Some information and thought

[adasgupta.05]

Dear All,

Please allow me to acknowledge all the valuable submissions from the group members. 

I am Ashim Das Gupta, a retired professor from Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand.  I joined this group on the invitation of Dr. Vishnu Prasad Pandey who is an Alumnus of AIT.  I would like to thank all the contributors as I learned a lot of the present state of issues by going through each of their submission.   I must submit that, ironically issues are more or less the same as they used to be 15 years back when I was involved in research and extension activities on trans-boundary waters through Oregon State University.   Due to various reasons I was not able to continue that collaboration.

Asia, the world’s most stressed continent in terms of per capita freshwater availability, needs a rule-based system to manage water stress, maintain rapid economic growth and ensure environmental sustainability.   This can only be possible when there is a political thrust, whether it is a national or international river basin.  In particular, for international (trans-boundary) river basin, this political thrust has to be of unique nature, of very similar dimension when we say cross-sectorial approach in water management, or in other words, it is going beyond the territorial limit forging cross-national understanding and collaboration. 

I refer to the first submission of Vishnu regarding the Mekong River Commission as well the submission by Bastakoti from IWMI, Nepal referring to it as an inter-governmental agency playing crucial role in bringing cooperation among the riparian countries of Lower Mekong River basin namely Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.   I fully agree with the view that the MRC has been, to some extent, successful in addressing various issues related to the use and management of water resources of Mekong Basin.  This is mainly on medium to minor development of tributaries in respective countries.  When it comes to mainstream, there are problems cropping up.

In this regard, I would like to share with you a recent development that will speak itself on the existing level of cooperation.   Construction has already begun on the first mainstream dam on the Lower Mekong at Xayaburi in Laos, first of 11 dams planned on the main stream.  A serious concern was raised several times and the initiation of construction was deferred few times as this will have a negative impact on biodiversity, sediment and nutrient flow and fisheries production, undercutting the livelihoods of people living along the river in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (raised by some of the member countries).   The governments of Cambodia and Vietnam suggested to carry out a trans-boundary environmental impact assessment of the Xayaburi dam which must include rigorous research into the life cycles and migration patterns of Mekong fish, a topic which –despite the importance of the Mekong’s fisheries – has largely been ignored.  In a recently concluded meeting of the 16^th Conference of Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) held in Bangkok (03-14 March 2013), this issue was raised and the delegates expressed their concern of a serious threat to two of the rarest freshwater fish in the world, the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish and the critically endangered giant pangasius.

Despite this incidence, what we see on the horizon that we got to have an agreed cooperation treaty among the riparian countries on related aspects including resource sharing with adequate legal implication allowing governments to implement and enforce policies to ensure sustainable and equitable allocation of water.  The basin management should have a trans-boundary view considering all the important facets of resources, integrating all the countries along the river.  Although the role of law in society varies from country to country, the central importance of water law should be widely recognized and honored.  The example of Nile River Basin Initiative has proved that a well-designed legislation, with concurrence of all involved, can reduce the stress of water resources and unsustainable development in future, regardless of the degree of uncertainty around future changes.    

The question is how this can be generated?  One way would be by external means through intervention of international bodies and/or the other way would be through people’s movement within country as well as across borders under stressed situations.   In many of the trans-boundary river basins, one or two riparian countries, like China remains the stumbling block, refusing to enter into a water sharing treaty with any neighbor – much less support a regional regulatory framework – because it wants to maintain its strategic grip on trans-boundary river flows.

At this juncture, what would be our role?  May I propose that we get some idea on where to go and how to go from where we are now.  Is it possible to form a network of researchers and professionals from various disciplines?  The idea is that this group plays a crucial role in generating information and knowledge on a common platform and tries to bridge the gap with the decision-making process.  I know I am talking something too ambitious, but we need to think on a broad horizon first. But another thing we need to consider, apart from resources, the socio-cultural environment in this type of venture.

With this I would like to thank everybody.  I am sorry for taking your time to go through this long submission.

Sincerely,

A. Das Gupta

[vishnu pandey]

1.    Thank you very much Prof. Das Gupta for your post  for the benefit of over 400 members in this group despite of your busy schedule. It is really nice to know more about issues on Mekong mainstream despite of existence of MRC, success of Nile River Initiative to demonstrate how well-designed legislation with concurrence of all involved can reduce stress on water resources. You also indicated intervention of international body could facilitate cooperation in shared basins. However, as mentioned by Dr. Bhanu, it is possible ONLY IF all the parties involved request jointly. In case of basin like Ganges with no progress in multi-lateral agreements even after 9 decades after the first bi-lateral agreement (Sarada Barrage Agreement, 1920) because of reasons like you mentioned in your last paragraph, what kind of interventions do some international agencies can make? Appreciate if you could elaborate a bit on it.

2.    I totally agree with Bishnu Gautam’s view that we so called water resources experts and/or engineers should NOT BE DIVIDED, respect ethics of profession, and be responsible to formulate and disseminate unbiased or consensus information to the public on the issues of national nterest through regular articles in mainstream media. Also agree that we should also take initiatives to discourage practices of floating biased articles with vested interest by certain quarter of the society. These all are possible if and only if we all become honest and respect ethics of profession. As we are discussing on Transboundary cooperation, we should go one-step ahead and think for benefits of all the inhabitants, flora and fauna in the basin, regardless of political boundary.

3.    Finally, I would like to post a question for discussion: What could be general circumstance that could be considered as opportune time to stimulate Transboundary Cooperation to the extent of establishing River Basin Authority? I would appreciate if someone(s) may share experience and or opinion.

With Warm Regards,

Vishnu Prasad Pandey

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From: adasgupta.05 <adasgu...@gmail.com>
To: urban...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, 16 March 2013, 11:55
Subject: [e discussion: Water Cooperation] Some information and thought

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