India and Pakistan share the waters of six rivers that flow through both nations under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which has remained unbroken through three wars.
Under the treaty, India controls the waters of the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers, while Pakistan controls the Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum rivers. An estimated 5% of India’s un-utilized water share flows to downstream Pakistani territory.
Indian PM Narendra Modi has vowed that un-utilized river water shares currently flowing to Pakistan will be diverted to the fields of Indian farmers, reviving a longstanding promise during an election rally in Haryana state.
In the meantime, many of India’s largest cities are running out of water, thanks to years of below-average rainfall from a weakening monsoon season.
A quarter of the world’s population residing in seventeen countries are now facing “extremely high” levels of baseline water shortages, using over 80% of the local renewable supply.
At least 21 Indian cities, including the capital of New Delhi, may run out of groundwater as early as 2020, leaving some 100 million people in dire straits.
Modi’s speech was not the first time his government has threatened to divert leftover water from its rivers.
Union Water Minister Nitin Gadkari warned Pakistan in February that it would “divert water from Eastern rivers to Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab after a suicide bomb attack that killed 40 Indian soldiers in Pulwama.
While ranked ‘only’ 13th in the water scarcity list, India has more than three times the population of all 17 other countries the World Resources Institute found to be facing “extremely high” water stress levels.
With Global Warming due to planetary shift, many nations will enter a new era of water shortages in the years to follow. Water Wars already started in Syria and Iraq, where the Euphrates and Tigris river systems are diverted or confiscated by Zionist entities.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
Watergeddon?
Since Israel invaded and confiscated the Syrian Golan Heights, the Jordan River was taken out of the equation?