Showing posts from category India.
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Fire in the Hole: A Look Inside India’s Hidden Resource War
›August 18, 2010 // By Schuyler Null
This month’s Foreign Policy has two features on India’s ongoing internal conflict with Maoist and tribal rebels – perhaps the least known insurgency and resource conflict in the world.
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Wilson Center’s Michael Kugelman Finds the Real Culprit in Pakistan’s Water Shortage
›July 28, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffExcerpt from Dawn:
ON Jan 15, 2006, the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) inaugurated its new fountain – the Rs320m lighted harbour structure that spews seawater hundreds of feet into the air.
Also on this day – as on most others in Karachi – several million gallons of the city’s water supply were lost to leakage, some hundred million gallons of raw sewage oozed into the sea, and scores of Karachiites failed to secure clean water.
Over the next few years, the fountain jet would produce a powerful and relentless stream of water high above Karachi. Meanwhile, down below, tens of thousands of the city’s masses would die from unsafe water.
After several fountain parts were stolen in 2008, the KPT quickly made the necessary repairs and re-launched what it deems “an extravaganza of light and water”.
In an era of rampant resource shortages, boasting about such extravagance demonstrates questionable judgment. So, too, does the willingness to lavish millions of rupees on a giant water fountain, and then to repair it fast and furiously – while across Karachi and the nation as a whole, drinking water and sanitation projects are heavily underfunded and water infrastructure stagnates in disrepair.
Continue reading on Dawn.
For more on Pakistan’s water crisis, see the Wilson Center report, “Running on Empty.”
Photo Credit: Adapted from UN map of South Asia, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. -
Cleo Paskal: India Is Key to Climate Geopolitics
›July 27, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff“Copenhagen was many things to many people,” said Chatham House’s Cleo Paskal, in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, but “what was very clear was that India, specifically, was playing quite a strong, clear role in deciding how alignments would be working.” We spoke to Paskal following her presentation at a recent Wilson Center event.
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A Return to Rural Unrest in Nepal?
›July 27, 2010 // By Russell SticklorIn the four years since the end of Nepal’s civil war, political progress in creating a multi-party unity government in Kathmandu has moved in fits and starts. While the effort to bring the Maoists into the fold has made some headway since 2006, continuing environmental and economic troubles in the Nepalese countryside threaten to undermine these tentative steps.
In recent months, a new threat to political stability has emerged: the Sapta Kosi Multipurpose Project, a massive, India-backed hydropower scheme in eastern Nepal currently in the early stages of development. Once operational, the controversial dam—slated to reach a height of nearly 270 meters, making it one of the tallest dams in the world—is projected to generate 3,300 megawatts of electricity.
A proposed barrage and series of canals round out the project, enabling new irrigation and flood-control infrastructure in both eastern Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar, immediately to the south. But the potential environmental impacts of the mega-project have already sparked significant backlash among some Maoist-linked ethnic groups in the region, where the reach and influence of Nepal’s fledgling unity government is tenuous at best.
“Strong” Protests Threatened Over India-Backed Mega-Dam
In June, a network of 15 groups sympathetic to the Nepalese government’s Maoist wing warned of “strong” protests if survey work on the dam continued and “the voice of the indigenous people was not heard.” A memo released by the group dismissed the Sapta Kosi project as “anti-people.”
Specific criticisms of the project have ranged from safety concerns (the dam would be built in a seismically active region) to population displacement. Maoist leaders in the region have alleged that many villages—as well as important local religious sites and valuable agricultural land—could be flooded if the project goes forward. Other Maoists say the project should be delayed until Nepal is reorganized as a federal republic, at which point the states directly impacted by Sapta Kosi could be given greater control over the project.
Meanwhile, some objections to the project have targeted Nepal’s partnership with India. According to ShanghaiNews.net, members of the Maoist opposition have insinuated that hydropower from Sapta Kosi will not be consumed domestically, but rather exported to meet the needs of energy-hungry India.
A number of prominent Nepalese and Indian environmental activists have also spoken against the project, including Medha Patkar, a well-known activist who has played a major role in many past Indian anti-dam protests. Patkar warns the project will not mitigate but instead worsen seasonal flooding, calling plans for the joint India-Nepalese dam project “inauspicious from [an] environmental, cultural and religious point of view,” according to the Water & Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal.
As Nepal Pledges Security for Dam Project, India Pushes Forward
In the past, threats against the Sapta Kosi project have caused surveillance work in the area to be suspended repeatedly. But after the latest round of warnings, the Nepalese government adopted a different tactic, pledging heightened security in the region to ensure the safety of Indian officials doing fieldwork.
In doing so, Nepal’s coalition government is throwing its limited weight around, and—to a degree—staking its reputation on its ability to prevent an outbreak of violence. Historically, Nepal’s government has been largely bypassed or ignored in matters of hydroelectric development. As Nepal Water Conservation Foundation Director Dipak Gyawali told International Rivers in a June 2010 interview:The main players are private investors, with state entities and civil society unable to stand up to them….In Nepal, we just saw local politicians burn down the office of an international hydropower company even after the project was sanctioned by their leaders in the central government.
Gyawali added that during the Nepalese civil war (1996-2006), private developers were able to build “small hydropower projects even while a Maoist insurgency was raging because they did not ride roughshod over local concerns.” Regarding Sapta Kosi, Gyawali said the government should adopt a similar approach, and “start listening to the marginalized voices.” Otherwise, he warned, the Indian-Nepalese team spearheading the project “will be faced with delays, impasse, and intractable political problems,” including the potential for Maoist violence in the region. (As noted earlier this month in New Security Beat, the Indian government has also struggled with Maoist-linked violence in recent years, as New Delhi struggles to pacify a Naxalite insurgency in eastern and central India.)
Rural Nepal’s Troubles Far Bigger Than Sapta Kosi
Maoists may be wielding Sapta Kosi as a weapon to gain political leverage both in the countryside and Kathmandu, but the proposed dam is far from the only environmental issue impacting rural lives and threatening to undermine support for the central government.
In a country where firewood still accounts for 87 percent of annual domestic energy production, deforestation has been hugely problematic across rural Nepal. As of 2010, less than 30 percent of the country’s original forest-cover now remains. The rapid removal of forest cover has reduced soil quality, exacerbated seasonal flooding, and caused degraded water quality due to high sedimentation levels.
Further, as the country’s population grows at an annual rate of 2 percent, low soil productivity and unsustainable farming practices have turned Nepal’s effort to feed itself into a constant uphill struggle. According to the World Bank, the country sports one of the world’s highest ratios of population to available arable land, paving the way for potential further food shortages.
Sustainable energy development in Nepal perhaps represents one way of slowly restoring environmental health to the country. By investing in a more reliable national power grid, the central government could reduce rural dependence on firewood for fuel, allowing the country’s forests, soil, and waters to recover even as population increases. Further, hydroelectric projects like Sapta Kosi—implemented with greater involvement from local communities—could play an important role in moving the country forward. With an estimated untapped hydroelectric potential of 43,000 megawatts, Nepal could not only meet its own energy needs by developing its waterways, but profit from hydroelectric energy exports as well.
On the other hand, the Nepalese government could—at its own peril—continue to overlook rural populations’ grievances, and the environmental degradation unfolding outside Kathmandu. If left unchecked, however, these conditions could once again make the Maoist insurgency an appealing movement, potentially reviving grassroots support for anti-government extremism.
Sources: CIA, eKantipur.com (Nepal), International Rivers, Kathmandu Post, NepalNews.com, New York Times, ShanghaiNews.net, South Asia News Agency, Taragana.com, Thaindian News, Times of India, U.S. Energy Information Administration, WaterAid, Water & Energy Users Federation-Nepal, World Bank, World Wildlife Fund.
Photo Credit: “Neither in Nepal Nor India,” courtesy of Flickr user bodhithaj. -
India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
›July 7, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Indian government’s battle with Maoist and tribal rebels – which affects 22 of India’s 35 states and territories, according to Foreign Policy and in 2009 killed more people than any year since 1971 – has been largely ignored in the West. That should change, as South Asia’s “other” insurgency, fomenting in the world’s largest democracy and a key U.S. partner, offers valuable lessons about the role of resource management and stable development in preventing conflict.
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New Security Challenges in Obama’s Grand Strategy
›June 4, 2010 // By Schuyler NullPresident Obama’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released last week, reinforces a commitment to the whole of government approach to defense, and highlights the diffuse challenges facing the United States, including international terrorism, globalization, and economic upheaval.
Following the lead of the Quadrennial Defense Review released earlier this year, the NSS for the first time since the Clinton years prominently features non-traditional security concerns such as climate change, population growth, food security, and resource management:Climate change and pandemic disease threaten the security of regions and the health and safety of the American people. Failing states breed conflict and endanger regional and global security… The convergence of wealth and living standards among developed and emerging economies holds out the promise of more balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists within and among nations. Profound cultural and demographic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid urbanization could reshape single countries and entire regions.
By acknowledging the myriad causes of instability along with more “hard” security issues such as insurgency and nuclear weapons, Obama’s national security strategy takes into account the “soft” problems facing critical yet troubled states – such as Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Somalia – which include demographic imbalances, food insecurity, and environmental degradation.
Not surprisingly, Afghanistan in particular is highlighted as an area where soft power could strengthen American security interests. According to the strategy, agricultural development and a commitment to women’s rights “can make an immediate and enduring impact in the lives of the Afghan people” and will help lead to a “strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan.”
The unique demographic landscape of the Middle East, which outside of Africa has the fastest growing populations in the world, is also given intentional consideration. “We have a strategic interest in ensuring that the social and economic needs and political rights of people in this region, who represent one of the world’s youngest populations, are met,” the strategy states.
Some critics of that strategy warn that the term “national security” may grow to encompass so much it becomes meaningless. But others argue the administration’s thinking is simply a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexity of today’s security challenges.
In a speech on the strategy, Secretary of State Clinton said that one of the administration’s goals was “to begin to make the case that defense, diplomacy, and development were not separate entities either in substance or process, but that indeed they had to be viewed as part of an integrated whole and that the whole of government then had to be enlisted in their pursuit.”
Compare this approach to President Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy, which began with the simple statement, “America is at war” and focused very directly on terrorism, democracy building, and unilateralism.
Other comparisons are also instructive. The Bush NSS mentions “food” only once (in connection with the administration’s “Initiative to End Hunger in Africa”) and does not mention population, demography, agriculture, or climate change at all. In contrast, the 2010 NSS mentions food nine times, population and demography eight times, agriculture three times, and climate change 23 times – even more than “intelligence,” which is mentioned only 18 times.
For demographers, development specialists, and environmental conflict specialists, the inclusion of “new security” challenges in the National Security Strategy, which had been largely ignored during the Bush era, is a boon – an encouraging sign that soft power may return to prominence in American foreign policy.
The forthcoming first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review by the State Department will help flesh out the strategic framework laid out by the NSS. It is expected to provide more concrete policy for integrating defense, diplomacy, and development. Current on-the-ground examples like USDA embedding in Afghanistan, stepped-up development aid to Pakistan, and the roll-out of the administration’s food security initiative, “Feed the Future,” are encouraging signs that the NSS may already be more than just rhetoric.
Update: The Bush 91′ and 92’ NSS also included environmental considerations, in part due to the influence of then Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates.
Sources: Center for Global Development, CNAS, Los Angeles Times, State Department, USAID, White House, World Politics Review.
Photo Credit: “Human, Food, and Demographic Security” collage by Schuyler Null from “Children stop tending to the crop to watch the patrol” courtesy of flickr user isafmedia, “Combing Wheat” courtesy of flickr user AfghanistanMatters, and “Old Town Sanaa – Yemen 49” courtesy of flickr user Richard Messenger. -
The Contradictions That Define China
›As a China follower who has visited the country numerous times over the past 40 years, I have an enduring love affair with the “old” China, which prided itself on balancing the harmony of nature with its decision-making. It is tragically ironic that despite this impressive historical and cultural backdrop, current choices have pushed the country’s harmony with nature beyond the tipping point.
The atmosphere in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in central China, tells a cautionary tale of China’s current emphasis on economic growth at the expense of its citizens’ health. With lower annual sunshine totals than London, Chengdu’s perpetually grey, cloudy horizon graphically illustrates the massive industrial waste and coal-fired pollution that plague this booming city.
In April, global health experts convened in Chengdu at the 5th International Academic Conference on Environmental and Occupational Medicine, which was co-sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Chinese CDC offices, to report on the impact of climate change on public health.
Because of its geography, the mountain-encircled basin in which Chengdu sits is the natural point of release for daily deposits of air pollutants and dust blown in from India and other countries to the west. A rapid series of satellite views presented by John Petterson, director of the Sequoia Foundation, brought gasps from conference attendees, as these accumulated industrial wastes were shown concentrating against the massive southern Tibetan mountain range, then turning grey and black as they moved east, before being deposited on Sichuan’s vulnerable (and already heavily polluted) basin.
Environmental risk factors, especially air and water pollution, are a major–and worsening–source of death and illness in China. Air quality in China’s cities is among the worst in the world, and industrial water pollution is a widespread health hazard.
And although air pollution is clearly a complex global problem, individual nation-states continue to approach this dilemma as though it lies between its borders alone.
Luckily, this conference was prefaced by a number of timely scientific articles on China in the Lancet. The predominantly Chinese authors clearly take the critical risks that we expect from the Lancet, which is a defender of accountability and transparency in global health. This issue brings shame to other publications who still consider their “place” to be protecting the conventional politico-economic emphasis on decision-making inherent to most industrialized countries.
At the conference, public health and climate experts openly voiced their frustration at the blatant privileging of economic priorities over the health of unknowing populations. China–the fastest growing economy in world history, with unprecedented growth driven by external “demand” and precipitous acceleration of domestic consumption–has become the poster-child for global ignorance. However, the West is an equal and essential partner, having moved their manufacturing to China for cheap labor, lax environmental regulations, and higher profits.
Dr. Mark Keim, senior advisor for the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, presented irrefutable evidence that root structure erosion from advancing saltwater has led to starvation in Polynesia, the first recorded evidence-based outcome measure of climate change’s public health effects.
At Mark’s request, I presented evidence on the worsening health impacts of rapid urbanization, specifically within urban enclaves that expand due to dense population growth before protective public health infrastructures and systems are in place (forthcoming in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine). Currently, the megacities in Asia and Africa–where sanitation is ignored and infectious disease is prevalent–now have the highest infant and under-age five mortality rates in the world.
Today, we face the largest gap in health indices between the haves and have-nots since the alarming days before the Alma-Ata Declaration. This new health data was an uncomfortable surprise to many conference attendees, most of whom were experts in the physical and environmental sciences.
We have become too “vertical” in our research over the past 50 years, and thus we fail to recognize that solutions to problems facing the global community must be trans-disciplinary and multi-sectoral, and serve multiple ministries and decision-makers.
If not undone by human decisions, global climate change and climate-warming greenhouse gases will rapidly intensify. This effort requires the best collaboration between science and the humanities, as well as the harmonious lessons of the “old” China.
Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., MD, MPH, DTM, is a senior public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a senior fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Photo Credit: Chengdu skyline in smog, courtesy Flickr user lonely radio. -
Parched and Hoarse, Indus Negotiations Continue to Simmer
›April 30, 2010 // By Julien KatchinoffBrewing conflicts over water in South Asia are not new to the readers of the New Security Beat. Violence due to variations in the monsoon season , high tensions over water and energy diplomacy, and pressures stemming from mismanaged groundwater stocks in the face of burgeoning population growth have all been reported on before.
The latest addition to this thread is disappointingly familiar: escalating tensions between Pakistan and India over the Indus river basin. Pakistan views Indian plans to construct the Nimoo-Bazgo, Chutak, and Kishanganga power plants as threatening the crucial water flows of an already parched nation according to objections voiced by the Pakistani Water Commission at the annual meeting of the Indus Water Commission in March. As a result, all efforts to reach an agreement on India’s plans for expanded hydroelectric and storage facilities in the basin’s upstream highlands failed.
In a recent editorial in the Pakistani newspaper The Dawn , former Indus River System Authority Chairman Fateh Gandapur claimed that new construction amounts to a clear violation of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT):“India is building large numbers of dams …on the rivers Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas, including on their tributaries in Indian-administered Kashmir. Together, these will have the effect of virtually stopping the perennial flow of water into Pakistan during a period of six to seven months that include the winter season. Not only will this be a blatant violation of the IWT and international laws on water rights of lower riparian areas, it will also amount to making Pakistan dry and, in the future, causing water losses that will deprive this country of its rabi and kharif crops. Our part of Punjab, which has a contiguous canal irrigation system that is amongst the largest in the world, will be turned into a desert.”
Gandapur’s fears, shared by many in Pakistan, are borne out of the desperate situation in which many of their compatriots live. As noted in Running on Empty: Pakistan’s Water Crisis, a report by the Wilson Center’s Asia program, water availability in the country has plummeted from about 5,000 cubic meters (m3) per capita in the early 1950s to less than 1,500 m3 per capita today–making Pakistan the most water stressed country in Asia. With more than 90% of these water flows destined for agricultural use, only 10% remains to meet the daily needs of the region’s booming population. This harmful combination of low supplies and growing demand is untenable and in Karachi results in 30,000 deaths–the majority of which are children–from water-borne illnesses each year.
This harmful combination of low supplies and growing demand is untenable, and may be get worse before it gets better, as Pakistan’s population is projected to almost double by 2050. At an upcoming conference at the Wilson Center, “Defusing the Bomb: Pakistan’s Population Challenge,” demographic experts on Pakistan will address this issue in greater detail.
Recent talk of ‘water wars’ and ‘Indian water jihad’ from Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and head of Jamaat-ud-Dawah, have played upon popular sentiments of distrust and risk inflaming volatile emotions, the South Asian News reports.
Harvard’s John Briscoe, an expert with long-time ties to both sides of this dispute, sees such statements as the inevitable result of the media-reinforced mutual mistrust that pervades the relationship of the two nations and plays on continued false rumors of Indian water theft and Pakistani mischief. “If you want to give Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Pakistani militants an issue that really rallies people, give them water,” he told the Associated Press.
The rising tensions have echoed strongly throughout the region. For the first time in its 25-year history, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has raised the water issue (long thought to be a major political impediment and contributor to SAARC’s stagnation) among its members during its meeting this week. “I hope neighbors can find ways to compartmentalize their differences while finding ways to move forward. I am of course referring to India and Pakistan,” said Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed, during his address on Wednesday. “I hope this summit will lead to greater dialogue between (them.)”
Prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani heeded the calls and responded with a hastily arranged in-person meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC conference. The emerging agreement targeted a comprehensive set of issues, including water and terrorism, and, while unsurprisingly weak on action, set a path upon which the nations can begin to move forward. Speaking about the agreement’s significance, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirumpama Rao told the Los Angeles Times, “There’s been a lot of soul-searching here. We need to take things forward. This is good for the two countries and good for the region.”
The fragile détente faces great hurdles in the months to come, especially if rainfall remains scarce as forecasters predict. Already, local communities in India and Pakistan are venting frustrations over water shortages. On Thursday, just one day after the agreement between Prime ministers Singh and Gilani, several Bangalore suburbs staged protests at the offices of the local water authorities, complaining loudly about persistent failures of delivery services to produce alternative arrangements for water provision despite regular payments by local citizens. Whether local civil action ultimately helps or hinders bilateral water cooperation between India and Pakistan will be interesting to track in the near future and we at the New Security Beat look forward to continuing to engage with readers on the latest developments.
Photo Credit: Mahe Zehra Husain Transboundary Water Resources Spring 2010
