Notes VI

Heat Wave in the Indus Valley, June 2007

Source NASA Earth Observatory

When I began preparing materials for use with the course on World Water Resources in the autumn, I copied a NASA space photograph of the Indus Valley (not the one above), encompassing Pakistan and large portions of its neighbors India and Afghanistan. Of necessity, India and especially Pakistan will be central topics in the course, but I did not anticipate the catastrophic flooding that has accompanied the summer monsoonal rains of 2010. Control of the waters of the Indus is one of the longest activities of civilization, for the residents of  Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, civilizations which flourished almost 5,000 years ago, used the Indus to irrigate their fields and feared its droughts and floods. The current flooding is but one season in an almost constant effort of people to make a livelihood from a beautiful but punishing environment.

Sumer Flooding in the Indus Valley, 3 August 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Meanwhile, rains have cooled Moscow somewhat, but peat fires remain a problem. This morning's New York Times has a good piece on peat fires. Along with an explanation of why those fires are so smoky, it also examines how a decision some years ago to drain bogs and mine the peat to use as fuel in electrical generating plants is partially to blame for the smoky fires, dangerous to health, of the extraordinarily hot summer of 2010.

Near the Potomac River, in Loudon County, VA a few kilometers northwest of the Fairfax County boundary, the real estate speculator Donald Trump is redeveloping a golf course. Today's Washington Post reported on the massive tree clearance on that roughly 325 hectare site. The spokesperson for Trump was quoted as saying "The trees threatened the shoreline. Many of the trees, ... stress and eroding (sic) the soil." I guess those trees are like the forest trees claimed by other public relations flacks to create air pollution and acid rain. Loudon County, and its neighbor Fairfax County should encourage widespread cutting of trees, deforestation, in order to protect the environment!

International Water Wars?

Indus Valley, Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A potential for water war between India and Pakistan has long been feared by outside observers. An article in today's right-wing Washington Post suggests that possibility is growing greater. The partition of the Raj in the waning hours of British control creating the predominantly Muslim Pakistan and the mostly Hindu India (though India also has a huge Muslim population making it one of the largest Muslim nations) is usually discussed in religious terms. In the bloody aftermath of the partition, Kashmir with a largely Muslim population, remained a major point of contention between the two mostly unfriendly states with Hindu India controlling the crucial eastern section. There have been almost ceaseless and frequently bloody confrontations between Hindus and Muslims and between India and Pakistan, with China later added to the toxic mix, but more frequently than not, the conflict has been discussed in religious and political terms.

In fact the conflict is also over water, for India and China control the crucial headwaters where the Indus River gets the bulk of its flow from melting snowfall and glaciers in the Himalaya. The Indus is a classic example of what the geographer Edward Ullman many years ago termed an exotic river, a stream that after gathering significant flow in a humid zone passes for much of its length through arid areas where rates of evaporation exceed rainfall and little if any water is added to the flow. In the arid zone the river becomes the major, if not the only, source of water and allows human occupation.

One of the oldest areas of agriculture and urban settlement on earth, the Indus Valley, now largely contained within Pakistan, has an almost total dependence on the flow of the Indus. The larger towns and cities use river water for urban and industrial purposes, and agriculture would be impossible were not for withdrawals of Indus water. The critical headwaters, most of the primary sources of the Indus's flow, are controlled by India (and to a much smaller extent by China). India has the ability, and the facilities, to cut off the flow into Pakistan. There is ample demand for the water within India, for its western portions are nearly as dry as most of Pakistan.

A water blockade with most or all of the flows cut off by India would in very short order lead to a collapse of agriculture in Pakistan and intense privation. It could also lead to open warfare between the nuclear armed states. More on this in later postings.