glaciers, snow, ice, and even soils. The quantity of water held in these natural reservoirs may not be as insignificant as is widely believed.438 _{The study reveals that in contrast to} the over-abstraction of groundwater elsewhere in South Asia, ‘there are vast, untapped

434 _{The World Bank 2014, Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment; A Discussion of Regional Opportunities}

and Risks, Report no. 67668-SAS, The World Bank, Washington DC, pp. xiv-xv

435 _{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. xv

436 _{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. xv

437 _{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. xv

438 _{The World Bank 2014, Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment; A Discussion of Regional Opportunities}

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groundwater resources in the central and lower reaches of the Ganges Basin. These additional groundwater resources, held in natural underground aquifers, can be sustainably used.’439

More importantly, the sustainable use of this groundwater in strategic conjunction with well-managed surface water, could provide the same benefits, and on a similar scale, as those that could be gained from the current and proposed multi-purpose dams; ‘Achieving all of this, however, would require significant reforms particularly in the policy and energy-pricing environment, and real changes in farmers’ behavior.’440 _{Yet, policy reform,} in combination with cultural and attitudinal change, is more difficult to bring about and measure than storing water behind multi-purpose dams.

With almost no flood control benefits, and the benefits of dry season flow augmentation being limited by low agricultural productivity, the overwhelming share of economic benefits from proposed dams will be, according to the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment, derived from hydropower. The benefit-sharing calculus is thus simple: the benefits and costs to be shared between Nepal, India and Bangladesh in the near term will be predominantly associated with hydropower.441 _{As Kayastha argues, these countries are less} concerned with the other benefits of dams – irrigation, flood control, navigation – than they are with hydropower production, and thus agreement must be reached on cost- sharing for this benefit before the other benefits can be realised.442