Water politics

The news that India has completely stopped the flow of River Ravi into Pakistan in a calculated move is both shocking and surprising.

This may be a death sentence for Lahore and other nearby cities, regarding their water needs because the recently constructed Shahpur Kandi dam allows India to keep 1,150 cusecs of water that was previously headed for Pakistan. The data also shows that the dam began rerouting the 1,150 cusecs of water to irrigate roughly 32,000 acres in the districts of Samba and Kathua in Occupied Jammu.

Former Indian prime minister PV Narasimha Rao laid the groundwork for the Shahpur Kandi dam project in 1995. When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared assertively on September 26 that “blood and water cannot flow together” and ordered his ministry to stop sending water from Ravi to Pakistan, the Indus Water Commissioner here should have come up with a plan to oppose this disastrous action by India.

Flow-measuring gauges at the river below the Indo-Pak border show that, the average annual flow in Ravi ranged from 1.1 to 2.2 MAF in 2000–2023. However, even this flow is insufficient to replenish the groundwater aquifer that serves Lahore and the other nearby cities.

River Ravi is estimated to contribute more than 80 per cent of the recharge the Lahore aquifer requires, according to a number of studies. A report by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences says that there is only one way to replenish the Lahore aquifer – River Ravi.

The biggest surprise is the Pakistan government’s silence. Given that Lahore’s water level is already dropping at a rate of roughly 2.5 to 3 feet per year, what will happen if the river’s water supply is totally cut off and Lahore runs out of water?

Within India, the ruling of the Indian National Green Tribunal, which was rendered on August 9, 2017, stipulates that all rivers in the nation must retain an environmental flow of at least 15-20 per cent of their average lean season flow.

International water law largely incorporates basic environmental principles and approaches, which is why it is said to be ‘green’. Can I remind the Pakistan government about the statement by the delegation of India at the 68th session of the sixth committee of the UN General Assembly? This written statement, which relates to ‘the law of transboundary aquifers’, alone is sufficient to bring India to its knees. However, it seems that there was absolutely no plan in place to deal with this disastrous move.

I firmly believe that the Indus Waters Treaty is a flawless document and should not be modified since any treaty modification will be viewed as a death sentence for Pakistan’s energy, food, and water security.

When the construction of the dam was going on, did the Pakistan government not consider what would happen if India stopped waters? Did it not consider how Pakistan would claim environmental flows needed for downstream areas, starting from Jassar, about 120km upstream of Lahore?

It is true that India has exclusive rights over the River Ravi water under the terms of the Indus Water Treaty. But the treaty was signed much earlier – when the concept of environmental flow was not considered. But may I draw the government’s attention to India’s written pledge that was correctly recorded by the court of arbitration in the Indus Waters Kishanganga Arbitration (Pakistan v India) in 2013.

The court ordered India to release a minimum environmental flow through its dam into Neelam River after having adopted the evolutionary interpretation of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which acknowledged that the duty to prevent transboundary environmental harm was a component of general international law.

It was expected that after the Kishanganga arbitration, the Pakistan government would take the case for the minimum environmental water flow to bring positive effects on the health of the River Ravi ecosystem and maintain sustain groundwater level for Lahore for future urbanization. But it did not happen.

Apparently it seems that the government has preferred to surrender to India’s strategic move of stopping the flow of water to Lahore. Not only will the water level in Lahore fall precipitously, but other Pakistani cities that rely on groundwater replenished by River Ravi will also be severely impacted.

Pakistan is ranked 130th out of 142 countries in terms of rule of law. Perhaps this is why Pakistan has never been able to produce a single lawyer for International courts. Otherwise, three cases at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – Hungary v Slovakia in 1997; Argentina v Uruguay in 2010; and Nicaragua v Costa Rica in 2015, where the ICJ upheld the principle of preventing transboundary environmental harm – are sufficient to hold India accountable for this disastrous decision.

International law, the ICJ and other courts’ rulings, and the precedent set by the Kishanganga arbitration suffice to restore River Ravi’s natural flows into Pakistan, protecting freshwater, river ecosystems, and human life that depends on river water in Pakistan.

The writer is an engineer and can be contacted at: ahabasi@gmail.com