Framing the Brahmaputra River hydropower development Sep 04, Hanchen Jiang, Tsinghua University, China

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1 Hanchen Jiang, Tsinghua University, China This contribution is based on a recent Water Policy article: Framing the Brahmaputra River hydropower development: Different concerns in riparian and international media reporting by Hanchen Jiang, Maoshan Qiang, Peng Lin, Qi Wen, Bingqing Xia, and Nan An. Numerous studies highlight the need to analyze the likelihood of conflict or cooperation along international rivers to better understand potential socio-political threats. 1,2,3 As a large international river, the Brahmaputra (called Yarlung Zangbo in China) is increasingly attracting the eyes of analysts. 4 This article examines the role of international media reporting in influencing conflict and cooperation within the Brahmaputra River basin. The Brahmaputra River The Brahmaputra originates from China, and flows through India and Bangladesh, emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The three riparian countries China, India and Bangladesh are the world s first, second and eighth most populous countries respectively, with around 130 million people living in the Brahmaputra River basin. In addition, all three countries face severe water scarcity and steeply rising demands for power generation, which, when exacerbated by climate change, makes the Brahmaputra more valuable to all of them. As the upstream country, China upper hand is always the dominant player in the game of sharing the river and has already taken certain actions to harness the river for China s benefit. For instance, the 510 megawatt Zangmu hydropower project, the first of a group of five hydropower plants known as the Brahmaputra hydropower development, was completed in The construction of the dam has raised concerns in India regarding China s further action on the so-called Great Bend or Great Canyon a deep gorge across the eastern extremity of the Himalayas, where the Brahmaputra suddenly curves south onto India s Assamese plain. Such actions may make India dependent on China for flow of what is Global Water Forum 1

2 currently a free-flowing international river. 6 To India, the Brahmaputra is of special importance for two reasons: first, the river, accounting for 29% of the total runoff of India s rivers, is key to India s River Linking Project; second, the Brahmaputra Basin possesses about 44% of India s total hydropower potential, most of which is still underdeveloped. 5, 6 Bangladesh, as the most downstream country in the Brahmaputra River basin with little political voice or bargaining power in water negotiations, is extremely vulnerable to most unilateral actions by the upstream countries. In addition, Bangladesh is heavily dependent on the upstream countries for collecting and delivering hydrological data, without which it cannot prepare for seasonal floods and droughts, or formulate its domestic water budget. This can lead to great losses and have consequences for the agricultural sector. Map of the Brahmaputra River, which flows through China, India, and Bangladesh. Considerable divergences of opinion on the development of the Brahmaputra exist among Global Water Forum 2

3 the three demographic giants, especially between China and India. The mixture of regional political and environmental aspects makes the issue complex, and understanding national attitudes and interests of the riparian countries holds the key to solving the problem. Hence, an important theoretical and empirical agenda is to examine how the perception of risk influence regional collaboration between China, India, and Bangladesh on the Brahmaputra River. This study aims to address this issue from the perspective of news media reporting, and to promote mutual understanding among riparian countries. Understanding the media s perception of conflict along the Brahmaputra In order to explore how the Brahmaputra hydropower development issue is framed in media outputs of different countries, we collected 1569 news articles referring to Brahmaputra hydropower in the LexisNexis English news database. A structural topic model was then used to derive 30 topics from the collected corpus for in-depth analysis. The 30 topics extracted from the topic model were categorized into four perspectives: economy, politics, environment, and technology. Political topics were shown to dominate the framing of the Brahmaputra hydropower development issue in English news media. Such political perspectives comprise inter-state relations between stakeholder countries and domestic politics in riparian countries, mainly India and China. The analysis showed that the Brahmaputra hydropower development issue is also increasingly attracting the attention of worldwide news media, with concerns over China s ambitious development projects. In particular, since 2010 the construction of the Zangmu project in China has stimulated discussion in the media. Less common are environmental perspectives, which primarily focus on the development of similar international rivers, such as the Ganges, the Indus, the Mekong, and the Salween. In addition, some globally significant environmental issues, including natural hazards and Global Water Forum 3

4 climate change impacts are also identified. Technology and economy perspectives are less frequently reported, and mainly focus on the energy sector. Conclusions Significant framing divergences among riparian countries show that advantages and dependencies on sharing an international river can be reflected in news reporting, which, in turn, may influence the decisions of and relations between the countries. The three topics that China s media emphasize are all related to the domestic development of China. In addition, as the dominant party, China actively avoids discussions regarding the development of the Mekong and the Salween. India s media behaves in a similar manner; as the vulnerable party in the Brahmaputra issue with China, India s media places more emphasis on this issue. Yet, as the dominant party in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Meghna (GBM) issue with Bangladesh, India avoids discussing Bangladesh-India relations on the GBM, which is in turn emphasized by Bangladesh s media. The international (non-riparian) news media focuses more on environmental, resource and energy problems, which better fit the scope of international media. These frames of international news media may add pressures to the riparian countries to make more cooperative and sustainable development plans. In conclusion, this study was a direct response to a dirge of understanding of the media s influence on conflict and cooperation in the Brahmaputra River Basin. The results show that all three riparian countries plan to develop the enormous hydropower potential of the Brahmaputra River; however, a lack of mutual understanding creates obstacles for cooperative development. The results suggest that in some cases, how the media reports development within the Basin may play a role in the development of cooperation or conflict amongst the riparian countries. Continued objective analysis and reporting of developments in the Basin will therefore play an important role in reducing socio-economic threats and Global Water Forum 4

5 fostering mutual understanding between China, India, and Bangladesh into the future. References: Wolf, A. T., Yoffe, S. B. & Giordano, M. (2003). International waters: identifying basins at risk. Water Policy, 5, Espey, M. & Towfique, B. (2004). International bilateral water treaty formation. Water Resources Research, 40, W05S05.1-W05S05.8 Biba, S. (2014). Desecuritization in China s behavior towards its transboundary rivers: the Mekong River, the Brahmaputra River, and the Irtysh and Ili Rivers. Journal of Contemporary China, 23, Jiang, H., Qiang, M., Lin, P., Wen, Q., Xia, B., & An, N. (2017). Framing the Brahmaputra river hydropower development: different concerns in riparian and international media reporting. Water Policy, wp Grafton, R. Q., Wyrwoll, P., White, C. & Allendes, D. (2014). Global Water: Issues and Insights. ANU E Press, Canberra, Australia. Rahaman, M. M. & Varis, O. (2009). Integrated water management of the Brahmaputra basin: Perspectives and hope for regional development. Natural Resources Forum, 33, Grafton, R. Q., Wyrwoll, P., White, C. & Allendes, D. (2014). Global Water: Issues and Insights. ANU E Press, Canberra, Australia. Hanchen Jiang is a Ph.D. candidate at Department of Hydraulic Engineering in Tsinghua University, China. His major is management science and engineering, and his research interests are related to public opinion and general intelligence on controversial issues, such as large infrastructure projects and energy sectors. He uses information technologies, such as web crawler and natural language processing methods, to collect and analyse unstructured data which are related to the interaction among society, environment and engineering projects. The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the Global Water Forum 5

6 views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here. Global Water Forum 6