The Colonization of Rivers: Dams and Water Wars
Public Costs and Private Gain: Dams in the American West
Water ownership did not always entail state and private involvement. For a long time, water was under community control. Throughout the world, complex water-conservation and water-sharing systems ensured sustainability and accessibility to all. Community control meant that water was managed locally and as a common resource. Such community-based systems can still be found in the Andes, Mexico, Africa, and Asia.
Community control was eroded when states took control over water resources. In the American West, the state collaborated with private entrepreneurs to acquire water rights. In the Third World, government control was facilitated by giant waterproject loans from the World Bank. Dams were a particularly popular means of shifting water control from communities to central governments and colonizing rivers and people. For European colonizers who came to America, river colonization was a cultural obsession and an imperial imperative. Nature in general, and rivers in particular, were valued for their commercial benefit and were seen as being in need of taming. John Widtsoe, an irrigation scientist with the Bureau of Reclamation, once argued:
The destiny of man is to possess the whole earth; and the destiny of the earth is to be subject to man. There can be no full conquest of the earth, and no real satisfaction to humanity, if large portions of the earth remain beyond his highest control. Only as all parts of the earth are developed according to the best existing knowledge, and brought under human control, can man be said to possess the earth. The United States … might accommodate its present population within its humid region, but it would not then be the great nation that it now is.1
W. J. McGee, President Theodore Roosevelt’s chief adviser on water programs, projected that the control of water was “the single step remaining to be taken before Man becomes master over Nature.”2 In 1944, describing the blocking of the Sacramento River to build the Shasta dam, the chief of construction, Francis Crove proclaimed: “We had the river licked. Pinned down, shoulders right on the map. Hell, that’s what we came up here for.”3
Rivers following their ecological path were viewed as wasteful: “It would outrage one’s sense of justice if that broad stream were to roll down to the ocean in mere idle majesty and beauty.”4 So wrote Wesley Powell, the director of the United States Geological Survey from 1881 to 1899. He also wrote that rivers were “wasting into the sea.”5 President Roosevelt, who founded the Bureau of Reclamation in 1902, shared similar views about water waste. While advocating for the establishment of the Bureau, Roosevelt argued, “If we could save the waters running now to waste, the western part of the country could sustain a population greater than even the legendary Major Powell dreamed.”6
Although the notion of taming nature justified the construction of massive dams, the limits set by nature did not go unnoticed even by Wesley Powell; it was he who warned against indiscriminate dryland settlement, saying, “It would be almost a criminal act to go on as we are doing now and allow thousands and hundreds of thousands of people to establish homes where they cannot maintain themselves.”7 As early as 1878, Powell had acknowledged the limits to making the desert bloom, and talked of possible dangers for years to come: “I wish to make it clear to you, there is not sufficient water to irrigate all the lands which could be irrigated, and only a small portion can be irrigated,” he advised in 1893. “I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict.”8
By the late 1890s, Los Angeles had already tapped its local supplies, and city officials were secretly purchasing land and water rights in neighboring Owens Valley.9 In 1907, bonds were issued to finance a 238-mile aqueduct that would divert the eastern runoff of the Sierra Madre. This clandestine agreement to transfer water from the farms to the city led to intense conflict between Owens Valley residents and Los Angeles water users.10 Nonlocal residents were equipped with private and public investment and backed by the might of the army. In 1924, Owens Valley residents blasted an aqueduct to prevent water diversion to Los Angeles.11 The water war had begun.
After 12 more blasts, armed guards were stationed on the aqueduct with orders to kill. In 1926, the Saint Francis Dam was built, but it broke soon after, killing 400 people. During the drought of 1929, groundwater pumping began but quickly dried up the 75-square mile Owens Lake. New scarcity had bred new conflicts. In 1976, the aqueduct was bombed again.12
Irrigation in the western United States was spurred by the need to provide food for gold-rush miners. By 1890, 3.7 million acres of land were irrigated. But by 1900, many water companies were facing bankruptcy, and public agencies were providing support to private developers.13 Water projects continued to be driven by the private sector but financed by public investments.
The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River was commissioned by the Bureau of Reclamation during the Great Depression and was completed in 1935. The 726-foot-high dam used 66 million tons of concrete—enough to build a 16-foot-wide highway from New York to San Francisco. The reservoir, Lake Mead, could hold the river’s entire flow for two years.
The dam marked the beginning of the large dam era and the partnership between government and corporations in control over water. Six companies—Henry Kaiser, Bechtel, Morrison-Knudson, Utah Construction, MacDonald Kahn, J. F. Shea, and Pacific Bridge—were awarded the bid for the dam. The Colorado River Compact, which approved the dam, excluded local governments and communities from the negotiations and decisions. Native Americans, who had been living in the Colorado River basin for centuries, were completely shut out of the decision to dam the river. As historian Donald Worster observes, “No one asked [Native Americans] to participate in the Colorado Compact negotiations, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, supposedly their guardian angel, failed to look out for their interests there.”14 Arizona, which considered the dam a theft of the state’s natural resources, refused to ratify the compact.
To this day, the primary beneficiary of the Hoover Dam has been California. In fact, the state leads the world in water consumption.15 Water from the Hoover Dam is transferred to California through a 242-mile aqueduct from the Colorado River, and nearly a third of the hydropower generated by the dam is used to pump water to the state. Although it accounts for a mere 1.6 percent of the 243,000-square-mile Colorado basin, California uses one-fourth of its water. Much of this goes to big farms.16
Large water-diversion projects are said to augment water. In reality, they take water from one community to another and from one ecosystem to another. The expansion of irrigated agriculture in the arid American West has come at the cost of agriculture in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Although cotton cultivation on lands irrigated by the Bureau of Reclamation increased by 300 percent in the West, it dropped by 30 percent in the South.17 In the North, fruit and nut cultivation declined by 50 percent, while it grew by 237 percent in the West; land devoted to bran cultivation fell by 449,000 acres across the United States, but doubled in the West; rice cultivation was abandoned in wet Louisiana while it expanded in the arid West.18
Dam construction in the United States was undertaken mainly by the Army Corps of Engineers. Established in 1775, the US Army Corps was once the largest engineering organization in the world. In 1981, the Corps’ civil works division alone employed 32,000 civilians and 300 officers, who built over 4,000 civil works, including 538 dams. Today, the Corps operates 150 projects that supply water to industries and urban centers.
The Corps’s damming activities extend beyond US borders. During the Green Revolution, dams imposed on the Third World through loan conditions were built mainly by the Army Corps. In 1965, despite a severe drought, the United States government refused to supply wheat to India unless the country altered its policies to introduce irrigation-intensive agriculture.19
The task of dam construction was of course assigned to the Army Corps. Loan terms imposed by the United States and the World Bank opened up a worldwide market for dam building. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson, who had forced India to adopt the Green Revolution, launched a “Water for Peace” program, which called for the Army Corps to build dams in the Third World. In a 1966 speech, he proclaimed:
We are in a race for disaster. Either the world’s water needs will be met, or the inevitable result will be mass starvation…. If we fail, I can assure you today that not even America’s unprecedented military might will be able to preserve the peace for long.20
Peace and food, the justifications for monumental dam construction, left a legacy of centralized water control, violence, hunger, and thirst. Although the rationale of peace and food emerged 30 years ago, they are still used to justify the control over water by the giant corporations that have replaced the Army Corps.
The Temples of Modern India
Punjab literally means the land of five rivers. The prosperity of the region is intimately linked with the sustainable use of the waters of the Indus and its tributaries, the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej. Irrigation in Punjab predates the Green Revolution by centuries.
During the ancient time of Greek rule, a flourishing agriculture existed in India, and as far back as the eighth century AD, Arab conquerors differentiated between irrigated and nonirrigated lands for the purpose of levying taxes.21 Inundation canals and water channels irrigated million of hectares of land. That waterlogging did not occur in these canals was a great advantage. The canals flowed for four to five months during the monsoon season and were dry and served as drainage channels for the remaining part of the year.
The Bhakra Dam was conceived in 1908 with a 395-foot-high-reservoir. In 1927 the height was revised to 1,600 feet. After independence in 1947, the Bhakra Dam assumed a new significance; a large amount of irrigated land in the Indus basin had come under Pakistan’s control, so India needed new sources of irrigation for Punjab. The dam was completed in 1963.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru referred to the Bhakra Dam as the “Temple of Modern India” and used it to shift control over water from the regions and states to the central government. Writing to the Minister for Works, Mines, and Power in 1948, Nehru argued for increased involvement by the central government:
The Bhakra Scheme is a big scheme and an urgent one, even more urgent than others. Thus far it has been carried on in a spasmodic way, and what surprises me is that the Center has little to do with it although we supply the entire finances. This is entirely unsatisfactory, and I think we should make it clear that we cannot finance a scheme unless we have an effective voice in it. The East Punjab Government has to shoulder tremendous burdens and in the nature of things they cannot function as effectively as the Center can.22
The older canal systems of Punjab were regionally managed within the state. A special unit of the Public Works Department’s Irrigation Branch known as the Derajot Circle was established in the 19th century to maintain the inundation canals. After the opening of the Bhakra system, water control was centralized and the Bhakra Beas Management Board established.23 The centralization of the management system made the Indus basin more vulnerable to floods and led to water scarcity. Water conflicts among neighboring states and between the states and the central government were ongoing.
Nehru, who had once raised the status of dams to temples, confessed later on in his life that he had been victim of the “disease of gigantism.” In hindsight, he doubted that the government should have initiated a large dam project like Bhakra because of its cost, its involvement of a considerable amount of foreign exchange, and its lengthy duration. In 1978, Irrigation Minister K. L. Rao made an astute observation about the intrinsic injustice of large dams—that those who bear the cost get no benefits:
When the Bhakra Dam was built, the village of Bhakra, situated on the banks of the Sudej, was submerged and the people built their houses on the adjacent hills. The project resulted in great suffering to the people of the village, but nobody took note of the people’s representations. It was many years later, during one of my visits to the dam site, that I found that the new village of Bhakra had neither drinking water nor electricity, though surrounded by blazing brilliant lights. This was indeed unfair, and I asked the Bhakra Management Board to supply both power and water to the village. Even then, there were objections. The management board thought that this was not a proper charge on the project. This indeed was an absurd approach.24
In May 1984, the Bhakra Main Canal near Ropar was ruptured. Haryana state incurred a loss of $41,614,648 and saw the damage as an act of sabotage. The governor asked the central government to protect the entire canal in the Punjab territory. The break created a serious water crisis in the state. The breached Bhakra mainline canal, the lifeline for the Sirsa, Jind, and Fatehabad districts of Haryana, forced the government to provide emergency supplies of drinking water by tankers.25
In 1986, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reported:
The situation today is that since 1951, 246 big surface irrigation projects have been initiated. Only 66 out of these have been completed; 181 are still under construction. Perhaps, we can safely say that almost no benefit has come to the people from these projects. For 16 years, we have poured out money. The people have got nothing back, no irrigation, no water, no increase in production, no help in their daily life.26
In September 1988, floods drowned Punjab, and 65 percent of its 12,000 villages were marooned. The state suffered a loss of about Rs 1,000 crores and 80 percent of the standing crops were destroyed. Close to 3.4 million people in 10 of the state’s districts were affected, and 1,500 people were reported killed.27
Experts at Punjab Agricultural University hold that these deaths, and the floods, “were very much man-made with a major share of the blame due to BBMB, the ‘Bhakra Beas Management Board.’”28 BBMB authorities had filled the Bhakra Dam up to 1,687.47 feet, 2.5 feet above the maximum storage capacity, largely for the prime minister’s visit for the Bhakra silver jubilee day.29 The dam released 380,000 cubic meters per second of water into the Sutlej River, already carrying 200,000 cubic meters per second over its capacity of 300,000. Water was similarly released without warning from the Pong Dam. Experts at Punjab Agricultural University maintain:
The deluge in these areas was not entirely due to rains, as was being made out, but due to criminal water management by the BBMB, who went about irrationally releasing water discharges in lakhs of cusecs without any warning to the thousands of people who live close to embankments of the two rivers.30
In November 1988, the chairman of the Bhakra Beas Management Board was fatally shot outside his residence. The floods had aggravated the conflict between Punjab and the central government since BBMB was under the latter’s control. In 1986, 598 people were killed in violent conflicts in Punjab; in 1987 1,544 died, and by 1988 the number of deaths had reached 3,000.31
Large Dams and Water Conflicts
In the past five decades, the capacity to divert rivers from their natural course increased dramatically with the adoption of technology from the United States. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers were in competition with each other and created a new culture of gigantic constructions financed by public money. Marc Reisner, author of the best-selling book Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, observes that “What had begun as an emergency program to put the country back to work, to restore its sense of self-worth, to settle the refugees of the Dust Bowl, grew into a nature-wrecking, money-eating monster that our leaders lacked the courage or ability to stop.”32 Interest groups whose positions largely conflicted with those of indigenous populations and ecologists flourished. When the technology euphoria of dam building arrived in India, so did the ecological disruption and social conflict associated with it. These conflicts were magnified because India is a riparian civilization, with settlements and irrigated agriculture taking place along rivers. The regions of India are described by their relationship to rivers or ab. Doab is “the land between the Ganges and Yamuna,” and Punjab is “the land of five rivers.”
The water management systems of both surface and groundwater in the arid and semiarid regions of the Krishna basin have evolved into one of the most sophisticated waterworks in the world. An aerial view of the basin reveals a network of numerous tanks constructed by the local people over an extended period of time. These tanks allow the use of surface water to irrigate approximately 500 acres of land; at the same time recharging the groundwater. They also prevent the easy drainage of water and, therefore, conserve it.
For a long time, these decentralized water conservation systems met both the drinking and the agricultural water needs of the surrounding communities. There was no major longdistance transfer of water, and local cropping patterns evolved in accordance with the local water endowment.
The needs of the Vijayanagar Empire led to the first major intervention in the natural water flow. During the reign of King Krishnadevaraya in the 16th century, there were many attempts to divert the water of Tungabhadra. The rulers of Vijayanagar, who understood the crucial role of tanks in food production and drinking water provision, undertook a systematic program of tank construction.33 The Daroji and the Vyasayaraya Samudram tanks in Cuddapah district are the result of this program. Although the Vijayanagar irrigation systems diverted water to some extent, they never caused waterlogging because they functioned as “round rivers,” diverting the water from the river but carrying it back through drainage channels. By contrast, large dams built on the same river led to immediate waterlogging.34
Dams and Displacement: The Case of India
River valley projects are usually considered the solution for agricultural water needs, flood control, and drought mitigation. In the past three decades, India has seen the erection of some 1,554 large dams. Between 1951 and 1980, the government spent $1.5 billion on large or medium irrigation dams. Yet the return from this large investment has been far lower than anticipated. Where irrigated lands should have yielded at least five tons of grain per hectare, output has remained at 1.27 tons per hectare.35 The annual loss due to unexpected low water availability, heavy siltation, reduced storage capacity, and waterlogging now amounts to $89 million.36
The Kabini project in Karnataka is a perfect illustration of how water development projects can themselves disrupt the hydrological cycle and destroy water resources in basins. While the dam submerged 6,000 acres of land, relocating displaced villages required the clearing of 30 thousand acres of primeval forests.37 Local rainfall fell from 60 inches to 45 inches, and high siltation drastically reduced the life of the dam. Within two years, waterlogging and salinity destroyed large areas of coconut and paddy fields nearby.38
The damming of two of India’s most sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Narmada, has generated vehement protests from women, peasants, and tribals whose life-support systems have been disrupted and whose sacred sites have been threatened. The people of Narmada Valley are not merely resisting displacement due to the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar Dams; they are waging war against the destruction of entire civilizations. As the internationally acclaimed novelist Arundhati Roy puts it:
Big dams are to a Nation’s ‘Development’ what Nuclear Bombs are to its Military Arsenal. They’re both weapons of mass destruction. They’re both weapons Governments use to control their own people. Both Twentieth Century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They’re both malignant indications of civilization turning upon itself. They represent the severing of the link, not just the link—the understanding—between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers, air to life and the earth to human existence.39
Over the past two decades, many men and women have dedicated their lives to the protest of the damming of Narmada Valley and the Ganges. Since the 1980s, two old men have been engaged in satyagraha (Gandhian nonviolence)40 on the banks of the two rivers. Sunderlal Bahuguna has been living in a small hut at the Tehri Dam site on the Ganges to block the flooding of Tehri and stop the building of a dam on an earthquake fault. Baba Amte, who resisted dam building in Maharashtra, has been stationed on the banks of the Narmada for years. In 1984, Amte wrote a letter to the prime minister, in which he referred to the dams as genocide.41 Although bedridden due to a severe back problem, he still remains by the valley and says he will go with the river. Medha Patkar, a leading activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and Arundhati Roy have also committed themselves to the fight against the Narmada Dam project—the world’s largest water project.
The Narmada project consists of 30 large, 135 medium, and 3,000 minor dams on the Narmada River and its tributaries. It is expected to uproot one million people, submerge 350,000 hectares of forest, drown 200,000 hectares of cultivable lands, and cost $52.2 billion over the next twenty-five years.42 The Sardar Sarovar Dam, already under construction, is facing major opposition from human rights and environmental groups as well as tribals likely to be displaced. The dam threatens people in 234 villages.43 Next in line for contruction is the Narmada Sagar project, which promises to submerge 91,348 hectares of land and displace people from 254 villages.44
The Narmada Valley protest, which once was a fight for a just settlement of the displaced people, has rapidly evolved into a major environmental controversy, calling into question not only the method of compensation for the evictees but the logic of large dams altogether. The movement has taken inspiration from earlier successful struggles that led to the withdrawal of two major dam proposals—the Silent Valley and the Bodhghat Dam projects. Large coalitions of local communities, environmentalists, and scientists worked together in the 1980s to stop these dams. As dam tensions emerge and grow, they will not only address problems created upstream due to submergence, they will also raise questions about problems created downstream due to water overuse and misuse by intensive irrigation.
The construction of the Ukai Dam across the Tapi River in Gujarat displaced 52,000 people.45 The farmers who once occupied fertile agricultural lands were forced to resettle in an area cleared of forests. Prior to their settlement in their new site, the government promised to level the land, clear the tree stumps, sink wells free of charge, and install power connections.
Once the farmers arrived, however, they found that most of the promises were not kept. The land was leveled with some assistance from the government, but the farmers cleared the tree stumps themselves with great difficulty. Moreover, the clearing of the forest and the removal of the remaining tree stumps led to topsoil erosion and made farming impossible. The government reneged on the wells, saying it had promised to sink wells only for those who had wells in the old villages. However, most of the old villages were near the river, and not many farmers had needed to sink wells. With insufficient water, little food, and almost no work, the settlers soon became migrant laborers in surrounding sugarcane fields.The Pong Dam in Himachal Pradesh in the Himalayas displaced 16,000 families. The government then attempted to rehabilitate about half of them in the faraway deserts of Rajasthan, and each family was given 16 acres of land—the largest compensation in the country so far. Despite these efforts, the families were unable to adjust to the new climate, water, people, and language, and most of them sold their lands and returned to their native place.
The Bhakra Dam was responsible for the displacement of 2,180 families of Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh.46 The families, who were promised land in surrounding Haryana 25 years ago, have yet to be fully compensated; only 730 families (33 percent) have been rehabilitated. Moreover, while the land, taken from them between 1942 and 1947 was estimated at the prevailing rates during that time, the lands they actually received were appraised at rates prevailing between 1952 and 1957, leaving them with a mere one to five acres per family. Like the people displaced by the Pong Dam, they too fled their harsh new environment and returned, to Himachal Pradesh.47
Dam conflicts in the past revolved around displacement. Today, the ecological imperative for the protection of nature has added a new dimension to the struggle of displaced people. They are now fighting for their own survival as well as for the survival of their forests, rivers, and land. In east India, tribals of 121 villages, who faced eviction by the Koel-Karo project in Bihar, successfully stopped the construction work.48 Had the project been completed, it would have taken water from the Koel River at Basia and diverted it to another dam near Lohajamir village in Topra block, Ranchi district, and to the Karo River.
It would also have submerged more than 50,000 acres of land, including 25,000 acres of forests under tribal control by customary law.
In postcolonial India, most large dams have been financed by the World Bank. I was personally involved in assessing the impact of World Bank–financed dams on the Krishna, Kallada, Suvernarekha, and Narmada Rivers. In each case, the ecological and social costs far surpassed the benefits. Typically, the benefits were grossly exaggerated in order to accommodate the World Bank’s logic of returns on investment.
The Sri Sailam Dam on the Krishna River is among the hundreds of dams financed by the bank. In the summer of 1981, the government evacuated local residents from the area with the assistance of police and bulldozers. The experience in Sri Sailam is illustrative of the hidden cost of building large dams in India. Each water development project leaves behind evictees whose lives are violently overturned.
Costs should never be assessed purely in commercial terms. The Suvernarekha Dam was built with a $127 million loan from the World Bank, primarily to provide industrial water for the expanding steel city of Jamshedpur.49 The dam displaced 80,000 tribals. In 1982, Ganga Ram Kalundia, the leader of the tribal anti-dam movement, was shot and killed by the police. Even after his death, Kalundia’s fellow tribals continued the struggle:
Our links with our ancestors are the basis of our society and of the reproduction of our society. Our children grow up playing around the stones which mark the burial sites of our ancestors. … Without relating to our ancestors, our lives lose all meaning. They talk of compensation. How can they compensate us for the loss of the very meaning of our lives if they bury these burial stones under the dam? They talk of rehabilitation. Can they ever rehabilitate the sacred sites they have violated?50
The massive people’s movements managed to force the World Bank out of the Narmada Valley Dam. But the bank stepped out of one project only to deepen its grip on India’s water resources through more loan conditions. World Bank–driven policies of water privatization are shifting control from governments to corporations. The centralization of power over water through development projects makes this transition easier. With communities bypassed, the World Bank and indebted governments are making frantic deals with corporations to own, control, distribute, and sell our scarce water resources.
The Global Picture of Displacement
While large dams in India have displaced between 16 million and 38 million people, in China, 10 million people have been displaced by the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River Valley alone. The World Commission on Dams estimates that worldwide, 40 to 80 million people have been displaced by dam projects.51 The commission concludes that too often “an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those benefits, especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by taxpayers, and by the natural environment.”
Worldwide, an estimated $2 trillion has been invested in more than 45,000 large dams. Between 1970 and 1975, the peak period of dam building, nearly 5,000 large dams were built all over the world. The top five dam-building countries account for 80 percent of all large dams, and China, with 22,000, accounts for 50 percent of them.52 The United States is home to 6,390 large dams, closely followed by India, with 4,000, Japan with 1,200, and Spain with 1,000. While dam construction has slowed down in the United States and Europe, India is experiencing the largest amount of dam construction in the world and accounts for 40 percent of dams currently under way. It is no surprise that the most contentious battles over dam construction are taking place in India.
Displacement is an intrinsic aspect of wars unleashed by large water projects. People fiercely resist being forced out of their homes and losing their livelihoods. Unfortunately, antidam movements in the Third World are facing new violence from states acting in partnership with global corporations. The World Commission on Dams reports that during the construction of the Kariba Dam in Africa, resistance by the Tonga people was met with state repression; eight were killed and 30 were injured.53 The report also notes that in April 1980, police in Nigeria fired at people protesting the Bakolori Dam and in 1985, 376 women and children in Guatemala were murdered to make way for the Chixoy Dam.
In 1991, 16,350 tribal families threatened by the Koel-Karo Dam in India successfully stopped its construction through their movement, the Koel Karo Jan Sangathan. The dam would have displaced residents from 256 villages and submerged 152 sacred ancestral graves. The government has now resorted to force to end the people’s resistance, which has lasted more than 10 years. In February 2001, during a demonstration against the assault of one member of the Koel Karo Jan Sangathan, protestors were met with gunshots from the police: six people, including three children, died on the spot and 50 were wounded.54
River Diversions and Water Wars
Large dams are constructed to divert water from the natural drainage of rivers. Altering a river flow also modifies the distribution patterns of water in a basin, especially if interbasin transfers are involved. A shift in water allocation most often generates interstate conflicts, which rapidly escalate into disputes between central governments and states.
Every river in India has become a site of major, irreconcilable water conflicts. The Sutlej, Yamuna, Ganges, Narmada, Mahanadi, Krishna, and Kaveri Rivers have been the center of heated court cases among states that disagree over ownership and distribution of water. Even events such as the kidnapping of the popular Indian film star Rajkumar in Karnataka by the forest bandit Veerappan in 2000 was related to the conflict over Kaveri River waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Veerappan’s demands included more of the Kaveri’s water for Tamil Nadu.55
The Kaveri River is one of the rivers involving an intricate interstate dispute. The Kaveri has been used for centuries and the famous, 2,000-year-old Grand anicut structure on the Kaveri River is believed to be the oldest water-flow management system on the Indian subcontinent. When the British introduced their engineering system in Thanjavur at the Kaveri basin in 1829, they could not handle the siltation and flooding and eventually reverted to the ancient anicut system.
Since India’s independence, the Kaveri has became the most contentious river between the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Water wars between these two states have led to bloodshed and brought down governments.56 Although much of the recent conflict has stemmed from a decision by the Kaveri Water Disputes Tribunal to reduce Tamil Nadu’s water supply from the Kaveri, the dispute can be traced to the 1892 agreement between the Madras state (now Tamil Nadu), which was under British rule and Mysore, which was under indirect colonial rule. In 1892, the British awarded Madras, the lower riparian state, veto power over all irrigation works undertaken by Mysore, the upper riparian state. In 1924, Madras and Mysore came to an agreement to build the Krishnaraj Sagar Dam and irrigate an additional 100,000 acres of land.
In 1974, the irrigation extension agreement between Madras and Mysore, renamed Tamil Nadu and Karnataka respectively after India’s independence, expired and the conflict over sharing Kaveri waters resurfaced. In 1983, the dispute reached the Supreme Court when the Tamil Nadu Farmers Society filed a petition for a greater share in the Kaveri waters.57 The court asked the central government to form the Kaveri Waters Dispute Tribunal in 1990.
However, the interim measures, ordering Karnataka to release water on a weekly basis, could not be implemented. When the tribunal issued its order, Karnataka passed an ordinance to block its implementation. The president of India had to intervene and refer the case back to the Supreme Court in 1991. The court deemed Karnataka’s ordinance beyond the legislative competence of the state and upheld the tribunal’s decision. The court’s verdict triggered riots in Karnataka’s capital, Bangalore. Tamilians were attacked and driven off their farms, and their houses were looted and burned. The violence spread to Tamil Nadu, and this time Kannadigas were attacked. The water riots of 1991 displaced an estimated 100,000 people.58
In the Americas, conflict between the Unites States and Mexico over Colorado River waters has intensified in recent years. In 1944, a treaty allocated a 1.5 acre-foot of Colorado River water to Mexico. In 1961, Mexico protested that water flowing from the United States was heavily salinated by dams at Glen Canyon, Lake Mojave, and Lake Mavasu as well as the Hoover Dam.59 In 1974, the United States built a plant to desalinate the Colorado River water before it entered Mexico. The total cost to build the project was $1 billion. Irrigation water provided for $350 per acre-foot in the United States cost $300 per acre-foot for desalination alone.60
Hydro-Jihad
Large dam-related conflicts are not restricted to states—they also involve wars between nations. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the major water bodies sustaining agriculture for thousands of years in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, have led to several major clashes among the three countries. Both rivers originate in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey, and the country holds absolute sovereignty over water in its territory. Turkey’s position is “The water is as much ours as Iraq’s oil is Iraq’s.”61 On the other hand, to assert its historical rights, Iraq invokes the “prior use” doctrine, which bases water rights on the cowboy logic of “first in time, first in right” and traces the use of the rivers to the people of Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago.62 In recent years, conflicts have been triggered by increased water demands for industrialization. Turkey created the State Hydraulic Works in 1953 to construct large dams and hydroelectric projects.63
The Ataturk Dam is at the center of the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP).64 The dam, completed in 1990, transfers water via a 26-kilometer tunnel to the Harran Plain in southern Turkey. The conflict between Iraq and Turkey is expected to intensify as Turkey attempts to move with its $32 billion plan to build 22 dams on the Euphrates for the irrigation of 1.7 million hectares of land.65 When the two dams operate along with the Ataturk Dam, Iraq would lose 80 to 90 percent of its allotment of Euphrates water.66
Water development projects on the Euphrates have been the cause of armed conflict between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and the Kurds. In 1974, clashes took place between Syria and Iraq. The PKK, the Workers’ Party in Turkey, has threatened to blow up the Ataturk Dam and the GAP.
The Kurds, who are divided across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, have launched nationalist movements in each state. Between 1950 and 1970, more than a million Kurds migrated to the west where the PKK continued to fight domestically. And in 1989, Turgut Ozal, then prime minister of Turkey, threatened to use water against the militants by cutting supplies off entirely unless Syria expelled the PKK, to whom it was giving refuge. In 1998, the Turkish chief of staff announced a “state of undeclared war” with Syria.67
Ethnic wars and water are intimately intertwined, as is illustrated in the case of the Ilisu Dam, which is expected to displace 78,000 people in the Kurdish region of southeast Turkey, and destroy the historic town Hasankeyf. The local communities do not want the dam, but their fear of being identified as part of the separatist movement keeps their resistance underground. The Ilisu fact-finding mission reports that “the authorities’ association of opposition to Ilisu with separatism is a major deterrent to any meaningful dissent. Put bluntly, people are frightened to take a public position against the dam.” The dam is clearly a means of political control. According to a member of the state police, “The dam means power—who has the water has the power.”68
Although the Middle East is water-scarce, water projects in the region are grandiose. Iraq’s river project, the 560-kilometerlong artificial Saddam River, cuts across the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The huge diversion scheme has turned 57 percent of former marshland into dryland and now threatens the survival of marsh Arabs who have been living by those rivers for 5,000 years. In defense, the marsh Arabs have declared what they call a “hydro-jihad” on Iraq.69
Israel and the West Bank
The war between Israelis and Palestinians is to some extent a war over water. The river under contention is the Jordan River, used by Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Israel’s extensive industrial agriculture requires the river’s water as well as the groundwater of the West Bank. While only 3 percent of the Jordan basin lies in Israel, the river provides for 60 percent of its water needs.70
Israel’s very formation was based on ensuring access to water. “It is necessary that the water sources, upon which the future of the Land depends, should not be outside the borders of the future Jewish homeland,” wrote Israel’s former prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1973. “For this reason we have always demanded that the Land of Israel include the southern banks of the Litani River, the headwaters of the Jordan, and the Hauran Region from the El Auja spring south of Damascus.”71
Water conflicts began in 1948, when Israel undertook the National Water Carrier Project, which involved a gigantic water pipeline extending from the Jordan River to the Negev Desert to irrigate crops.72 This project led to a dispute with Syria. In 1953, United States envoy Eric Johnston initiated the Unified Development of Water Resources plan to resolve conflicts between Israel, Syria, and Jordan. Syria rejected the plan, and since then, Israel-Syria border conflicts have been closely connected to river diversions by Israel. Former Israeli prime minister Levy Eshkol declared in 1962 that “water is the blood in our veins” and that being prevented from accessing it would be cause for war.73
Between 1987 and 1988, Israel used 67 percent of its water for agriculture and allocated the rest for domestic and industrial purposes.74 Although Israel’s agricultural water consumption had been reduced to 62 percent by 1992, it remained the leading sector for water use. In 2000, 50 percent of the total cultivated area in Israel was irrigated; in contrast, Palestinian villages consumed only two percent of Israel’s water.75 The water apartheid, demarcated along ethnic and religious lines, is fueling the already heated Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The 1967 war, which led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, was in effect an occupation of the freshwater resources from the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the West Bank. As Middle-Eastern scholar Ewan Anderson, notes, “The West Bank has become a critical source of water for Israel, and it could be argued that this consideration outweighs other political and strategic factors.”76
Between 1967 and 1982, West Bank waters were controlled by the military. Now they are controlled by Israel’s water company, Mekorot, and integrated into Israel’s overall water network.77 West Bank waters supply 25 to 40 percent of Israel’s water; Israel consumes 82 percent of the West Bank’s water, while Palestinians use 18 to 20 percent. Palestinian water use is controlled and restricted by the Israeli government. A 1967 military order decreed:
No person is allowed to establish or own or administer a water institution (any construction that is used to extract either surface or subterranean water resources or a processing plant) without a new official permit. It is permissible to deny an applicant a permit, revoke or amend a license, without giving any explanation. The appropriate authorities may search and confiscate any water resources for which no permit exists, even if the owner has not been convicted.78
In 1999, Palestinians were allowed to dig only seven wells.79 In addition, Palestinian wells could not exceed 140 meters in depth, while Jewish wells could be as deep as 800 meters.
As drought and overuse aggravate the water scarcity, water conflicts are bound to intensify. The water level of the Sea of Galilee is at a 100-year low; since 1993, it has fallen 13 feet. Because of drought, Israel had to reduce its water use in agriculture by 10 percent in 1999. It is predicted that Israel will have to cut water use further, cease its cultivation of cotton and oranges, and shift to drought-resistant crops.80
Conflict over the Nile
The Nile is the longest river in the world and is shared by 10 African countries, including Ethiopia, the Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Eritrea. It is also another complicated site of water conflict. In 1990, the total population of the Nile basin countries was estimated at 245 million and projected to reach 859 million by 2025. Ethiopia contributes 86 percent of the total annual flow of the Nile, while the remaining 14 percent comes from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi.
The White Nile, arising in Burundi, and the Blue Nile, originating in Ethiopia, have led to historical conflicts between Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan. During their colonial rule in the Sudan, the British, who used the Nile in the Sudan for navigation, signed an agreement with Ethiopia in 1903 not to manipulate the flow of the Blue Nile.81 In 1958, Egypt began building the Aswan Dam and displaced 100,000 Sudanese.82
Initially the Aswan Dam generated conflicts between Egypt and Sudan. But the Sudanese were placated with the promise of more water. However, Ethiopia was never consulted in the sharing of Nile waters and retaliated by declaring its right to use the Nile whichever way it chose. Upon the completion of the dam in 1970, Egypt and the Sudan began construction of the Jonglei Canal for $100 million until the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army ceased the project and drove out the construction crew.83
In 1959, Egypt and the Sudan entered a bilateral agreement known as the “Full Utilization of the Nile Waters,” dividing the entire flow of the Nile among themselves, regardless of the water demands, potential or otherwise, of the upper riparian states. This agreement has been a source of unending battle between the three countries.84 In the 1960s, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, through a loan from the African Development Bank, hired the US Bureau of Reclamation to build 29 irrigation and hydroelectric dams on the Blue Nile.85 However, Egypt, whose water supply stood to be reduced by 8.5 percent by the new dams, blocked the approval of the loan and prevented the projects.
In 1997, the United Nations held the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses in order to create guidelines for water sharing of international rivers. The two principles used at the convention were the rule of equitable and reasonable use and the no-harm rule: equitable use referred to water sharing on an equitable basis among multiple users, and the no-harm rule referred to not causing harm to co-riparian states.
Enforcing these rules gave rise to diverse interpretations and hence conflict. These two rules have been invoked by Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Sudan and have led to more intense debates over water use. On the one hand, Egypt and the Sudan have held that the 1959 Nile agreement is non-negotiable on the basis of the no-harm rule. On the other hand, Ethiopia and other upstream countries have used the principle of equitable use among coriparian states to argue for their water rights.86
In February 1999, at the meeting of the Council of Ministers of Water Affairs of the Nile Basin in Tanzania, the Nile Basin Initiative was launched. The 10 Nile basin states endorsed a Nile River Basin Strategic Action Program with a vision “to achieve sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization of water resources and has recognized the rights of each riparian state to use the resources of the Nile within its boundaries for development.”87 The countries are trying to go beyond past conflicts and sustainably and justly use the waters of the world’s biggest river for some of the world’s poorest people.
International Water Rules
Neither international nor national water laws adequately respond to the ecological and political challenges posed by water conflicts. No legal document in contemporary law mentions the most basic law related to water—the natural law of the water cycle. Claims are derived from and protection is limited to artificial concrete structures. This limitation has propelled regions and states to enter a contest for the most extravagant water projects as a means of establishing their rights to water—the more you extract and divert water through giant projects, the more you can claim rights. Water conflicts continue to escalate and, to date, no appropriate legal framework exists to resolve these conflicts.
Four theories of water rights—the territorial sovereignty theory, the natural water flow theory, the equitable apportionment theory, and the community of interest theory—have guided water distribution practices around the world. The territorial sovereignty theory of 1896, also known as the Harmon doctrine, holds that riparian states have exclusive or sovereign rights over the waters flowing through their territory. Countries can use this water any way they choose, regardless of their infringement on other riparian states. This doctrine has been relevant in the dispute between the United States and Mexico over the Rio Grande.
The Harmon doctrine has never won complete acceptance because it violates the concept of justice. Even countries that benefit from the rule have conceded rights to the lower riparian users. While arriving at a settlement with the other riparian states, even the United States, originator of the Harmon rule, has granted some rights on the ground of good-neighbor policy. In a 1906 treaty regarding the Rio Grande, while affirming the Harmon doctrine, the United States was “willing to provide Mexico with water equivalent to that which she had used before the diversions took place” on the basis of “international comity.”88 Again in 1944, a treaty between the two granted Mexico the right to a specified quantity of waterfrom the Colorado River. Similarly, India, while claiming absolute supremacy as the riparian owner of the Indus River, has conceded rights to neighboring Pakistan.89
The natural water flow theory, also known as the territorial integrity theory, maintains that since a river is a part of the territory of the state, every lower riparian owner is entitled to the natural flow of the river, unhampered by the upper riparian owners. The upper riparian owner must allow the water to flow in its natural course to the lower riparian owner in its ordinary channel with reasonable use by the upper riparian owner. This principle was derived from British private property laws and applied to water in a unitary state. Egypt used this doctrine in 1952, against the Sudan, claiming absolute water use of the Nile. However, the Nile Waters Commission rejected Egypt’s claim. In 1929, Egypt scored a victory when Britain awarded it veto power over utilization of water by upper riparian states.90
The theories of equitable utilization and community of interest are closely related. Equitable utilization holds that international rivers should be used by different states on an equitable basis. In recent years, the equitable utilization theory has gained international acceptance. The Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers adopted in 196691 recognized that states are “entitled to a reasonable and equitable share in the beneficial uses of waters of an international drainage basin.” The rules overturned those of the American West and established that an existing use may have to give way to a new use for equitable distribution.
Although popular, the theory of equitable distribution is not without problems. The most difficult question lies in the meaning of equitable distribution. The equitable apportionment criterion used to resolve interstate conflicts does not lend itself to precise articulation; dividing a river is not an easy task. The underlying principle of equitable apportionment is equitability, not equality. Equitable utility is defined as the maximum benefit accruing to all the riparian states, in light of their differing economic and social needs.
This dual goal of achieving full benefit while catering to varied needs is precisely what poses a challenge: every state and river is unique, and a solution in one case may not be feasible in another. Crafting guidelines for equitably sharing water requires an analysis of complex technical and economic data as well as a judicious balancing of competing claims and uses of the river. The problem is further complicated because water use is normally determined by the needs and economic development stages of the nation—factors that are constantly changing.
Despite the difficulties inherent in the doctrine of equitable utilization, the International Law Association and the United Nations have offered broad guidelines and fundamental principles. According to the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers, “each basin state is entitled, within its territory, to a reasonable and equitable share in the beneficial uses of the waters of an international drainage basin.” The need now is to combine ecology with equity, and sustainability with justice.
During the period of the large dam euphoria, river diversions were assumed to offer only benefits and no costs. However, as we enter the era of ecological constraint, the principle of equitable use, previously defined in purely economic terms, requires a radical alteration in order to preserve the integrity of river basins and minimize water conflicts. Current applications of water rights largely uphold the rights of a state to control or consume water through large water projects. The creation of the Krishna Valley Authority (KVA) in India is an illustration of how the theory of equitable use favors large dam construction.
The Krishna Tribunal established the KVA in order “to ensure that the waters of the river Krishna are stored, appropriated and used to the extent and in the manner provided.”92 The Krishna Valley Authority, modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority, was not created to conserve and protect Krishna River; its purpose was to engage in integrated planning at the level of the entire basin. As Marc Reisner points out, “The creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority marked the first time a major river system was ‘viewed whole’ even if the natural river disappeared as a result.”93
The framework of scientific knowledge and social justice currently used in water conflict resolution assumes that a river is wasted if it is not dammed. The concept of protective use gives priority to dam building and other water project construction. The Helsinki Rules state that an existing reasonable use is acceptable “unless the factors justifying its continuance are outweighed by other factors, leading to the conclusion that it be modified or terminated so as to accommodate a competing incompatible use.” If the existing use is held to be conclusive, then “it freezes river development according to the requirements of the earlier user. Indeed, it is conceivable that, if a state moves quickly enough, it could appropriate all of the waters of a basin to the complete exclusion of its co-basin states.”94 But if no weight is given to the existing uses, it would inhibit river development, as no nation would like to invest large sums of money on projects without assured continuation of water use. The Helsinki Rules represent a compromise between the conflicting forces involved in dam building.
In India, no state can have free rein over a common source of water such as an interstate river. The Government of India Act of 1935 imposes limitations on provinces’ use of interstate river waters. If the action of one province affects or is likely to prejudicially affect the interest of another province, the latter can file a complaint to the governor-general. The Indian Constitution also bars a co-riparian state from developing an interstate river without taking into account the harm it can cause to other co-riparian states. The Constitution empowers Parliament to provide “for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the water of or in any interstate river or river valley.”95 The act, however, is silent on what principles ought to be followed in settling interstate water disputes.
The existence of international guidelines such as the Helsinki Rules and the United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses does not necessarily ensure justice. Each basin is so distinct that a monolithic water-use approach would be unfeasible. In light of ecological diversity, the principle of equitable utilization becomes vague. Equitable use theory treats rivers as static resources to be apportioned at will. When it comes to rivers, what is in fact appropriated is the flow; and because water is a flow and not a stock, its distribution has nonlocal impact. The distribution of benefits and losses to upstream and downstream regions or to riparian and nonriparian states, changes over time, as does the implication for equitable sharing.
The issue of water rights allocation is not only one of maintaining a balance between territorial sovereignty and riparian rights; water projects also have a severe ecological impact, and costs are unequally distributed among states and among social groups. While natural flow cannot be an absolute criterion, conservation must be a criterion for determining sustainable use. The ecological perspective also helps correct the view that water conserved is water wasted. Ecologically unexploited water can be critical in maintaining essential ecological processes such as groundwater recharge and freshwater balance.
The ecological links between surface water and groundwater and between freshwater and the life in the ocean have been overlooked in resource management as well as in legal frameworks. In Krishna, groundwater use was disassociated from the utilization of the Krishna waters, and the Krishna Tribunal granted states full freedom to use groundwater. By excluding control over groundwater utilization, the tribunal allowed privatization and overuse of water resources and fostered an environment for new conflicts. Groundwater use was unregulated and thus depleted in almost all parts of the basin, further aggravating water scarcity and drought. The lack of regulation also introduced new demands for river diversions and interbasin transfers.
In the Rayalseema region, overexploitation of groundwater and the collapse of the indigenous system of irrigation have given rise to new demands for the interbasin diversion of the Krishna basin waters. Surface water and groundwater cannot be artificially separated, since surface water flows recharge groundwater, and groundwater depletion affects the status of surface waters.
Disputes over dams are struggles among communities and regions about how much water one region can take from another, or how much environmental damage one group must bear in order that another group can meet its irrigation or energy needs. So far, struggles against dams in India have largely originated from the problem of displacement. It is a struggle between displaced citizens and the ruthless state machinery.
On the other hand, struggles against massive irrigation systems’ byproducts, such as waterlogging and salination, are often limited to challenging the distribution of large water projects and have not focused on large-scale storage systems. Both the ecological impacts of storage—submerging forests, homelands, and farmlands—and the impacts of canals and irrigation need to be taken into account. Finally, water rights conflicts have predominantly taken the form of interstate conflicts at the regional level.
A coherent framework for a just and sustainable water-use policy can evolve only when there is a dialogue between the movement against dams, the movement against the ecological hazards of intensive irrigation, and the movement for water rights. The key to linking these movements is the ecological perspective, which connects water to its various functions in river basins. An ecological paradigm allows for an ecological audit of water projects, exposes the hidden costs of such projects, and proposes an alternative for resource allocation.
1. John Widtsoe, “Success on Irrigation Projects” (published as a pamphlet in 1928), p. 138.
2. Charles R. Goldman, James McEvoy III, and Peter J. Richerson, eds., Environmental Quality and Water Development (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1973), p. 80.
3. “By a Damsite,” Time Magazine, June 19, 1994, p. 79.
4. Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of theAsthetics of Nature (New York: Knopf, 1967), p. 141.
5. Fred Powledge, Water: The Nature, Uses, and Future of Our Most Precious and Abused Resource (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982), p. 279.
6. Bureau of Reclamation, “Reclamation” (Washington, DC, 1975).
7. Tim Palmer, Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), p. 20.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 22.
10. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 202.
11. Palmer, Endangered Rivers, p. 58.
12. Ibid.
13. Worster, Rivers of Empire, p. 98.
14. Ibid, p. 211.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Palmer, Endangered Rivers, p. 215.
18. Ibid., p. 183.
19. Vandana Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution (London: Zed Books, 1988).
20. Worster, Rivers of Empire, p. 264.
21. Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla Bhar, History of Food and Farming in India (New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, 2001).
22. Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution.
23. Ibid.
24. L. C. Jain, “Dam Vs. Drinking Water: Exploring the Narmada Judgement,” Parisar, 2001.
25. Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution.
26. Jain, “Dam Vs. Drinking Water.”
27. Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution.
28. “Punjab Floods Were Man-Made,” Economic Times (Bombay), October 4, 1988.
29. Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution, p. 145.
30. “Dams and Floods,” Indian Express, October 21, 1988.
31. Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution.
32. Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (New York: Viking, 1986).
33. Vandana Shiva et al., Ecology and the Politics of Survival (New Delhi: Sage, 1991), pp. 202-240.
34. Ibid.
35. Government of India Agriculture Statistics, Delhi, 2000.
36. L. C. Jain, “Myths about Dams,” (unpublished document, 2001).
37. Shiva et al., Ecology and the Politics of Survival, p. 186.
38. Ibid.
39. Arundhati Roy in “The Greater Common Good,” Frontline, April 1999, p. 31.
40. Gandhian nonviolent, civil disobedience.
41. Illustrated Weekly, August 1984.
42. Vijai Paranjapaye, “Narmada Dams” (New Delhi: The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, 1987).
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. For an expanded discussion of the Ukai Dam and its social and ecological consequences, see Shiva, Ecology and the Politics of Survival, pp. 228-229.
46. Ibid.
47. For further discussion of the Bhakra Dam displacement, see Shiva, Ecology and the Politics of Survival.
48. Ibid., p. 230.
49. Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publications; London: Zed Books, 1993).
50. Ibid., p. 101.
51. Dams and Development, Report of the World Commission on Dams (London: Earthscan Publications, 2000), p. xviii.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 18.
54. Letter from the anti-dam movement in Koel Karo.
55. On July 30, 2000, Kannada film star Rajkumar was kidnapped by the famous outlaw Veerappan. Veerappan presented 10 demands, including a mandate to find a permanent solution to the Kaveri water dispute. Other demands included making Tamil the second administrative language of Karnataka, unveiling the Thiruvalluvar statue in Bangalore, and increasing the daily wages for Manjolai Estate workers in Tirunelveli. Rajkumar was released on November 15, 2000.
56. Elizabeth Corell and Ashok Swain, “India: The Domestic and International Politics of Water Scarcity,” in Leif Ohlsson, ed., Hydropolitics; Conflicts over Water As a Development Constraint (Dhaka: University Press; London: Zed Books, 1995), pp. 142-143.
57. Ibid, p. 143.
58. Ibid, p. 144.
59. Marq De Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (New Y ork: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 236-237.
60. Ibid., p. 239.
61. Michael Schultz in Ohlsson, ed., Hydropolitics, p. 106.
62. Ibid., p. 101.
63. Ibid., p. 99.
64. GAP is the Turkish Acronym.
65. Schultz in Ohlsson, ed., Hydropolitics, p. 99.
66. De Villiers, Water, p, 210.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid, p. 11.
69. Schultz in Ohlsson, ed. Hydropolitics, p. 110.
70. Helena Lindholm, “Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” in Ohlsson, ed. Hydropolitics, p. 58.
71. Quoted in Saul Cohen, The Geopolitics of Israel’s Border Question, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), p. 122.
72. Lindholm, “Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” p. 61.
73. Ibid, p. 69.
74. Ibid, p. 62.
75. Ibid, p. 63.
76. Ewan Anderson, “Water: The Next Strategic Resource,” quoted in Lindholm, “Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” p. 77.
77. Fadia Darbes, Palestinian Water Authority, “Water Resources in the Region: An Approach to Conflict Resolution,” (paper submitted to the P7 Summit on Water Issues, Brussels, June 7-10, 2000).
78. Military Order 158, November 19, 1967, Amendment to Water Law 31, 1953, quoted in Jerusalem Media Communication Center, 1993: p. 22.
79. Lindholm, “Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” p. 80.
80. Mara Natha, Secunderabad, India, March/April 2001.
81. De Villiers, Water.
82. Ibid, 216.
83. Ibid, p. 220.
84. Jan Hultin, “The Nile: Source of Life, Source of Conflict,” in Ohlsson, ed. Hydropolitics, p. 29.
85. De Villiers, Water, p. 224.
86. Ibid, p. 225.
87. Imeru Tamrat, “Conflict or Cooperation in the Nile,” (paper submitted to the P7 Summit on Water Issues, Brussels, June 7-10, 2000).
88. Ibid.
89. K. Tripathi, Inter State River Conflicts (Delhi: Law Institute, 1971), p. 31.
90. Hultin, “The Nile,” p. 33.
91. The Helsinki rules were adopted by the International Law Association at the 52nd conference, held at Helsinki in August 1966. Report of the Committee on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers (London: International Law Association, 1967).
92. Report of Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (New Delhi: Government of India, 1973), p. 43.
93. Reisner, Cadillac Desert.
94. Shiva et al., Ecology and Politics of Survival, p. 255.
95. Ibid.