Opinion: India’s myopic bid to renegotiate Indus Water Treaty will hurt all of South Asia

Climate change is South Asia’s foremost development challenge – and a rapidly emerging non-traditional regional security threat. India’s 90-day notice to Pakistan to initiate renegotiation of the Indus Waters Treaty could pose a development and security dilemma for Pakistan and the rest of South Asia.

India’s letter of January 25 was addressed to the Pakistani commissioner of the Permanent Indus Commission, a joint body that oversees the Indus Waters Treaty’s implementation.

Instead of initiating a collaborative approach, India has opted for an inward, myopic approach that will worsen its transboundary water relations with Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Pakistan. Its insular policy will bifurcate ecosystems and divide regional climate responses when integrated action is needed for implementing the Paris Agreement.

Unless India and Pakistan, together with the international community, devise a climate-smart response, South Asia will fail to devise collaborative approaches to critical climatic challenges such as changing monsoon and rainfall patterns, glacial melt, droughts, riverine floods, cloud outbursts, transboundary flooding, tropical storms, and sinking or salinising coastal areas extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. India’s limited thinking on this issue can push millions into poverty.

By demanding its revision, India is rendering the well-functioning Indus Waters Treaty dysfunctional. However, while Pakistan is opposed to renegotiating...

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