Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Water Dispute Between India and Pakistan
India and Pakistan both have rapidly growing populations and they share the water of the Indus River through a treaty signed many years ago. However, the New York Times reports that India's construction of hydroelectric dams along the river has created new tension between the countries. Pakistan feels that the dams will give India control over the water flow that will leave Pakistan vulnerable to having its water supply manipulated by India. Since the amount of water is unlikely to increase, whereas the populations of both countries are projected to grow enormously between now and the middle of this century, this situation is likely only to worsen over time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
At IIASA a lot of people were talking about the vast potential for water conflict in our near future. Unfortunately the conversation mostly revolved around how to re-awaken the public about this issue. It seems like water/resource conflict had its heyday in academia and the media, and is no longer very 'trendy'. Similar to population growth and the environment, there was a huge explosion of interest years ago, and since the predictions never came to fruition people just don't really believe/pay attention to the hype.
ReplyDeleteFew institutes focus on conflict resolution with a specific focus on water, but it seems like we should start preparing, no?
One resource:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/recent-pubs/pin/culture-neg-greek.html