The problem with problems of water scarcity in South Asia

February 25th, 2014

Paula Hanasz, Australian National University, Australia

There is a prevailing but false and pernicious assumption about water scarcity: the idea that scarcity is a problem of nature or something otherwise extrinsic to human society and management of resources. This narrative obscures several important aspects of ‘real’ scarcity. The first of these overlooked aspects is that inequalities often shape access to and control over water. Second, water scarcity is not exclusively a phenomenon of nature, but more often than not due to anthropogenic interventions, resulting from bad water management and land use practices.1 Third, decreasing availability of water per se does not automatically lead to conflict.

Of course water scarcity can also be ‘real’ – falling groundwater tables or increased salinity are evidence of the physical lowering in water availability, and urban residents throughout South Asia have experienced this absolute scarcity.1 But in South Asia, the most prevalent and pressing problems of ‘scarcity’ are really problems of governance. Allocating a finite resource between seemingly incompatible water uses (e.g. industrial use versus environmental flows) and prioritising the competing benefits that flow from water (e.g. fishing revenues versus hydroelectricity production) are wicked policy problems. The ‘scarcity’ arises when demand for water exceeds water supply and zero-sum thinking prevails in the development of solutions.F1



Perceptions are also significant. Water availability in South Asia is likely to worsen significantly due to the rising demand from rapid population growth and industrialisation; climate change affecting Himalayan glacial melt and raising sea levels (which increases salinity in aquifers); whilst groundwater withdrawals occur at an unsustainable rate.3 It is not surprising, therefore, that the region has often been threatened with gloomy pictures of ‘water wars’ and ‘water famines’. This perception of a looming crisis creates an urgency for tackling an envisioned ‘problem’- the problem of scarcity, in terms of inadequate water in aggregate or per capita terms. Scarcity is constructed as a vagary of nature rather than human-induced, and chronic rather than cyclical.1 There is thus an ‘environmentalisation’ of certain conflicts and politicisation of the environment in this region.4

The term ‘scarcity’ is misleading: it belies the fact that access to and control over water is usually linked to prevailing social and power relations. As Douglas Hill has pointed out:

“There is nothing natural about crises; they arise from particular social forms and certain kinds of resource use. So, too, with the multiple crises of water in India, which are the consequences of a raft of interrelated dynamics on a variety of scales.” 5

In other words, water crises are never just about water; they are always interconnected with other social, political, economic, and environmental factors, such as the degree of conflict already present, the strength of rule of law, or economic conditions.

The former Indian Water Minister, Ramaswamy Iyer, persuasively argues that water conflicts arise not out of scarcity but gross mismanagement in response to a seemingly unlimited demand for water.4,6 Iyer sees current water crises as primarily crises of understanding – the common misperception of the problem as one of availability. The solution then, according to engineers and bureaucrats such as those at the World Bank, lies in increasing water ‘production’, for example through additional water infrastructure that creates a supply-side response to the growing demand.6

Iyer also identifies within India a reluctance to adopt a demand-side approach, despite unheeded lessons from previous mega hydroengineering projects that never delivered.6 But India is not the only country in the region to have developed a knee-jerk supply-side response to the perceived crisis of water scarcity. Pakistan, for instance, has been drilling an increasing number of wells to extract the fossil water from hard-rock aquifers in Balochistan.1 Asia as a whole boasts the world’s most massive plans for exploiting its ‘scarce’ water resources with inter-basin transfer projects.7

These technological fixes should have made the South Asian economies less dependent on water, but that has not happened.1 Economic solutions have had mixed results also. The low consciousness about the economic value of water is listed in India’s 2012 National Water Policy as one of the reasons for ubiquitous waste and inefficient use of water.3 The creation of markets for water trade in rural areas has established water as a commodity subject to the forces of supply and demand.6 The practice in most India states of supporting livelihoods through subsidising farmers’ electricity has led to severe groundwater depletion through unregulated use of electric water pumps and spurred a growing market in water-selling by local pump owners.8 There was hope that this marketisation of water would slow overexploitation of groundwater, but this has not been the case so far. Indeed, the growth of water markets has typically reinforced inequalities in the agrarian structure, with those having pump ownership generally coming from the rural elite.9



Another insidious problem with water scarcity is the misconception that it creates conflict. Water shortages, according to Thomas Homer-Dixon, arise in three ways: environmental change (human-induced decline in the quantity or quality of a resource), population growth (reduction in per-capita availability), and unequal distribution (the concentration of resources in the hands of the few).10 Homer-Dixon’s ideas about the relationship between natural resources and social instability have become dangerously simplified in their popularity; the commonly accepted wisdom is that resource scarcity equals resource wars. The reality, however, is complex: economic and social factors tend to have a much larger effect on conflict than resource availability.11 Therefore, water related tensions should never be taken out of their socio-political context, such as the presence of conflicts, the strength and legitimacy of governing institutions, and cultural values.

The problem with problems of scarcity is not so much lack of water, nor even lack of access to water. It is, rather, a problem of prioritising competing interests. Hydropower may compete with the requirements of, say, downstream fisheries, industrial uses, water quality needs of domestic consumption, environmental flows, and so on. Which water uses should take priority when demand outstrips supply? This question is something that the region has little experience in dealing with because this has not been a problem in the past.12

Prior to the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s there had been ample freshwater availability, but the consequent population boom, urbanisation, and economic growth, has driven per capita availability to dangerous lows.13 Demand for water has burgeoned while supply has remained constant. Concurrently, the number of state agencies in South Asia dealing with water issues has proliferated. Each use of water is now under a different department, and the multiplicity of administrative bodies often results in contradictory and conflicting claims on water.1

It is the wicked problem of managing competing interests that is at the crux of the so-called scarcity crisis. Moreover, it is inequitable distribution or weak governance that is a more certain path to conflict than is scarcity in itself. We must therefore pay careful attention to the real and complex issues of water management in South Asia without becoming distracted by the alarmism of manufactured scarcity. When there is not enough water to go around, bemoaning the ‘not enough’ part of the situation is futile; instead, focus should be placed on sharing what is available in an equitable way.

Footnote:

F1. Zero-sum thinking is the approach that assumes gains to one party must equal losses to the other parties in a negotiation. In relation to water management, zero-sum thinking presupposes that any given quantity of water can only be used one and by only one party. See Islam and Susskind (2013).2

References:

1. Lahiri-Dutt, K. (2008). ‘Introduction’ in Lahiri-Dutt, K., and R.J. Wasson (eds.) (2008). Water First: Issues and Challenges for Nations and Communities in South Asia, Sage, New Delhi.

2. Islam, S. and L.E. Susskind (2013). Water Diplomacy: A Negotiated Approach to Managing Complex Water Networks, RFF Press, New York.

3. Government of India (2012). ‘National Water Policy (2012)’, Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India.

4. Singh, R. (2008). ‘Trans-boundary Water Politics and Conflicts in South Asia: Towards Water for Peace’, Centre for Democracy and Social Action, New Delhi.

5. Hill, D. (2013). ‘Trans-Boundary Water Resources and Uneven Development: Crisis Within and Beyond Contemporary India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36(2).

6. Iyer, Ramaswamy R. (2007). Towards Water Wisdom: Limits, Justice, Harmony, Sage Publications, New Delhi.

7. Wirsing, R., Jasparro, C., and D.C. Stoll (2013), International Conflict Over Water Resources in Himalayan Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

8. Pearce, F. (2006). When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century, Beacon Press, Boston.

9 . Hill, D. (2009). ‘Boundaries, Scale and Power in South Asia’ in Ghosh, D., Goodall, H. and S. Hemelryk-Donald (eds.), (2009). Water, Sovereignty and Borders in Asia and Oceania, Routledge, New York.

10. Evans, A. (2010). ‘Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict’ World Development Report 2011, Background Paper, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University.

11. Tamas, P. (2003). Water Resource Scarcity and Conflict: Review of Applicable Indicators and Systems of Reference, UNESCO, Technical Documents in Hydrology, PC ?CP series, No. 21, SC-2003/WS/49.

12. Chellaney, B. (2013). Water, Peace and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham.

13. Kumar, M., and M. Furlong (2012). ‘Securing the Right to Water in India: Perspectives and Challenges’, Our Right to Water, Blue Planet Project.

Paula Hanasz is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. Her thesis explores the water interactions between India, Nepal and Bhutan. Paula can be contacted at paula.hanasz@anu.edu.au.

The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.