Guwahati: It is the largest river in South Asia, 114 million people depend on the river basin for their water, electricity, food, agriculture, and fishing and it includes parts of the world’s two most populous countries, China and India.
The Brahmaputra Basin includes many outstanding environmental features. With a depth of 6,009 metres, the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet is the deepest canyon in the world.
Originating at 5,300 metres above mean sea level(masl) and flowing at 3,500 masl through Tibet, the Yarlung Tsangpo is the highest navigable river in the world. It is third, behind the Amazon and Yellow rivers, in the transport of sediments, with some sediments deposited in the river channels and banks of the floodplain of Assam, and some carried further downstream and deposited in the Bengal Delta, the largest delta in the world.
But yet Brahmaputra has received relatively less attention from global and national scholars in terms of research and knowledge production compared to the Indus, Ganges, and other comparable river systems of the world.
A report “Elevating river basin governance and cooperation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region published by ICIMOD says the Chinese and Bangladeshi parts of the basin are more researched than the Indian part, with one reason being the lack of availability of or access to data in India due to government restrictions. Brahmaputra river has a drainage area of 580,000 square kilometres across China, India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.”
The report quoting Partha Das of Aaranyak says although Chinese researchers have carried out comprehensive work on the geophysical, climatic, ecological, and environmental aspects of the basin, their research is not easily accessible because it is not in the public domain or not available in English.
“The existence of a comprehensive and holistic knowledge base on the river and its basin, encompassing all important aspects of the physical, biological, environmental, and socioeconomic regimes, is a precondition to fully exploiting the benefits,” the report says quoting Partha Das for a basin-wide cooperation agreement.
The report quoting Dr Anamika Barua of IIT Guwahati says in general, secrecy around hydrological data and water knowledge remains a constraint.
Sources say as Brahmaputra is a transboundary river, its stream flow data is classified information and one will have to send a request to the Central Water Commission to get information.
China and India have two MoUs, signed in 2002, whereby China agreed to provide seasonal water flow data on the Yarlung Tsangpo to India, and India pays China for the data. These agreements help facilitate advance warning for floods during the summer monsoon period, but the flow data for the dry season are not shared.
The report says over the past decade, the academic literature is growing on hydromorphology, biodiversity, cultural history, social development, livelihoods, resource utilisation, hydroclimatology, water governance, climate change, and management of the basin. “However, studies have typically focused on only one or the other part of the river or basin, and usually from one perspective. Despite the existence of research institutions in all the riparian countries, there is a notable lack of a whole-of-basin perspective in research and data collection” the report says.
The report also talks about the research and knowledge dissemination by researchers and civil society organisations increasing in recent years with experts believing that governments in all countries of the Brahmaputra basin have not actively contributed much to support knowledge creation and dissemination.
“Informal multi-country research networks have evolved, but their work is severely hampered by the lack of funding for basin-wide research activities. As a result, there is a lack of basin-wide knowledge generation and data sharing, a significant limitation to furthering basin-wide management of the Brahmaputra” it says.
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“Climate monitoring in the region is inadequate, creating many uncertainties, particularly in high-altitude areas. There is a lack of data disaggregated by gender, disability, poverty and landlessness, and Indigenous group membership,” the report says.
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