Technical Exchange on River Basin Management Planning

13-14 February 2017, Hyderabad

Technical Exchange on River Basin Management Planning

13-14 February 2017, Hyderabad

Impulse contribution:

Guido Schmidt. India-EU Water Partnership Secretariat. At Technical Exchange Development of Integrated Water Resources Management Plans in India. 14 February 2017. Hyderabad

Potential and possible power of benefit sharing and trade-offs to address conflictive

issues on the basin-wide scale

Benefit-sharingCountries/regions through which a river flows can share the

financial, social, and environmental benefits, without necessarily dividing the flow of water or allocating diversions

among the countries in a quantitative manner benefit sharing reframes the means of ‘possessing’ water, by

privileging the benefits of joint rather than unilateral development of the shared resource… Benefit sharing focuses on

how the outputs from water use can be optimally allocated to various actors for different objectives.

Trade-offs: International treaty deliberations use the terms rights, interests, and needs. Analysis and Negotiations needed to

identify and precise trade-offs

International treaty deliberations use the terms rights, interests, and needs

Analysis and Negotiations needed to identify and precise trade-offs

Trade-offs

Types of Benefits to be shared

• Energy (by sharing production)• Permanent Water quantity (by sharing investments in supply

or efficiency infrastructure) • Temporary Water scarcity and Drought risk (by water markets

or trading schema)• Flood risks (by upstream investments)• Water quality improvements (by upstream investments)

Experiences of benefit-sharing (1)

Energy • Senegal: Manantali dam (2003) re investments, navigation, hydropower• India-Bhutan hydropower investments & cooperation• Mekong: Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam • Itaipu dam (Brazil, Paraguay) effect of royalties on living conditions • Lesotho Highlands Water Project on the River Senqu-Orange (Angola, Namibia):

locating the project upstream increases aggregate net benefits . Lesotho Highlands Water Project illustrates benefit sharing in practice through payment for water, purchase agreements for power, and financing arrangements

• Dams on the Columbia River (US-Canada): altered dam design increases aggregate net benefits , including flood protection benefits

• Kariba Dam on the River Zambezi (Zambia, Zimbabwe) • IIT Roorkee has explored a framework to promote cooperation in the

Brahmaputra basin (hydropower, flood management, navigation)

Experiences of benefit-sharing (2)

Preventing flood risks by upstream investments• Room for the River NL-BE (green infrastructure)• Linked to Hydropower (e.g. Columbia river)

Water scarcity and Drought risk• Drought Management Plans, with different guarantee levels,

e.g. Spain, EU• Water markets (potentially a tool for sharing benefits),

Australia• Agreement on environmental flows regimes

Challenges1. equitable sharing of value, especially with women and the less-wealthy, 2. potentially high costs of development and implementation, 3. changing historical water institutions/ traditions, and 4. overcoming perceptions of increased economic or security riskCriteria and institutional set-up : • economic (optimization)• environmental• Long-term sustainability• Social (equity) …Tools: • Multi-criteria analysis• Hydro-economic modelling• Gaming & scenario development