Why China is building the world’s largest dam on the Tsangpo, how India may be impacted

An infrastructure project of the scale that China is planning on the Yarlung Tsangpo could affect millions living in these regions, their livelihoods, and the ecology.

“This will not be just another project. This will have a very large reservoir, in a very difficult area; it is very risky, dangerous, and, to my mind, an irresponsible project,” Ashok Kantha, a former Indian Ambassador to China, said.

On Friday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said: “…As a lower riparian state with established user rights to the waters of the river, we have consistently expressed…our views and concerns to the Chinese side over mega projects on rivers in their territory. These have been reiterated, along with need for transparency and consultation with downstream countries, following the latest report (on the new project). The Chinese side has been urged to ensure that the interests of downstream states of the Brahmaputra are not harmed by activities in upstream areas.”

Kantha, who spoke with The Indian Express before Friday’s statement by the MEA, said India needs to raise its concerns with China “far more forcefully”. “It cannot just be part of our quiet dialogue with the Chinese side because the stakes are serious,” he said.

What is the Yarlung Tsangpo project?

Y Nithiyanandam, Professor and Head of the Geospatial Research Programme at Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru, said the location of the dam is mentioned in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) — at the “Great Bend”, where the Yarlung Tsangpo makes a U-turn in Medog county before entering Arunachal Pradesh.

The dam (or dams) could impact the flow of water from China to India, the lower riparian state.

Recent developments including the allocation of funds, development of smaller dams along the river channel, and changes in land use in upstream areas, indicate the project is in an advanced planning stage, and visible construction progress is likely to follow soon, Dr Nithiyanandam said.

Why does China want this mega project?

China has said the dam will help it move away from conventional energy sources and achieve net carbon neutrality by 2060. The Yarlung Tsangpo is ideal for hydroelectricity generation — its steep descent from high mountains ensures a “remarkable flow rate”, Dr Nithiyanandam said.

Some recent additions to China’s network of tens of thousands of dams are staggering in scale. The immense weight of the volume of water stored in the Three Gorges Dam reservoir is suspected to have caused blips in gravity anomaly maps, Dr Nithiyanandam said. Water released from the dam has had severe environmental impacts — “the scientific community believes the massive storage of water can create earthquakes; and, more than all, it has displaced more than a million people…due to changes made in the river morphology,” he wrote in an article for Takshashila in July 2023.

What are the specific concerns for India?

The dam (or dams) could impact the flow of water from China to India, the lower riparian state, Kantha said. A significant amount of the water in the Brahmaputra system comes from Tibet.

Also, “going by the experience of other large dams, they always lead to other negative consequences,” Kantha said. The flow of silt, crucial for agriculture, can get interrupted, and changes in river flow can impact the local biodiversity.

This region is among the world’s most ecologically fragile and earthquake-prone. Kantha recalled that a landslide in 2004 had created the glacial Parechu Lake in the Tibetan Himalayas near Himachal Pradesh. After the Chinese alerted India, the level of the lake was monitored daily. The lake burst in June 2005 and sent a large volume of water down the Sutlej, but timely coordination and planning helped limit the damage.

“Even if there is no mala fide involved, such incidents become very serious. In the Tsangpo case, you’re talking about a large dam in an earthquake-prone area. Chinese scholars have also raised these concerns extensively, such as in the case of Three Gorges,” Kantha said.

To prevent disasters, coordination and exchange of information between countries is essential, Kantha said. “China doesn’t feel the need to cooperate more closely with lower riparians. In the Mekong river basin, China has constructed 12 large dams with negative consequences for countries downstream,” he said.

What coordination mechanism do India and China have on transboundary rivers?

There is an umbrella Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation on transboundary rivers, and two separate MoUs on the Brahmaputra and Sutlej, Kantha said.

The need for the Sutlej MoU was felt after the Parechu incident — however, China did not agree to round-the-year provision of data, and the MoU is currently pending renewal.

The Brahmaputra MoU, renewable every five years, lapsed in 2023. The renewal process is ongoing through diplomatic channels, the Jal Shakti Ministry says on its website.

The umbrella MoU was signed in 2013, and has no expiry date. But at present, there is “no activity being undertaken under this MoU”, says the Ministry’s website. An Expert Level Mechanism set up in 2006 provided for annual meetings between the two sides, but the process has seen interruptions.

Within these limited avenues of cooperation, the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses can play a role.

“Neither India nor China is a signatory, but we abide by its key features, including the equitable and reasonable utilisation of waters,” Kantha said. Under the convention framework, the upper riparian does not have a free run, and one country’s actions cannot significantly harm another.

The cooperation on data sharing has largely held, barring during the 2017 Doklam crisis and after the 2020 Ladakh standoff.

So what options does India have?

“The larger problem is that understanding (between the countries) is very limited and narrow in scope,” Kantha said. “The Chinese are unwilling to discuss any agreement which should involve major commitments on their part.”

Whenever India has raised concerns about such projects, the standard Chinese response has been that these are primarily run-of-the-river projects — meaning they did not involve major impounding of water, Kantha said.

He said that India must “challenge” Chinese statements such as the recent “completely wrong” claim by the foreign office spokesperson that the Tsangpo mega dam would not have negative impacts downstream. “We need to say that publicly – otherwise, it will become a fait accompli and a huge problem for India down the road,” Kantha said. “India needs to have an honest dialogue and essentially dissuade them from taking up a project of this magnitude.”

According to Kantha, water “will become, and should become, a major issue in India’s engagement with China” — and “it should be made very clear to the Chinese side that if they’re not mindful of our interests and concerns, it will have a serious, negative impact on relations.”