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Michael H. Glantz, ESIG, NCAR

Senior Scientist

May 9, 2003

Thoughts on

Creeping Environmental Problems and Transboundary Water Issues in Asia

“History is affected by discoveries

we will make in the future” Karl Popper

[And some of those discoveries will be conceptual]

Michael Glantz

In Central Asia, along the Amudarya, there is a message made out of whitewashed rocks embedded in the side of a hill which sums up the dependence of the region on water: “Voda iz zhizn” (water is life). This is as true for individuals as it is for cultural groups and national governments. It is true for countries rich and poor around the globe.

Some countries have ample amounts of water; others do not. Some countries are upstream: others are downstream. Some can rely on good precipitation from year to year; others cannot. Some are in humid areas and others are in arid lands. The point is that precipitation is unevenly distributed in time and space; everyone knows that. In a variation of the “golden rule”, the one with the gold makes the rules. The same can be said of water resources, the one with the water makes the rules, with some notable exceptions (e.g., the Nile).

What I want to do is to discuss creeping environmental problems (CEPs) and then discuss them with respect to their potential impacts on water resources in Asia in general and China specifically. The point of the paper is that creeping phenomena can lead to disasters just as can abrupt changes. The CEPs are “stealth-like” problems or seldom appear on the proverbial political radar screen. Creeping environmental problems can be defined as low grade, long term and cumulative problems. Today environmental conditions (such as air quality) are not much worse than yesterday and they will not be much worse tomorrow than today. That is the reality as well as the perception day after day. Yet, after several years, incremental, imperceptible changes have likely turned into a problem and, if unaddressed, a crisis.

Most environmental problems involving human activities are of the creeping kind: air pollution, acid rain, soil erosion, deforestation, water pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, etc. Societies have difficulty dealing with the creeping kind of environmental change, in part because there are no readily identifiable thresholds. In fact those thresholds of change are often identified only after the various thresholds have been crossed.

In a given watershed, there are various kinds of low-grade incremental changes that might affect the flow (quality, quantity, timing) of water between upstream and downstream water users. The Yangtze River floods of 1998 were first blamed on slow- moving, moisture-laden storm systems. They were then blamed (in China) on the heavy snows in the Tibetan highlands. Finally, the Chinese government admitted that 40 years of its policies had allowed deforestation of mountain slopes in the watershed which had markedly changed the rainfall-runoff regime. The combination of the above three factors led to China’s biggest floods in a century and had an impact, direct or indirect, on about one-fourth of China’s population. Two of those alleged causes were of the abrupt kind (catalysts) –storms and heavy seasonal snows. One, however, was an underlying cause of the creeping kind: deforestation over a multi-decade period.

Construction of reservoirs and dams can clearly have an effect on access to freshwater but there are also some creeping environmental problems that bear watching if one is monitoring the stability of water resources in a region and, in that context, the future stability of that region:

  • Soil erosion and sediment loading of rivers and reservoirs
  • Land clearing or transformation (conversion to irrigated agriculture, deforestation)
  • Drainage runoff
  • Increase or decrease in precipitation over time, including changes in year-to-year patterns of variability (e.g., changes in the variability of the Asian summer monsoon)
  • Demographic changes upstream and downstream that will affect water needs elsewhere within a country
  • Urbanization
  • Industrial effluents and sewage

It is the collective impact and interactions of these changes that can, over time, create both environmental and societal crises.

Forecasting by Analogy

The notion of forecasting by analogy stems from a belief that there are many examples worldwide incremental environmental changes that have led not only to environmental crises but also to political, social and economic problems, if not crises. For example, one can review (by hindcasting) how a society (its government agencies) responded to a particular climate-related event such as a flood or a drought in order to identify its strengths and weaknesses. In the absence of any changes in political, bureaucratic or individual behavior, one can reasonably assume that similar adverse impacts could foreseeably recur in the same location in the not-too-distant future. However, one of the benefits of hindcasting would be to safeguard known strengths while seeking to eradicate identified weaknesses. In doing so, a society would be in a better position to cope with similar events in the near to mid future.

Applying the forecasting by analogy approach to water issues in Asia --- by looking at water issues in the region and by looking as well at water issues in other parts of the globe and how they were dealt with --- could help us to identify potential problems related to in-country and transboundary water issues that could foreseeably occur in the next couple of decades.

Surprises that shouldn’t be

Societies (especially their governments) have expressed a lot of interest and committed considerable funding to develop effective early warning systems to prevent disasters. The reason behind their interest is quite obvious --- they do not want to be surprised by unwanted, potentially harmful events, whether natural or human in cause. The idea behind scenarios, simulations, and game theory is to reduce the likelihood of surprises.

There are knowable surprises (seemingly an oxymoron), that is, there are ‘surprises that should not be’. For example, if one were to live in a floodplain, one should accept the likelihood of suffering from flood conditions at some time in the future. Nevertheless, people are surprised, if not by the event itself, thenby its timing, intensity, causes, damaging effects, etc. By seeking out analogs related to potential and actual water conflicts and water-related decision-making situations elsewhere on the globe, one can identify at least some knowable surprises and, if need be, prepare in some way for them.