Damming and Infrastructural Development of the Indus River Basin: Strengthening the Provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty

Abstract

Whilst the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 allows for damning and infrastructural development in the Indus River Basin, it does so without factoring in environmental considerations. This is because environmental standards in international law, except those related to pollution control, were largely absent when the Treaty was negotiated in the 1950s. Given the increasing list of development-related disputes between India and Pakistan, and their aspirations for further damming and other infrastructural works in the Basin, this paper seeks to close the gaps in the Treaty’s provisions and developments in international environmental law to date. To do so effectively, the paper analyzes the relevant provisions of the UN Watercourses Convention, supplemented with an examination of the European regional framework. Based on these, it proposes changes to the Treaty so that both India and Pakistan are able to work within a legal framework which not only provides for environmental impact assessments for planned projects, but enhances monitoring, assessments, and reporting. This will ensure that such developments are not only environmentally sound but also help to alleviate some of the disputes between India and Pakistan.

Transboundary cooperation a potential route to sustainable development in the Indus basin

“…Agricultural practices, namely crop-type shift, crop rotation and water and energyuse efficient irrigation technologies can help reduce water stress, but require investment, education and organizational resources. Fresh water availability is also tightly related to the operation of hydropower plants and reservoirs, which must balance prescribed allocations of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) with challenges in controlling seasonal droughts and floods [10,11].…”

“…For instance, the IWT has provisions for dispute resolution and arbitration, but lacks trust-building mechanisms such as adequate data-sharing. As the impacts of climate change manifest, the issue of trust, allocation, and co-operation will gain new saliency for Pakistan and India in particular, but also for Afghanistan and to a limited extent, China [11,14].…”

High Mountain Areas

“…For instance, within the transnational Indus River basin, climate change impacts may reduce streamflow by the end of this century, thus putting pressure on established water sharing arrangements between nations (Jamir, 2016) and subnational administrative units (Yang et al, 2014b). In this basin, management efforts may be hampered by current legal and regulatory frameworks for evaluating new dams, which do not take into account changes in streamflow that may result from climate change (Raman, 2018). Within the transnational Syr Darya and Amu Darya basins in Central Asia, competition for water between multiple uses, exacerbated by reductions in flow later in this century, may hamper future coordination (Reyer et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2019).…”