South Asia today faces the worst of water wars. No country is likely to be left untouched, but the great thirst will be felt the most in the region that has the world’s two most populous countries — India and China.

The Tibetan plateau is the principal watershed in Asia and the source of its 10 major rivers, including the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet), the Sutlej and the Indus. About 90% of the Tibetan rivers’ runoff flows downstream to China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any continent.

There are two parts to China’s grand scheme which seems to rival India’s plan to connect all its own rivers: One is the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric plant on the Great Bend dwarfing all other similar projects (it will generate 40,000 megawatts, more than twice the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam); the second is the diversion of the waters of the Tsangpo which will be pumped northward across hundreds of kilometers of mountainous region to China’s northwestern provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu. China’s green light for the project could indeed be considered a declaration of war against South Asia. There are Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, starting point of the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej Rivers. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.

In the map, the three red lines indicate China’s water diversion projects. The route across the Tibetan plateau will be the most controversial as it redirects the natural flow of water away from countries such as India and Bangladesh.

The uneven availability of water within some nations has given rise to grand ideas – from linking rivers in India to diverting the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas in the Chinese heartland. Interstate conflict, however, will surface only when an idea is translated into action to benefit one country at the expense of a neighboring one.

As water woes have intensified in its north owing to intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds. It has dammed rivers, not just to produce hydropower but also to channel the waters for irrigation and other purposes, and is presently toying with massive inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects.

After building two dams upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong, stirring passions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet have a bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is reluctant to share information.

Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.

But why must this region run dry? It is fed by major rivers such as the Yangtze, Indus, Ganges and the Brahmaputra. But the problem is all of them originate in the Tibetan Plateau and will be badly affected by melting glaciers. As per reports, it may all end very badly because a water deficit will have a cumulative, destructive effect on agricultural production, power generation, food availability and livelihood, forcing all four countries in the sub-region to try and secure water resources. They may even look beyond their borders, leading to geo-political tension.

India has bilateral agreements on water. It has the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 with Pakistan and treaties with Nepal and Bangladesh cover development of the Mahakali river and sharing the waters of the Ganga. But New Delhi has nothing like that with Beijing. If today’s legal and policy architecture were used to deal with any future water dispute, India and China would have nothing more to look to than a couple of MoUs on sharing flood-season hydrological data on the Yarlong Tsangpo/Brahmaputra and the Sutlej/Langquin Zangbu rivers. Former water secretary Ramaswamy Iyer agrees that there is a chasm where there should be a formal agreement. Until some years ago, water did not even figure in talks between India and China.

The 10 major watersheds formed by the Himalayas and Tibetan highlands spread out river waters far and wide in Asia. Control over the 2.5 million-square-km Tibetan plateau gives China tremendous leverage, besides access to vast natural resources. Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy. This could force both India and China to “securitize” water sources and lead to tension.

It also makes one wonder if China, would ever consider a UN proposal to let India collaborate with its plans to dam rivers that are the life blood to India and Bangladesh downstream, the way Pakistan has been collaborating with India on water projects that have affected it since the 1960s. Theoretically during the monsoon, release of waters from China’s new dams could literally drown millions of Indians and Bangladeshis in the south, or withholding water during the dry seasons (from October to May) could create awesome famines. As a political/military weapon a dam has suddenly become an awesome weapon with catastrophic force.

While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries – from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China – it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern.