US Senate passes bill seeking lower riparian rights for Tibet rivers

In what can be a minefield for President-elect Joe Biden as far as China relations are concerned, a US legislation passed by the Senate on Monday gives primacy to the Dalai Lama on the succession issue as also lower riparian rights for Tibet rivers thereby drawing India into the narrative, writes senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi: In what can possibly be construed as outgoing US President Donald Trump laying political and diplomatic minefields in the Yarlung Tsangpo waters and in Tibet for President-elect Joe Biden, a bill called the ‘Tibetan Policy and Support Act’ (TPSA) was passed by the US Senate on Monday night.

While it has already been passed by the House of Representatives, the enactment of the TPSA appears to be a formality that will wait for Biden’s nod.

The bill can be seen as an effort to maintain the legacy of outgoing President Don Trump whose strategic policy cornerstone would arguably be a no-holds-barred belligerent posture with China. It was a break with the past in the sense that earlier regimes, unlike Trump, tacitly recognized and accepted that US and Chinese business and trade interests were too much intertwined to be unshackled totally.

While the present bill gives primacy to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people in taking decisions on the succession issue, what is of significance from the Indian point of view is what the enactment says with regard to the river waters flowing out of the Tibetan plateau.

The provisions seek that the US Secretary of State should “encourage a regional framework on water security… to facilitate cooperative agreements among all riparian nations that would promote transparency, sharing of information, pollution regulation, and arrangements on impounding and diversion of waters that originate on the Tibetan Plateau.”

In effect, the bill provisions are aligned with the Indian position especially after reports of China building mega dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo river have emerged.

The Tsangpo enters India as the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh and Brahmaputra in Assam before flowing into the Bay of Bengal as the Padma in Bangladesh.

Interestingly, earlier on the same day, China brought out a white-paper titled “Energy in China’s New Era” where it admitted to the construction of huge hydropower bases dam networks on its major rivers in the south-west.

Without taking the name of the Yarlung-Tsangpo or Tibet, the white-paper said: “Focusing on major rivers in the south-west, China is building large hydropower bases and controlling the construction of small and medium-sized hydropower stations in the basin areas.”

The biggest river in China’s south-west is the Yarlung Tsangpo.

The developments come amid heightened concerns of the negative impact of damming the Tsangpo on the lower riparian regions in India and Bangladesh especially on Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

ETV Bharat has earlier reported that the Tsangpo river water is to be intercepted at about 3,000 metre altitude, led into tunnels and then to turbines at 850 metres (Motuo) and 560 metres (at Daduo or Daduquia).

While the Metok dam is to have a power generating capacity of 38,000 MW power, the Daduquia dam is likely to have 43,800 MW production capacity. In contrast, the world’s biggest ‘Three Gorges dam’, also in China, produces 18,600 MW.

With China embarking on a unilateral posture as far as damming the rivers in its south-west are concerned, there is little that the US can coerce China to do so.

Besides seeking to vest vast powers on the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, the bill talks of promoting human rights of Tibetans, promotion of their distinct historical, cultural, religious, and linguistic identity and “to promote activities to preserve environment and water resources of the Tibetan plateau.”

In effect, the bill appears more to be a statement of US intent than anything else as China is least expected to abide by what the US wants of her. (END)