“Where we need water, we find guns instead”: understanding the securitization of sovereignty claims on the Brahmaputra

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes Indian and Chinese sovereignty claims on the Brahmaputra river through the lens of securitization theory. The approach, which looks at the escalation of an issue from normal to emergency politics, allows us to examine the resultant redefinition of the state’s rights and prerogatives. Taking the Brahmaputra river basin as its case study, the article focuses on the multiple hydropolitical contexts in which India’s and China’s pitched efforts to assert their respective user rights on its waters is situated. The securitization this has entailed, by way of structural, institutional, and discursive mechanisms, has only served to amplify existing patterns of state behavior, be it hydro-nationalism or opacity in information sharing. Drawing on experiences from other case studies of transboundary river basin management, it seeks to examine how the water conflicts between both states could be resolved. The article argues that federalizing the securitization debate in India is essential to grasping the layered narratives that have evolved around the Brahmaputra. Acknowledging the polyphonic nature of securitization would open new avenues for desecuritizing the water discourse. This in turn could entail rescaling politics and, by implication, reconfiguring sovereignty itself.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. “Time is Running Out on Water,” Address by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum, Davos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hO83qESlH0 (accessed January 24, 2008).

^2. Ibid.

^3. Naho Mirumachi, “Securitising Shared Waters: An Analysis of the Hydropolitical Context of the Tanakpur Barrage Project between Nepal and India,” The Geographical Journal 179, no. 4 (2013): 309–19.

^4. Nilanjan Ghosh, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, and Sayanangshu Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning in the Brahmaputra: A Critique,” (ORF Issue Brief No. 328), December 9, 2019.

^5. On the lack of feasibility of China’s water diversion projects, see Hongzhou Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes: The Coming Water Wars?” WIREs Water 3, (2016): 158–60.

^6. Jonathan Holslag, “Assessing the Sino-Indian Water Dispute,” Journal of International Affairs 64, no. 2 (2011): 19–35.

^7. Sebastian Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts: Toward a Solution through Launching a Cooperation Spiral,” in Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations, ed. Kanti Bajpai, Selina Ho, and Manjari Chatterjee Miller (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 111.

^8. Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning,” 4.

^9. Selina Ho, Neng Qian, and Yifei Yan, “The Role of Ideas in the China-India Water Dispute,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics (2019): 263–94.

^10. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 212.

^11. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 214. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s AQUASTAT database (https://www.fao.org/aquastat/statistics/query/index.html), the per capita availability of internal renewable water resources for China dropped from 2104 cubic meters in 1998–2002 to 1927 cubic meters in 2018–2022. For the same block periods, India’s internal renewable water resources per capita fell from 1323 to 1069 cubic meters.

^12. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 213.

^13. For a phase-wise organization of the literature, see Stephan Stetter, Eva Herschinger, Thomas Teichler, and Mathias Albert, “Conflicts about Water: Securitizations in a Global Context,” Cooperation and Conflict 46, no. 4 (2011): 441–59. See also Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, “Beyond Environmental Security: Complex Systems, Multiple Inequalities and Environmental Risks,” Environmental Politics 20, no. 1 (2011): 42–59. Detraz identifies three approaches within the literature on environment and security: environmental conflict, environmental security, and ecological security, each of which correspond to the realist, liberal, and ecological perspectives (cited in Cudworth and Hobden, “Beyond Environmental Security,” 43). Much of the policy focus on environment has tended to remain on environmental conflict, as was evident from the discussions on the linkage in the UN Security Council in 2007 (ibid., 44).

^14. Cited in Cudworth and Hobden, “Beyond Environmental Security,” 44.

^15. This was also the phase when cooperation as a possible, and a more likely, outcome of water scarcity and degradation, came to be increasingly explored. This meant a focus on the functionality of global and regional institutional structures in governing water and their impact on the practice of sovereignty.

^16. Cited in Karin Bencala and Geoffrey Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 2 (2008): 21.

^17. Mark Zeitoun and Naho Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction I: Reconsidering Conflict and Cooperation,” International Environmental Agreements 8 (2008): 298.

^18. Scholars such as Homer-Dixon refer to scarcity-induced conflicts but ones that are likely to unfold at the sub-state level when projects such as dam construction could lead to protests and repressive action by state agencies.

^19. Bencala and Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,”22.

^20. Ibid., 29.

^21. Juha Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 1 (2008): 70.

^22. Douglas Hill, “The Discursive Politics of Water Management in India: Desecuritising Himalayan River Basins,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (2017): 828.

^23. A dyad sharing a river is more likely to have had a history of military conflict than contiguous states that do not. See Peter Burgess, Taylor Owen, and Uttam Kumar Sinha, “Human Securitisation of Water? A Case Study of the Indus Waters Basin,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29, no. 2 (2016): 387. Rosaleen Duffy makes a similar argument linking natural resources to the incidence of conflict. Biodiversity hotspots accounted for 80% of the world’s armed conflicts that occurred between 1950 and 2000. See Rosaleen Duffy, “Waging a War to Save Biodiversity: The Rise of Militarized Conservation,” International Affairs 90, no. 4 (2014): 820.

^24. Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction I,” 305.

^25. Stefano Guzzini, “Securitization as a causal mechanism,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4–5 (2011): 329–41.

^26. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 491.

^27. Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization,” 77.

^28. Cited in Bencala and Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” 31.

^29. Cited in Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 209.

^30. Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning”

^31. Cited in Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction I,” 303.

^32. Brahma Chellaney, Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2013); G. S. Padmanabhan, Next China-India War: World’s First Water War—2029 (New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2014).

^33. Cited in Selina Ho, “Big brother, little brothers: Comparing China’s and India’s transboundary river policies,” Water Policy 18, (2016): 33.

^34. Nickum cited in Ho, “Big brother, little brothers,” 32.

^35. Ibid., 36.

^36. For more on India’s hydro-hegemony as having a stabilizing effect on South Asia, see Paula Hanasz, “Power Flows: Hydro-hegemony and Water Conflicts in South Asia,” Security Challenges 10, no.3 (2014): 95–112.

^37. Ibid., 39.

^38. Itay Fischhendler, “The Securitization of Water Discourse: Theoretical Foundations, Research Gaps and Objectives of the Special Issue,” International Environmental Agreements 15, (2015): 245–55.

^39. Fischhendler, “The Securitization of Water Discourse,” 248.

^40. Gleick cited in Burgess, Owen, and Sinha, “Human Securitisation of Water?” 385.

^41. Holslag, “Assessing the Sino-Indian Water Dispute,” 24.

^42. Ibid., 22.

^43. Fischhendler, “The Securitization of Water Discourse,” 248.

^44. Besides recognizing Egypt’s “historic rights” on the river, which meant the major quantum of its waters, it also made it incumbent on other riparian states to seek Egypt’s prior approval before undertaking any hydraulic development on the Nile and its tributaries. At the same time, it placed Egypt under no such obligation toward other riparians for construction on the Nile, effectively granting it veto power.

^45. Stetter, Herschinger, Teichler, and Albert, “Conflicts about Water,” 450.

^46. Burgess, Owen, and Sinha, “Human Securitisation of Water?,” 396.

^47. “War by other Means.” India Today, September 28, 2016, https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/the-big-story/story/20161010-indus-waters-treaty-pm-narendra-modi-pakistan-nawaz-sharif-829651–2016-09-28.

^48. Cited in Ho, Qian, and Yan, “The Role of Ideas in the China-India Water Dispute,” 272.

^49. Cited in Holslag, “Assessing the Sino-Indian Water Dispute,” 21.

^50. Brahma Chellaney, “The Sino-Indian Water Divide,” Project Syndicate, August 3, 2009. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-sino-indian-water-divide-2009–08.

^51. Holslag, “Assessing the Sino-Indian Water Dispute,” 21.

^52. Ibid.

^53. Cited in Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes,” 157.

^54. Cited in Neha Arora and Devjyot Ghoshal, “India Plans Dam on Brahmaputra to Offset Chinese Construction Upstream,” Reuters, December 1, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/india-china-hydropower-idUSKBN28B4RB.

^55. Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes,” 158.

^56. Ruth Gamble, “How Dams Climb Mountains: China and India’s State-making Hydropower Contest in the Eastern-Himalaya Watershed,” Thesis Eleven 150, no. 1 (2019): 42.

^57. Cited in Mirumachi, “Securitising Shared Waters,” 315.

^58. Ibid.

^59. Guzzini, “Securitization as a causal mechanism,” 335; Claire Wilkinson, “The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgystan: Is Securitization Theory Useable Outside Europe?,” Security Dialogue 38, no. 1 (2007): 5–25.

^60. Guzzini, “Securitization as a causal mechanism,” 335; Adam Côté, “Agents without Agency: Assessing the Role of the Audience in Securitization Theory,” Security Dialogue 47, no. 6 (2016): 541–58.

^61. Stetter, Herschinger, Teichler, and Albert, “Conflicts about Water,” 447.

^62. Ibid.

^63. Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction I,” 301.

^64. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, “Waters of Conflict or Waters of Cooperation? Geopolitics of Sino-Indian Transboundary Water Management in the Yarlung Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra” (PhD diss., Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, 2017) http://gyan.iitg.ernet.in/handle/123456789/923.

^65. Ibid., 302.

^66. Jonathan Luke Austin and Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard, “(De)securitisation Dilemmas: Theorising the Simultaneous Enaction of Securitisation and Desecuritisation,” Review of International Studies 44, no. 2 (2017): 304.

^67. Ho, “‘Big brother, little brothers,’” 35.

^68. Ibid., 36.

^69. The efficacy of the arrangement for hydrological data itself has been questioned. The identification of the monitoring stations in China as an early flood warning mechanism for India has been critiqued for being suboptimal. As part of the MOU, China is to share hydrological data (on rainfall, discharge, and water level) from three monitoring stations on the Yarlung, Nugesha, Yangcun, and Nuxia (see map) twice daily from May 15 to October 15 each year. The lack of discharge data for the part of the river between the last monitoring station in China (Nuxia) and the first in India (Tuting), a stretch in which the discharge swells by more than twice, is a major concern for India (Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning”).

^70. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 212–3.

^71. Ho, “‘Big brother, little brothers,’” 46.

^72. For more on competing agendas of the northeastern states over hydropower projects, see Sanjib Baruah, “Whose River is it, Anyway? The Political Economy of Hydropower in the Eastern Himalaya,” in Water Conflicts in Northeast India, ed. K. J. Joy, Partha J. Das, Gorky Chakraborty, Chandan Mahanta, Suhas Paranjape, and Shruti Vispute (London and New York: Routledge, 2018); Sumit Vij, “Transboundary Water Cooperation in South Asia: A Case of Brahmaputra River Basin,” International WaTERS Policy Brief (April 2020): 3.

^73. Cited in Holslag, “Assessing the Sino-Indian Water Dispute,” 23.

^74. Fischhendler, “The Securitization of Water Discourse,” 249.

^75. Cited in Nimmi Kurian, “Flows and Flaws: Questioning River Hierarchies of the Brahmaputra,” in India’s Water Federalism: New Perspectives for Public Policy, ed. Srinivas Chokkakula (Hanns Seidel Foundation, forthcoming).

^76. Cited in ibid.

^77. Gamble, “How Dams Climb Mountains,” 59.

^78. Kurian, “Flows and Flaws”

^79. Ibid.

^80. Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, “Revolutionary Securitization: An Anthropological Extension of Securitization Theory,” International Theory 4, no. 2 (2012): 172; Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization.”

^81. Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization,” 69.

^82. Holbraad and Pedersen, “Revolutionary Securitization,” 173.

^83. Hill, “The Discursive Politics of Water Management in India,” 837.

^84. Austin and Beaulieu-Brossard, “(De)securitization Dilemmas,” 306.

^85. Austin and Beaulieu-Brossard, “(De)securitization Dilemmas,” 307.

^86. Stetter, Herschinger, Teichler, and Albert, “Conflicts about Water,” 452.

^87. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 214; Ho, “‘Big brother, little brothers.’.”

^88. Ho, Qian, and Yan, “The Role of Ideas in the China-India Water Dispute,” 263.

^89. Cited in Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes,” 160.

^90. Cited in Sudha Ramachandran, “Chinese Dam Plan Worries India- But Perhaps Excessively,” The Diplomat, December 9, 2020.

^91. Ho, Qian, and Yan, “The Role of Ideas in the China-India Water Dispute,” 269; Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning,”

^92. The widely cited book Tibet’s Waters Will Save China was published by former PLA officer Li Ling in 2005. See also Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes,” 160.

^93. Cited in Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 213.

^94. Cited in Ho, Qian, and Yan, “The Role of Ideas in the China-India Water Dispute,” 270.

^95. Ibid.

^96. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 211.

^97. Cited in Ho, “‘Big brother, little brothers,’” 41–2)

^98. Bencala and Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” 22.

^99. Avoiding the use of accusatory language, extending the sharing of hydrological information beyond the flood season to the entire year, and notifying about dam-building activities are some of the measures through which the cooperation spiral can be operationalized. For more, see Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts”

^100. Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 215–21.

^101. Wolf cited in Burgess, Owen, and Sinha, “Human Securitisation of Water?,” 387.

^102. Notably, the mandatory third-party mediation in settling disputes under the UNWC is one of the chief reasons why China objected to signing the convention (Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes”). See also Biba, “China-India River-Water Conflicts,” 222.

^103. China had voted against the UN convention, besides Burundi and Turkey (Zhang, “Sino-Indian Water Disputes,” 157). India has not ratified the convention. See also Bencala and Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” 24.

^104. Anamika Barua and Sumit Vij, “Treaties can be a non-starter: A Multi-track and Multilateral Dialogue Approach for Brahmaputra Basin,” Water Policy 20 (2018): 1027–1041.

^105. Ibid., 1038.

^106. Baruah, “Whose River is it, Anyway?,” 130; Kurian, “Flows and Flaws”

^107. Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Modak, “China-India Data Sharing for Early Flood Warning”

^108. Kurian, “Flows and Flaws.”

^109. Ibid.

^110. Bencala and Dabelko, “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” 25.

^111. Ibid., 24.

^112. Andrea Gerlak, Robert Varady, and Arin Haverland, “Hydrosolidarity and International Water Governance,” International Negotiation 14, (2009): 318.

^113. While the UN World Water Development Report, 2006 highlighted the efforts of the Friends of the Earth Middle East to facilitate cooperation among the mayors of the Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian villages along the Jordan river, it was silent on the bitter water conflict upstream between Lebanon and Syria (Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction I,” 305).