An environmental imagination

 

Is ‘flood control’ even possible in geographies like the Brahmaputra valley with such a potent monsoon? Must every flood be a disaster?

This year’s flood in Assam has been devastating, although not unprecedented. In fact, floods in Assam have become an annual event, leaving millions of lives shattered every year and costing the state dearly. The scenes on our television screens and the social media feed leave us with a sense of déjà vu. These events are being normalised either as a natural disaster or, increasingly, as a climate change-induced phenomenon. It is a familiar story in other parts of eastern India as well, with Bihar being one of the worst-affected states.

While flash floods, a recurring event across Indian cities nowadays, are largely the result of poor urban planning and inefficient municipal administration, a flood has to be understood in relation to ‘flood control’ and, by extension, control of the river itself which poses larger, philosophical questions. This calls into attention our worldview on rivers, raising questions about how we imagine our ‘hydro-sociality’. Of further importance is to examine what one might call the ‘governmentality of floods’ — that is the power that an entire apparatus of institutions, practices, and technologies exercises vis-à-vis flood risk management.

Central to the Indian State’s flood management system is the construction of embankments which date back to the colonial era (although pre-colonial embankments also exist). Enough has been written about the perils of embankments and I will not go into those in this piece. Not only writings but songs have also been sung and films made about embankment-induced catastrophes. Way back in 1929, the American blues singers, Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy, composed “When the Levee Breaks” (later reworked by Led Zeppelin) in the context of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Be it the levees on American rivers or the colonial and post-colonial embankments on Indian rivers, research has shown that far from controlling flood, these embankments have aggravated the flood crisis, rendering traditionally flood-dependent communities flood-vulnerable. Critique of an embankment-centric flood control approach has, at times, emerged from within the State itself. The 1980 Rashtriya Barh Ayog report, for instance, noted: “Flood control should not be considered as an end in itself, rather it is the means to an end. Flood control has to be viewed within the broad context of the economic and social development in the country. Management of floods should be considered in the context of the overall plan for management of the water resources of a river basin… The approach, therefore, cannot be static, but should remain dynamic and flexible.”

Rural communities realise the risks posed by embankments very well. In my own research sites in Majuli, Assam, villagers have often referred to embankments as “mrityu-baan” (weapons of death). Clearly, neither research nor local knowledge has been given due attention by policymakers. Little wonder then that even as Assam was drowning recently — largely due to embankment breaching — the water resources minister of the state promised, ironically, hundreds of kilometres of new embankments.

Why this obsession with embankments?

In my view, the embankment fetish of the State is rooted in two factors: first, the modernist ideology, a hubris, of human’s mastery over nature, that nature can be controlled and disciplined; second, and more importantly, it highlights two interrelated things: first is what the anthropologist, David Graeber, said about bureaucracy, that it is a “dead zone of imagination”. Thus, the hydraulic bureaucracy cannot think beyond embankments or similar structures, as evidenced by the case of Assam ever since the Assam Embankment and Drainage Act of 1953 came to pass. Almost like an automated entity, the bureaucracy carries on with embankments year after year. Second, the embankments seem to have become part of the ecosystem of the hydraulic bureaucracy, with deep roots and rhizomes, entangling multiple actors with various stakes. So everyone loves a weak embankment that requires repairing or rebuilding.

What is to be done? Is ‘flood control’ even possible in geographies like the Brahmaputra valley with such a potent monsoon? Must every flood be a disaster? Going back to the Rashtriya Barh Ayog’s recommendations, we must seriously consider watershed management and floodplain management at the basin level (thus requiring cooperation among riparian states and nations) while also pursuing various non-structural measures such as flood forecasting and warning, flood proofing, flood defence education, and capacity building of local communities and institutions. Deforestation of the Himalayas and its foothills must be stopped in order to reduce the force of the rivers in the monsoon. What if we built and revived a network of channels (like the ones that existed alongside rural roads and fields) that could absorb the excessive water in the monsoon? How about regulations on the types of permissible dwellings in flood-prone areas? There’s much to learn here from indigenous communities inhabiting the riverine geographies of the Brahmaputra for generations. A robust crop and livestock insurance system will also go a long way in checking floods. In short, we need a new environmental imagination if we are to co-inhabit these floodplains.

A resident of a riverside village in Majuli once told me: “Nodikhon bor komal, moromere subo lage” (The river is too delicate, it should be touched with love). How about we commit to that: to love our rivers, again?

Source"The Telegraph, 31/08/24

Author: Mitul Baruah

Chinese dam projects on Brahmaputra are a threat to lives and livelihoods downstream

 

Building a decentralised network of check dams, rain-capturing lakes and using traditional means of water capture have shown effective results in restoring the ecological balance while supporting the populations of the regions in a sustainable manner.

With India-China relations hitting its lowest point since the 1962 war, border infrastructure has come under intense scrutiny. The construction of several dams along the Yarlung (Brahmaputra) river on the Chinese side has been a repeated cause for concern for Indian officials and the local people, whose livelihoods and security depend on the river.

The Brahmaputra is a perennial river, with several peculiar characteristics due to its geography and prevailing climatic conditions. Inhabitants along the river have to deal with two floods annually, one caused by the melting of the Himalayan snow in summer and the other due to the monsoon flows. The frequency of these floods have increased and are devastating due to climate change and its impact on high and low flows. These pose a concern for the population and food security in the lower riparian states of India and Bangladesh. The river is in itself dynamic as frequent landslides and geological activity force it to change course very often.

As India and China continue to grow demographically as well as economically amid increased consumption among its citizenry, both nations face water constraints. China, which is home to close to 20 per cent of the world’s population, has only 7 per cent of its water resources. Severe pollution of its surface and groundwater caused by rapid industrialisation is a source of concern for Chinese planners. China’s southern regions are water-rich in comparison to the water-stressed northern part. The southern region is a major food producer and has significant industrial capacity as a consequence of more people living there.

China has an ambitious plan to link its south and north through canals, aqueducts and linking of major rivers to ensure water security. In pursuit of these goals, China, being an upper riparian state in Asia, has been blocking rivers like the Mekong and its tributaries, affecting Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It has caused immense damage to the environment and altered river flows in the region. China sees these projects as a continuation of their historic tributary system as the smaller states have no means of effectively resisting or even significant leverage in negotiations. Chinese projects in the Himalayas have only recently begun to operate amid protests from India.

India is severely water-stressed as well. In summer, a vast majority of urban areas face water shortage. Similar to China, India has 17 per cent of the world’s population and 4 per cent of water. While a majority of India’s population reside in the Gangetic plains, the southern and western regions experience harsh and dry summer and the rainfall is scarce and erratic in the eastern coast. As in China, an equally ambitious north-south river-linking project has been proposed in India, though it has come under criticism for potentially disturbing fragile ecosystems.

There are now multiple operational dams in the Yarlung Tsangpo basin with more dams commissioned and under construction. These constructions present a unique challenge for Indian planners. First, they will eventually lead to degradation of the entire basin: Massive amounts of silt carried by the river would get blocked by dams leading to a fall in the quality of soil and eventual reduction in agricultural productivity. Second, the Brahmaputra basin is one of the world’s most ecologically sensitive zones. It is identified as one of the world’s 34 biological hotspots. This region sees several species of flora and fauna that are endemic to only this part of the world — the Kaziranga National Park houses 35 mammalian species out of which 15 are listed as threatened in the IUCN conservation list. The river itself is home to the Gangetic river dolphin, which is listed as critically endangered.

Third, the location of the dams in the Himalayas pose a risk. Seismologists consider the Himalayas as most vulnerable to earthquakes and seismic activity. Landslides resulting from earthquakes pose a significant threat — the 2015 Nepal earthquake and the resultant landslides wiped out several dams and other facilities. The sheer size of the infrastructure projects undertaken by China, and increasingly by India, poses a significant threat to the populations living downstream. Close to a million people live in the Brahmaputra basin in India and tens of millions further downstream in Bangladesh. The projects in the Himalayas threaten the existence of hundreds of thousands of people.

For both India and China, the Brahmaputra presents a geopolitical opportunity as damming this perennial river would result in water security in an era of unprecedented shifting climate patterns. This security extends beyond water, as there is the potential to significantly change the flow rate during times of standoffs and high tensions. In fact, during the 2018 Doklam border standoff between India and China, China stopped communication of water flow levels from its dams, effectively rendering India blind to floods during the standoff.

There are alternate solutions to solving the water crisis. Both sides must cease new constructions on the river and commit to potentially less destructive solutions. Building a decentralised network of check dams, rain-capturing lakes and using traditional means of water capture have shown effective results in restoring the ecological balance while supporting the populations of the regions in a sustainable manner. It is in the interest of all stakeholders to neutralise this ticking water bomb.

This article first appeared in the print edition on November 23, 2020 under the title ‘Water bomb in the Himalayas’. Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, and professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute. Ganesh is a student of politics and governance at Sciences Po Paris

Source: Indian Express, 23/11/20