COMMENTARY

Geopolitics of Dam Design on the Indus

Majed Akhter

The legal geopolitics of the Baglihar and Kishenganga hydroelectric power projects, whose legitimacy under the Indus Waters Treaty has been contested by Pakistan, demonstrates the political nature of technology and the governance of technology need not remain out-of-bounds for non-engineers. In attempting an understanding, this article seeks to step outside the conventional nationalist mode of geopolitical analysis.

Majed Akhter (majed.akhter@gmail.com) is to shortly take up a position as Assistant Professor of Geography at Indiana University Bloomington, the United States.

t is widely accepted that the world is fast approaching or already in the midst of a water crisis. Perhaps nowhere has this diagnosis quickened pulses and inamed passions more than in the Indus Basin in Pakistan and northwest India. Planners, politicians and scholars in both countries tend to advocate technological solutions to water problems dams, telemetry, use of metering, drip-irrigation, lined canals, etc. At rst, it is difcult to imagine a more reasonable way to proceed. Surely, listening closely to engineers is the only rational way to tackle technical problems like water supply? Scholars of science and technology have, however, long argued that treating technological artefacts as apolitical is not tenable (Winner 1980). To illustrate this point, I discuss two river control projects whose legitimacy under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has recently been contested. The IWT is a unique water treaty, partly because it allocates the Indus by geography, not volume of water. The IWT divides the waters of the Indus and its ve eastern tributaries into three Western Rivers, allocated to Pakistan, and three
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Eastern Rivers, allocated to India. Important exceptions to this general separation are highlighted in the appendices of the IWT and include Indias qualied rights to use the waters of the Western Rivers. This qualied right is at the heart of the two contentious projects analysed below: the Baglihar and Kishenganga hydroelectric power projects. Baglihar and the Neutral Expert The Baglihar project is located on the main stem of the Chenab, roughly 110 kilometres east of the Pakistani border. On 15 January 2005, Pakistan invoked its right under the IWT to determine the legality of some features of the design of the dam by a Neutral Expert appointed by the World Bank. The World Bank appointed Raymond Latte, a Swiss professor of civil engineering, to serve as the Neutral Expert. On 12 February 2007, after two years of deliberation, Latte delivered his decision on the Baglihar case. Lattes interpretative efforts focused on Paragraph 8 of Annexure D of the Treaty. A nnexure D presents conditions for the generation of hydroelectric power on the Western Rivers by India, and Paragraph 8 is broken into eight sections that specify design constraints for any new run-of-the-river hydroelectric plant. Runof-the-river is a term with a specic meaning in the IWT, but we can think of it as referring to a dam whose primary purpose is not storage. The Baglihar
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decision consisted of six separate determinations concerning Pakistans objections to design features regarding storage capacity, power-intake tunnels, and design and height of spillways. I focus the analysis on the question of spillway height; specically on the sluice spillways designed for controlling sediment and managing large ood events. The economic life of dams and other river control structures is shortened by the slow accumulation of sediment in reservoirs. Sedimentation is an especially acute problem in Himalayan rivers because, geologically speaking, these mountains are young and prone to erosion. Drawdown ushing is a technique whereby the sediment accumulated at the bottom of a reservoir is ushed into the channel downstream of the dam. This is accomplished by drawing down the level of water in the reservoir and opening spillways that have been placed at a low level on the dam. India proposed to locate sluice spillways on the Baglihar structure at 808 metres above sea level, as compared to a dam crest height of 844.5 metres above sea level. Pakistan objected that even if these spillways were necessary, they were located too low on the dam. Latte determined that the spillways were necessary and appropriately placed. Indeed, he argued that the spillway outlets should be located even lower, at about 800 metres above sea level. This determination was arrived at through a review of international best practice in dam design, and Lattes rationale was that his decision assured optimal sediment management capacity, which in turn would maximise the economic life of the dam. But what do these technical details have to do with geopolitics? Surely, this is a matter for technical persons to sort out amongst themselves in appropriately technical language? While the microdetails of dam design may seem beyond the pale of geopolitics, nothing could be further from the truth. The height of sluice spillways was contested because this seemingly mundane design feature has stark geopolitical implications for upstream/downstream dynamics. While sluice spillways improve the economic life of the dam by enabling ushing of silt, they also give
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the upstream riparian greater capacity to control the ow of water. To understand the downstream perspective on the geopolitics of spillway height, imagine that a paper cup in your hand is the reservoir behind the Baglihar structure. A spillway is the equivalent of a hole cut out of the cup small enough to cover with your thumb. Pakistan would have preferred a simple over-ow approach to reservoir management the spillway would not be a hole at all, but the lip of the cup. This way, no one is afforded effective control over the ow of water when the cup is full, water will simply ow over. A hole at the bottom of the cup, however, gives whoever is holding the cup a great degree of control over the ow of water, by virtue of when, and for how long, their thumb covers the hole. The lower the hole, the more control you have over the water ow. This is an imperfect analogy because it does not capture the upstream riparians relationship with sediment. But, I hope it effectively illustrates the downstream perspective. Latte concluded the executive summary of his decision by reecting on the contentious nature of the Baglihar project. The Neutral Expert considers that his decision has not been rendered against one or the other Party (Latte 2007: 20). There are no winners or losers created by his decision, Latte seems to be saying. In other words, dam design is not a political or geopolitical issue. Court of Arbitration The Kishenganga Hydroelectric Project is located on a tributary of the Jhelum River in India-administered Kashmir. The Kishenganga project generates energy by dropping water 2,500 metres through a series of tunnels. The tunnels begin from the Kishenganga River (called the Neelum River in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir) and end 25 kilometres to the south, near Wullar Lake. On 17 May 2010, Pakistan requested arbitration by a Council of A rbitration (the Council) to be convened by a procedure detailed in the IWT. The seven-member council was composed of eminent jurists and one professor of engineering. Pakistan presented the Council with two central objections.

First, Pakistan argued that the diversion of the Kishenganga was not permitted under the IWT primarily on the grounds that it would interfere with already existing uses in Pakistani territory. Second, Pakistan argued that even if this diversion was permitted, the drawdown ushing technique Kishenganga was designed to employ was not permitted by the IWT. The Council took the rst objection as a matter of determining whether the operation of Pakistans Neelum-Jhelum Hydroelectric Project, about 70 kilometres to the east (and downstream) of Wullar Lake was an already existing use protected by the IWT. They decided that not only did the Neelum project in Pakistan not constitute an already existing use, but that the diversion of the Kishenganga for the purposes of power generation was permitted. I will leave aside an analysis of the Councils rst determination and focus on the second objection regarding the appropriateness of the dam design for drawdown ushing. The Indian legal team argued that Lattes ruling in the Baglihar decision should serve as an authoritative precedent on the question of the permissibility of drawdown ushing. As far as the Council was concerned, however, Lattes determination carried no general precedential value beyond the scope of the particular matter before him (Schwebel et al 2013: 177). The Council made their ruling public on 18 February 2013. In stark contrast to Lattes determination, which was justied largely on economic and technical grounds, the Council argued that Indias right to hydropower generation was not absolute, but had to be balanced against Pakistans right to the uninterrupted ow of the waters of the Western Rivers. The penultimate paragraph of the ruling on the Kishenganga project states that any exercise of design involves consideration of a variety of factors not all of them technical. Hydrologic, geologic, social, economic, environmental and regulatory considerations are all directly relevant (Schwebel et al 2013: 199). The Council also found that drawdown ushing was not necessary to generate hydropower, in light of feasible sedimentation management options, and therefore was not permissible under A nnexure D of
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the IWT. In arguing that drawdown ushing is impermissible, the Court found no reason why the factors favouring the feasibility of [alternative sediment management methods] would not apply equally to other sites on the Western Rivers (ibid). In other words, the Court asserted that its decision was precedent-setting. This will be a very signicant factor shaping Indus geopolitics in the next decade. Conclusions While delivering the Kishenganga decision of 2013, the Council took into account the geopolitical effects of dam design, which the Neutral Expert, delivering the Baglihar decision of 2007, did not. My purpose in writing this article is not to decide whether Pakistan or India is winning the ongoing game of Indus hydro-politics. Rather, I want to step outside the conventional nationalist mode of geopolitical analysis to argue that technological artefacts like dams have (geo)political effects that exceed the

category of the nation state. In the words of one scholar of technology, hydraulic infrastructures like dams are always thick with politics (Bijker 2007). The legal geopolitics of the Indus I have discussed above demonstrates that the political nature of technology is more visible in some contexts than in others, and that it is not necessary that the governance of technology remain out-of-bounds for non-engineers. A comparison of the rulings of the Neutral Expert and the Council suggests that it is not the technology itself (i e, dams, nuclear power, genetics, telecommunications, etc) that determines whether a conict is legal, as opposed to strictly technical; it is how society chooses to treat the conict. But why stop at consulting lawyers about dam design? Why not invite to the discussion sociologists, anthropologists, political geographers, uvial ecologists, or dare I suggest it those people who will actually live with the dam? Throughout the negotiation of the IWT, and for more than a half century

since, there are two things the World Bank, international lawyers, an army of supposedly neutral experts from academia and policy analysis circles, and Indian and Pakistani state elites agree on: Kashmiris must not be consulted, and that the Indus rivers are somehow separate from the earth they ow on, when that part of earth happens to be in Kashmir. After all is said and done, it is only by dealing squarely with the thorny issue of Kashmiri sovereignty that a truly just sharing of the Indus rivers can begin.
References
Bijker, Wiebe (2007): Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics, Isis, 98(1): 109-123. Latte, Raymond (2007): Baglihar Hydroelectric Plant: Expert Determination on Points of Difference Referred by the Government of Pakistan under the Provisions of the Indus Water Treaty Executive Summary, World Bank, Lausanne, 12 February. Schwebel, Stephen, Franklin Berman, Howard S Wheater, Lucius Caisch, Jan Paulsson, Bruno Simma and Peter Tomka (2013): Partial Award in the Matter of the Indus Waters Kishenganga Arbitration, Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, 18 February. Winner, Langdon (1980): Do Artifacts Have Politics?, Daedalus, 109(1): 121-36.

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