River water conflicts: meaning, a case study, and their reasons and impacts

Meaning of river water conflicts

A river water conflict is a dispute over the sharing and use of a river's water between groups of users, between states of a country, or between countries that the river crosses. One side's use (storing, diverting or polluting the water) reduces what reaches the other side. The DU syllabus places international and inter-state conflicts over water under water resources. Worldwide, about 100 countries share the waters of 13 large rivers and lakes, so the problem is widespread; within India, such quarrels have grown from local disputes into disputes between states, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu being a standing example.

Case study: the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada

The Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat is part of the very large Narmada river project, built to store the river's water for irrigation and to generate hydroelectric power.

• Who gains and who loses. Large farmers downstream stand to receive the water and most of the economic benefit, while thousands of tribal families whose land, forests and fields were tied to the river have been displaced from the submergence area; fishing people at the river's estuary also lose their livelihood.
• The conflict. The question the case raises is one of equity: why should the poorer people of the valley bear the cost of development that serves better-off farmers elsewhere ? Local resistance grew into the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a movement against large dams, and the demands of the people threatened with losing their homes led the World Bank to withdraw from the project in 1993.
• Environmental cost. The forests drowned by the reservoir took their biological diversity with them.
• Resettlement. Rehabilitating displaced people has no ready solution, and most large dam projects have failed to resettle those they displaced.

Reasons for river water conflicts

1. Demand outgrowing a fixed supply. A dammed river is wanted for power and also for homes, crops and industry, and these competing uses give rise to conflict; the world's yearly withdrawal of fresh water has doubled in fifty years.
2. Upstream control. A country or state upstream can hold back water on which those downstream depend.
3. Uneven benefits from dams and canals. Dams send water to some users and take land and livelihoods from others, as in the Narmada valley.
4. Breakdown of local arrangements. The loss of traditional local controls over fair sharing is a major source of conflict.

Impacts on the environment

• Submerged forests take their biodiversity with them.
• Reservoirs silt up, especially where the catchment is deforested, and a dammed river no longer serves for fishing and navigation as before.

Impacts on the economy

• Downstream farmers who get less water lose crops and income in deficit years, while those who win the water gain.
• River fisheries and navigation suffer once water is dammed.

Impacts on society

• Displacement of tribal and poor rural people, with resettlement rarely successful.
• Protest movements and political tension between the parties; across borders, conflict over water can make regions unstable.

Conclusion

River water conflicts are really conflicts over scarce water and over who bears the cost of using it. Basin-wide sharing agreements, efficient irrigation and a move to several small dams, which harm the environment less than one large dam, can ease them.