Water co-operation: the power of principles
Interview with Sundeep Waslekar
“Two countries that actively co-operate on water do not go to war.” This is the message that Sundeep Waslekar, co-founder and president of the Mumbai-based think tank Strategic Foresight Group and world leader in water diplomacy, has made it his mission to bring home to the world. On the occasion of a visit to the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna, Waslekar spoke about the relevance of OSCE principles of co-operative security to the ever more urgent issue of sharing responsibility for the water of the world.
Under your leadership the Strategic Foresight Group has developed the Blue Peace approach to transboundary water co-operation. Why is it important for states to co-operate in the management of shared river basins?
What is important to bear in mind is that water co-operation is not just about water. At the Strategic Foresight Group we have developed the Water Co-operation Quotient, a tool to measure the quality of co-operation in transboundary water basins around the world. The results of the analysis show that whenever any two countries that share transboundary water resources get into active – not just nominal or legal – co-operation, the risk of war reduces substantially. Not only war about water but war for any reason at all. Increasing water co-operation also increases the prospects of comprehensive peace. So water can be a big instrument of peace. And this is why we constructed the concept of Blue Peace, particularly for the strife-ridden Middle East. Blue Peace is about transforming water from a source of potential crisis to an instrument of potential co-operation and peace.
The Water Co-operation Quotient for 2017 covers all 286 transboundary river basins of the world. Of those 286, eight had a full score – their performance is the best in the world. And among these eight, I would like to highlight one very interesting case in the OSCE area: the Finnish-Russian co-operation. The OSCE is the only international organization besides the UN to which both Finland and Russia belong. So this is a success story for the OSCE. The co-operation may not have been facilitated by the OSCE’s institutional structures, but it is based on OSCE principles, and principles are more important than institutional structures. So this is something the OSCE should project.
A second case relevant to the OSCE that I would like to mention is co-operation among the Central Asian countries. At the time of the publishing of the latest Water Co-operation Quotient at the end of 2017, the performance of Central Asian countries in the field of water co-operation was merely average, due to a lack of political will. But in the last few weeks, in March 2018, dramatic developments have taken place. A meeting between the President of Uzbekistan and the President of Tajikistan was followed by a summit meeting of all the Central Asian countries, at which they agreed to co-operate on water and hydro power. The issue which had created conflict over many years, the issue of the construction of the Rogun dam in Tajikistan, was in principle resolved. This is of course a very new development. But it is a big change. Again, the organizational structures of the OSCE may not have been directly involved in this big political breakthrough. But it is the principles of the OSCE, the principles of co-operation and comprehensive security, that have become triumphant.
The recent agreement between the Central Asian states will have far reaching implications, also outside of the OSCE region – in Africa, for instance. Whereas there are many good examples of transboundary water co-operation in Africa, we have in North-East Africa the conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over a dam on the Nile, which is very similar to the conflict between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan over the Rogun dam. If the agreement in Central Asia holds and leads to active co-operation in the next year or so, it will have a big psychological and political impact on the relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia.
So we are meeting at a time when there are some positive developments taking place in the OSCE region, and they could have an impact. My study of the OSCE has shown me that it tends to emphasize the success of its institutional structures, which is of course very important, but that it is much more reticent about the success of its principles. I think the OSCE should look at the triumph of its principles as well.
The OSCE is of course involved in specific basins, like the Chu-Talas, Dniester and Kura river basins, and this is quite a constructive effort because they are proceeding step by step: first building an understanding, then commissions, then institutions and finally co-operation on the basis of that. I was happy to learn from my conversations in the OSCE Secretariat today that there is a long-term commitment to this. I am sure that this gradual approach will have an impact.
Water is a precious resource that with the growing world population and climate change will become increasingly scarce, also in parts of the OSCE region. Is the international community dealing properly with this?
The statistics speak for themselves. According to the latest joint monitoring report of WHO and UNICEF, of the 7.5 billion people that live on the planet, 2.1 billion don’t have access to safe and clean drinking water. And over 4 billion people don’t have access to water in a comprehensive way, including for sanitation and other needs. In the area where there is scarcity of water, which is mostly outside of North America and Europe, water is used mostly for irrigation, for agriculture – almost 80 per cent. So the crisis of water is not just a crisis of drinking water; it is a crisis of food production. Furthermore, water is also used for urban needs, for electricity and power, and this is going to increase. So really the crisis of water is about food, about electricity and about health.
If the shortage of water is not managed, my rough calculation is that at some stage in the next 20 years, the big developing countries like China, India, Iran, Turkey and some of the African countries may have to go to the market and import an additional 200 to 300 million tonnes of food grains. That could mean skyrocketing food prices all over the world. Whether you are living in Europe, which has water, or Brazil, where there is a water surplus, or South Africa, where there is water scarcity, you will be affected. You could have serious hygiene problems in the cities. The crisis of water scarcity will be articulated not through long lines for procuring water itself, but through food dry-ups and disease. And that could lead to migration, and that could lead to political destabilization. You are looking at a vicious cycle, and that is the risk.
The scarcity of water per se can be managed with technology and with governance. For example, Singapore has a very low per capita availability of water, but it is able to manage it with better governance and better technologies. And there is a third factor in addition to governance and technology which is very important: transboundary co-operation. You may improve your governance, but if your neighbours don’t improve their governance all your efforts will be literally washed away.
Water can be a factor for crisis and water can be a factor for peace – we have to choose. We have Sustainable Development Goal No. 6 for water and Sustainable Development Goal No. 16 for peace. The two goals are not separate. Water can be a link between sustainable development and sustaining peace.
How are women affected by water issues and do women have a special role to play in resolving them?
There is no doubt that where there is water scarcity, for whatever reason, the whole society is affected – men, women and children. In the past, the role of women has often been forgotten. I believe that if women played a role a bigger role in addressing the water problem, there may be a possibility of our finding more sustainable solutions, and we are going to explore this further in our work. There is some evidence for that, and it comes from my country, from India. Not from water but from another sector, from local governance. We have what we call the village governance bodies, and social science institutes have done research with very large samples – not just a few hundred but rather thousands of cases. They have found that whenever men are in government in these local bodies, a lot of the money is spent on political organization and on things like exhibitionist buildings, displays of social ego. And whenever women are controlling the local governance institutions, they spend money on things like childcare or water supply, on caring for the society’s needs. This is evidence, not my opinion. And that leads us to believe that women can have a slightly different approach in terms of setting priorities.
But it’s the priorities that matter, not the fact that someone is a woman per se. If a woman is representing a male power structure – she may be the wife or the sister of the president – then you cannot expect a change. So you have to see what priorities and what values they represent.
What developments do you foresee in the area of water diplomacy?
Water diplomacy is a new and evolving field and, as in the case of any evolving field, we have to expect that a lot of changes will take place. As science and technology advance, disciplines which require scientific knowledge increasingly also require human knowledge – an understanding of the human mind and thinking. Water diplomacy is one of these fields where scientific and human knowledge are being combined.
The interesting thing about water diplomacy is that while a lot of work is happening within the state structures, a lot is also happening outside the state structures. Geopolitics always come back to using the state structures – the OSCE, for example, could only be created by states; it could not have been created by political scientists. But in water diplomacy a lot of the impetus is also coming from outside the state structures. The Strategy Foresight Group is a completely non-state actor, but we work closely with the states. So here you have a confluence of intellectual capital coming from outside the formal state structures combined with the authority of the formal state structures. And that’s a new phenomenon in international relations.
Are you worried about a new nationalistic tendency among states and an increasing disinterest in international co-operation?
This is a growing phenomenon we see everywhere in the world, and at this stage it looks like it has captured the imagination of a large number of people. The reason why has to do with insecurity – a sense of immediate insecurity and threat. Much of this is actually not very soundly founded. The threat human society faces from terrorism, for example, is there, but it’s not as profound as it is made out to be. So once people realize that the foundation for narrow nationalism is not really strong, hopefully they will get disillusioned and we will move back to a better understanding of human relations.
But there is a risk. Along with globalization, we have a globalization of risks taking place – the spread of weapons such as radiological, biological and some chemical weapons, for instance. They are becoming easier and easier to access and to purchase. If some terrorist group captures weapons of mass destruction, or produces some with the help of artificial intelligence, and if they create massive devastation, then of course the spectre of looming threat will prove to be true. It is not something I hope will happen, it is not something I think will happen, but it is not something I would rule out completely.
Do you have any positive forecast for the future, a scenario we can look forward to?
If we don’t have any unpleasant shock like the one I have just described, then we could begin to redefine the world as we have defined it for the last several centuries: as a world of opportunities. It’s because we saw the world as a place of opportunities that Columbus went to look for India and found America. It’s because we looked at the world as a place of opportunities that so many scientific discoveries were made. In the last few years, we have defined the world as a world of risk. If the theory of risk is proved wrong and if no unpleasant accident takes place, then we will regain our concept of the world as a world of opportunities, and therein lies our hope.
The views expressed in this interview are those of the interviewed expert and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the OSCE and its participating States.