China builds hydroelectric dam on Brahmaputra in Tibet

[lemontree]

China builds hydroelectric dam on Brahmaputra in Tibet, India fears flash floods

BEIJING: China has announced that it has completed a major hydropower dam on the Brahmaputra, called Yarlung Zangbo, in Tibet. The dam is bound to enhance fears in India and Bangladesh about flash floods and related risks like landslides involving lives of millions of people downstream.

India has repeatedly expressed concern about the dangers of damming the Brahmaputra, one of the strongest Himalayan rivers, in upstream areas in Tibet. China has routinely responded saying its plans were restricted to run-off-the-river dams focussed on generating electricity, which posed little danger.

Indian officials have so far been satisfied by Beijing's explanations, not realizing China was actually building a massive project that would affect the river's flow into Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of the northeastern region of India, sources said.

India has two options:
- negotiate a water sharing treaty; if that fails.
- war in the only other option.

If neither happens, then India can prepare for a desert safari in the NE of India.

[Blademaster]

India has two options:
- negotiate a water sharing treaty; if that fails.
- war in the only other option.

If neither happens, then India can prepare for a desert safari in the NE of India.

The water sharing treaty has to be fair or China can expect strong Indian movements in tibet or even calls for Tibet independence movement. Water is a very sensitive issue in India.

China just endangered her hold over Tibet by needlessly provoking India into something that China does not want: a more active interest in the goings of Tibet.

[Skywatcher]

Oh for crying out loud, it's hydroelectric. Doesn't make any financial sense to actually pipe the water out and over the Himalayas to the central plains.

[Oracle]

India has two options:
- negotiate a water sharing treaty; if that fails.
- war in the only other option.

If neither happens, then India can prepare for a desert safari in the NE of India.

The Chinese hydro-electric project in itself is not a threat, if the course of the river is not changed. Regarding water sharing treaty, there's only as much water the Chinese can hold as the capacity of the dam itself. What flows outwards depends on the spillway capacity.

Flash floods is a concern during monsoon, and this is an area both countries should work upon and share data. The main concern should be -
1. Is China building more dams on the course of the Brahmaputra to India? If so how many?
2. What would the aggregate dam volume & final spillway capacity?

If we have the above data, we can calculate the risk of flash floods during monsoon, and also the amount of water heading into Indian territory, and if that is enough.

NE is rich in monsoon rain. Actually very rich. But the region doesn't have sufficient water storage capacity and hence supply for the rest of the year is deficient. There are floods every year. If the GoI comes up with a plan to store excess rainfall, we can safely ignore China to an extent.

[Oracle]

Brahmaputra dam won’t hurt India’s northeast, Beijing says

So, 5 dams planned. 1 built.

Excerpts from the article:

Hua said China was in full "cooperation and communication" with the downstream areas. She said during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to New Delhi in September, it was India which "thanked China for the provision of hydrological data and assistance in emergency handling" of the river situation. "On the exploration and utilization of trans-boundary rivers, China has been adopting a responsible attitude, and we ensure exploration goes hand in hand with protection," she said.

[lemontree]

A study by the China's Ministry of Water Resources found that approximately 55% of China's 50,000 rivers that existed in the 1990s have ... disappeared.

Global implications

China's water shortage has global implications. As more water projects are built in China and water is diverted from the south to the north, the water supplies of nearby countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Thailand and Bangladesh will be affected.

Rivers which could be impacted include the Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Mekong, Irrawaddy, Nu, and the Lancang.

[Oracle]

BBC

The article says China did indeed divert southern rivers to its north. Which rivers? And, is it feasible to divert Brahmaputra on the kind of terrain it runs through China before entering India?

[commander]

China is giving us one more headache and we should reciprocate the same by stepping up in Southern China sea and more trade flow with the surrounding countries. China is already making a lot of progress in Sri Lanka. We have been warning it would happen the moment the civil war was over. We are losing our grip on SL and now these dams on NE.

[Oracle]

We are losing our grip on SL and now these dams on NE.

Dams are in Chinese territory.

[anil]

China builds hydroelectric dam on Brahmaputra in Tibet

An observer had anticipated diversion of the brahmaputra to happen around 2020

In the past decades, India has been world number one in starvation deaths, foreign aid and bribery. In the 2000s, it was transformed from a chronic under-performer to a potential superpower. Here are eight predictions of what it will look like in 2020:

India will overtake China as the fastest-growing economy in the world. China will start ageing and suffering from a declining workforce, and will be forced to revalue its currency. So its growth will decelerate, just as Japan decelerated in the 1990s after looking unstoppable in the 1980s. Having become the world's second-biggest economy, China's export-oriented model will erode sharply - the world will no longer be able to absorb its exports at the earlier pace. Meanwhile, India will gain demographically with a growing workforce that is more literate than ever before. The poorer Indian states will start catching up with the richer ones. This will take India's GDP growth to 10% by 2020, while China's growth will dip to 7-8%.

India will become the largest English-speaking nation in the world, overtaking the US. So, the global publishing industry will shift in a big way to India. Rupert Murdoch's heirs will sell his collapsing media empire to Indian buyers. The New York Times will become a subsidiary of an Indian publishing giant.

In the 2000s, India finally gained entry into the nuclear club, and sanctions against it were lifted. By 2020, Indian companies will be major exporters of nuclear equipment, a vital link in the global supply chain. So, India will be in a position to impose nuclear sanctions on others.

India, along with the US and Canada, will develop new technology to extract natural gas from gas hydrates - a solidified form of gas lying on ocean floors. India has the largest gas hydrate deposits in the world, and so will become the biggest global producer. This will enable India to substitute gas for coal in power generation, hugely reducing carbon emissions and making Jairam Ramesh look saintly.

India will also discover enormous deposits of shale gas in its vast shale formations running through the Gangetic plain, Assam, Rajasthan and Gujarat. New technology has made the extraction of shale gas economic, so India will become a major gas producer and exporter. Meanwhile, Iran's mullahs will be overthrown, and a new democratic regime will usher in rapid economic growth that creates a shortage of gas in Iran by 2020. So, the Iran-India pipeline will be recast, but in reverse form: India will now export gas to Iran.

More and more regions of India will demand separate statehood. By 2020, India will have 50 states instead of the current 28. The new states will not exactly be small. With 50 states and a population of almost 1.5 billion, India will average 30 million people per state, far higher than the current US average of 6 million per state.

China, alarmed at India's rise, will raise tensions along the Himalayan border. China will threaten to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra from Tibet to water-scarce northern China. India will threaten to bomb any such project. The issue will go to the Security Council.

Islamic fundamentalists will take over in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US will withdraw from the region, leaving India to bear the brunt of consequences. Terrorism will rise in India, but the economy will still keep growing. How so? Well, 3000 people die every year falling off Mumbai's suburban trains, and that does not stop Mumbai's growth. Terrorism will bruise India, but not halt its growth.

[Officer of Engineers]

An observer had anticipated diversion of the brahmaputra to happen around 2020

The guy is whacked! He wrote the article in 2010. There ain't nothing being constructed on the horizon then or now that could divert that much water in 10 years time.

[Skywatcher]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]38566[/ATTACH]

BBC

The article says China did indeed divert southern rivers to its north. Which rivers? And, is it feasible to divert Brahmaputra on the kind of terrain it runs through China before entering India?

You'd have to spend at least a couple hundred billion USD to pipe the Brahmaputra over to say, the Yangtze (not to mention the power supply for pumping the water up the slopes).

Better off using that money to build a bunch of desalination plants around Beijing.

[Double Edge]

Chinese Chequers and Dam(n) Nonsense | DH | Oct 18 2009

Had posted an op-ed by this author some time back here i think, but here is an excerpt of what he thinks about this subject...

a new red herring being dragged across the trail as a result of reports that the Chinese plan to dam the Tsangpo at Zangmu (29.14 lat., 29.52. long.) with an installed capacity of 450 MW (comparable to the Baglihar project India has commissioned on the Chenab). Even if this be true (and more such sites are reportedly being investigated) this is probably a modest run-of-river hydro project with little consumptive use and no hint (or capability) of diversion northwards. Such a project would be fully within China’s right to build.

Indian news reports continue to be singularly ill-informed about Tibetan geography, topography and hydrology. The Water Resources Ministry must take the rap for such national ignorance which has deeper roots in the downgrading of geography as an educational discipline. For one thing, the Tsangpo (Siang/Dihang in Arunachal) is confused with the Brahmaputra (which is formed in Assam after the confluence of the Siang, Luhit, Dibang and Noa Dihing, all substantial rivers in their own right). So the “Brahmaputra” is not being diverted anywhere and will not “run dry”. In any event more than 70 per cent of the run-off of the Brahmaputra is generated south of the Himalaya.

Reference is made to a report by Li Lung, “Tibet Water Plan to Save China” (2005) through the Great Western Route Project, by diverting over 200 billion cubic metres of water from Tibet to North China, 120 BCM of this coming from the “Brahmaputra basin”. This diversion is proposed at a far higher latitude in Tibet (with a correspondingly smaller catchment). The possibility of harnessing the great U-Bend of the Tsangpo as it drops into India from Tibet is also confusingly discussed as a possible source of pumping power for moving water north. While many old time generals and ideologues have commended the Great Western Diversion Project, a number of technical experts, economists and ecologists have panned this fantasy.

So while India keeps a wary eye on water resource developments in Tibet, it does not need to become hysterical and thrown off balance and diverted from the real tasks of diplomacy and development. Earlier reports of floods form extreme river surges in Arunachal and in the Sutlej Valley were mistaken for Chinese mala fides. They were in fact the result of debris/glacial lake outbursts in remote Himalayan Valleys. These, with glacial and permafrost melting and aberrant weather, is going increasingly to impact the entire Himalayan-Karakoram region on account of climate change. Cooperation in meeting this common challenge is what India and China should be talking about.

In 2013 he had this to say

Verghese termed embankments meant for flood control in the Brahmaputra and its tributaries as "engines of corruption" and wondered what prevented the government to chalk out an effective flood management plan of action.

He also suggested that India engage with China in a joint survey of techno-economic and social feasibility of developing enormous power potential of the Tsangpo-Dihang U-bend from Tibet to Assam. "Rather than needlessly worry about exaggerated reports of Chinese plans to divert the Brahmaputra northwards, the Northeast should press the Centre to invite Beijing for such a joint survey," Verghese said.

[Firestorm]

India has two options:
- negotiate a water sharing treaty; if that fails.
- war in the only other option.

If neither happens, then India can prepare for a desert safari in the NE of India.

War sir? Over a run-of-the-river project? It would be better if we don't react the same way pakistan does every time we build a new dam in Kashmir. A water sharing treaty is a good idea but it's not the end of the world if that fails to materialize.

[Skywatcher]

Large scale hydropower projects in Tibet would be very good for India, since China will be selling the power south to Bangladesh and India.

If I was New Delhi, I'd be more worried about mine tailings leaking out into the rivers (China has been reasonably good, all things considered, at keeping that issue under control, but as you increase the number of mines, the chances increase of something going wrong).