(TibetanReview.net, Jan23’24) – China appears to have completed in remote western Tibet the building of a new dam which if true will enable it to control the flow of water to Nepal and India’s northern plains, reported the newsweek.com Jan 22, citing satellite images.
Mapcha Tsangpo River, which translates from Tibetan as “peacock,” is known as the Ghaghara in India and the Karnali in Nepal. It is a significant and perennial source of freshwater supply to the populations in western Nepal and in India’s northern plains, the report said.
Based on analysis of imagery from Sinergise’s Sentinel Hub website, which renders photographs captured by the Sentinel-2 satellite of the European Union’s Copernicus earth observation program, the report noted that the construction at Mapcha Tsangpo began in Jul 2021.
The dam is stated to be built in the north of the town of Burang (Tibetan: Purang), home to the multi-religiously sacred Mt Kailash in Tibet’s Ngari prefecture. It is now completed and visible in images taken this month from Earth orbit, the report said.
The concrete structure is roughly 18 miles north of Nepal’s border town of Hilsa and approximately 37 miles east of the Indian border. Hilsa has roughly 51,000 residents, but Nepal’s wider western region is home to more than 4 million people.
After Nepal, the Mapcha Tsangpo, so-called because of its flow from a rocky passage resembling the beak of a peacock, enters the plains of India, where it is known as the Sarayu, and passes through the holy city of Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Besides, Beijing is building yet another dam north of the Burang site, construction for which began in Dec 2022, the report said., citing China’s official Xinhua news agency. The project could further control Tibet’s river system upstream from the Mapcha Tsangpo.
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Omair Ahmad, managing editor for South Asia at The Third Pole, a specialist publication on environmental issues in the Himalayan region, has told Newsweek that the case of the new dam in Tibet had shades of China’s hydropolitics in the Mekong Delta of Southeast Asia.
“The best comparison of this is how China has tried to reshape hydropolitics in the Mekong. This is where it has increasingly argued that, as an upstream neighbor, it has rights that the downstream neighbors must respect, which goes completely against all of the international law on this,” Ahmad has said.
But “unlike the Mekong, there are no regional water institutions like the Mekong River Commission in South Asia, so there is not even a space to engage,” Ahmed has added.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that China’s spree of building dams on transnational rivers flowing in Tibet does not end here. In 2021, China announced plans to link Tibet’s river systems with the rest of the mainland, which would involve building a mega dam along the border areas with India, the report said.
In recent years, India has protested China’s construction of hydropower projects by refusing to purchase electricity from sites with Chinese investment, such as the Chameliya hydropower station in Nepal, built with Beijing’s financial aid, the report noted.
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China has also built in this geo-strategically sensitive Tibetan border region a new Ali Pulan Airport, a dual-use site that serves both civilian and military purposes. It officially became operational late last month, the report said, citing the Tibet region’s civil aviation authority. Ali-Pulan is the Pinyin rendition of Ngari-Purang, the prefecture and county in which it is built.