7 October 2020, NIICE Commentary 6100
Nahian Salsabeel
As the visible impacts of climate change like extreme weather, frequent natural disasters, shorter farming seasons, irregular seasonal patterns, melting of polar ice caps and such gradually unfold, scientists, strategists and policymakers expect these rampant global changes to have long-term implications for human security and violent conflict across borders. International organizations like United Nations, as well as states like the US have stressed the violent adverse impacts of climate change, through material and non-material harms, and especially acting as a threat multiplier, as seen in the cases of Darfur and Somalian conflicts.
The South Asian region, being an area ridden with numerous issues such as the Sindh and Indus water river sharing between India and Pakistan, India-Nepal conundrum over water sharing and hydroelectricity production, is considered to be a region where climate change will be a prominent threat multiplier. Island nations like Maldives and Sri Lanka face the dangers of inundation with rising sea level caused by increasing temperature and subsequent melting of glaciers. The displaced population will create an influx of climate refugees, adding pressure to the existing public service framework, and thereby, heighten tension in the cities between the host communities and the refugees, as well as erupt riots and agitated movements against failures of the government policies. Frighteningly, although it is expected that South Asia is likely to be the next section of the world for such violence induced by climate change, the practical scenarios portraying the devastating effects to the societal, economic and political life of people across borders are alarmingly undervalued, and largely ignored by both the people and government authorities in the South Asian countries. As a result, research regarding climate conflict nexus to South Asia has been limited as well.
Sea Level Rise in South Asia: A Grave Non-Military Threat
More than 90 percent of the heat emitted from the harmful gases has been absorbed by the world’s seas, and it is taking a toll on our oceans. In approximately 120 years, coastal areas, which are currently inhabited by 1.3 billion people, are projected to be inundated by sea-level rise. Let’s look at the case of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
A study conducted last October evidenced that the continued rise of sea levels will cause Bangladesh to lose its southern frontiers, along the path of Khulna, Barisal and the country’s mega shipping region, the coastal Chattogram.  A 2016 report published by Brac indicates that about 27 million people are will be at risk of sea level rise in Bangladesh by 2050, while two-thirds of the country will find themselves less than five metres above sea level. Official data shows sea level rise was observed at 5.73 mm per year at Char Changa station in Hatiya while Hiron point in the Sundarbans at 3.38 mm per year. The people living in these areas have a perilous decision to make, as they either have to migrate to the overcrowded cities of the country, or they have to live at their homes, threatened by jeopardy of life. Poor institutional and structural assistance is arbitrary and unhelpful, while aid after natural calamities have had a history of being consistently insufficient. According to another the study, conducted by Valerie Mueller and Joyce Chen, a rise of soil salinity from rising seas will push nearly 140,000 coastal residents to migrate to another location within their district, and nearly 60,000 to move to alternate districts. Placing 40 percent of productive land in southern Bangladesh under severe threat, the rest of the land face the threat of erosion, putting many islanders at the risk of displacement.
Consisting of 1,190 islands, the state of Maldives is situated only 3 meters above sea level, while 80 percent of its land is either at or less than 1 meter above sea level. The limited chorography of the country makes it highly vulnerable to the threats of rising sea level, thereby, making it one of the most susceptible to rising sea level and coastal flooding. Sea level has been rising by 0.07 inch (1.7 millimeters) per year since 1950, on a globally averaged basis. However, an average rise of 0.13 inch (3.3 millimeters) per year from 1993 to 2008 suggests that the pace of sea level rise is accelerating. Some 191 of the country’s 358 inhabited islands have fewer than 5,000 people, and about one–third of all residents live in the capital city of Malé on North Malé Atoll. Should the country become completely inundated, the state, believing in the limited probability of stopping environmental degradation, has opted the option of buying land from Australia, simply because of the availability of land in the Australian continent. Rising sea levels also threaten the scarce resources of freshwater. The situation was already dire before the devastating tsunami in 2004, with only 11 percent of the total number of inhabited islands having fresh groundwater sources. 87 percent of the drinking water in the country is supplied through collected rain water, but the need of freshwater sources still remain as dry seasons with no loom.
An 8 metre sea level rise is likely to cause the entire Sri Lankan nation-state to become completely inundated. However, a project rise in range of sea level rise range of 0.2 – 0.6m would still wreak havoc. Sea level previously reached up to five meters higher in Sri Lanka, submerging lowlands and wetlands as well as forming new wetlands and lagoons. Short-term sea-level rise along the Northern coast is likely to reduce the beach widths to zero, while in the long-run sea-level rise and affiliated coastline recession may result in the disappearance of a considerable number of beaches along most of the Sri Lankan coast. Other than that, it is projected that by 2025 the country could lose 6,110 hectares of land, while by 2100, the country could lose about 25,000 hectares worth of just land.
Water Conflict: Fight for the most Vital Resources
Water is a scarce resource around the globe for numerous states, especially developing ones, with higher demands for the resource with booming population growth and rising economic growth. As a result of environmental degradation and poor water management, the resource has now become the scarcest for poor economies. Therefore, the struggle to get this limited resource can lead to tensions between groups, civilizations, nationalities and states, and in some cases, even conflict. The following section will discuss two prominent river sharing tensions in South Asia region, namely Indus River sharing issue of India and Pakistan and India-Nepal water sharing.
The Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan is as exemplar to understanding how water can be shared between two countries. In the wake of the Pulwama attack, tensions between the two countries stirred and one of the reasons for the increased contentions between the two states lied with the India’s threat to Pakistan with the rhetoric of diverting the water of Indus River. As a result, the initiative to build Ravi Dam was taken up, which was extra source of conflict between two nuclear-armed neighbors. The diversion of water will result into a reduction of the capacity of the river by more than 30 percent during winter. Despite the fact that India has the complete legitimacy to re-route the river on the basis of principle of sovereignty, growing tensions from Pakistan’s side over its largest source of freshwater can lead to an armed conflict in the future.
Similarly, Nepal-India relations have often not been as smooth as one might expect. Despite being small and landlocked, Nepal is rich in water-resources, and upper riparian to all Indo-Nepalese transboundary rivers. It is estimated that the Nepalese rivers could generate up to 83,000 MW of hydroelectric power and during the times of better relations, the two countries have signed numerous water-sharing treaties and hydroelectricity infrastructure projects to exploit the benefits mutually. However, with the change of political parties in power, attitudes towards these initiatives constantly change. Especially, public opinion in Nepal has always been very critical of Kosi (1954) and Gandak (1959) agreements. It is being maintained that as the barrages were constructed quite close to the Indian border, Nepal was unable to benefit from them
Conclusion
Environmental migrationary trends occur due to poverty, hunger, food shortages, loss of arable land, natural disasters, lack of employment opportunities in the rural areas, as a result of climate change. The increasing number of rural migrants massing into South Asian cities would stress the aggregate economic activity of those areas due to cheap labor influx, create complications on resource allocation, health and sanitation issues leading to tension, cynicism, hostility and ultimately conflict with the host communities. This would assert government policies to deal with the issue. However, as climate change is a transboundary issue, it might be a little too late for any actions to be taken. In the era of COVID-19, it is more likely that contraction of resources due to climate change, like reducing spatial territory, reducing food security, water security, and so on, contention in cross-border natural resource sharing as well as constricted interactions between state leader and their respective cabinets, will lead to further exacerbation of conflict.
