Tibet earthquake exposes threat Chinese mega dam project on Brahmaputra poses to Tibet, India, and Bangladesh

The devastating earthquake in Tibet last Tuesday that left 126 dead and 188 injured has exposed the danger associated with the plan of China to set up a mega hydro power dam on river Brahmaputra in the Tibetan plateau and the threat such a dam will pose to the entire region especially Tibet and the lower riparian countries of India and Bangladesh. The Chinese dam on Brahmaputra will dwarf any other hydro power project anywhere in the world; including China’s own Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world at present.

A debate has been going on about linkages between hydro power projects and earthquakes. Some experts argue seasonal variations in levels of water in reservoirs necessary for hydroelectric plants put stress on rock formations in the area. This can destabilize the geological structure around the dam, causing the structure to slip and leading to earthquakes.

“Reservoir triggered or induced earthquakes occur in conjunction with rapid water level changes behind large dams,” an article in ScienceDirect in 2021 says. “The phenomenon may be the gravitational imbalance due to the addition of water in the reservoir. The filling of water in the reservoir enhances the amount of pressure in the area. The more likely explanation for reservoir-induced seismicity is the increase of pore pressure because of the hydrostatic head of the reservoir. Also, seasonal fluctuations of water create stress beneath the reservoir, causing earthquakes which can cause considerable damage.”

The Tibetan plateau and the Himalayan region is a seismically active and unstable zone, and earthquakes of different magnitudes are not infrequent in Tibet. The Shigatse region of Tibet, the worst affected by Tuesday’s quake of magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale, also suffered significant damage in 2015 by a massive quake of magnitude 8.1 that devastated Nepal.

The possible impact of building a massive dam on a river in a seismically active mountain zone is still not clear. Especially, in view of Tuesday’s quake in Tibet, China’s assurance does not look convincing that building the world’s largest dam on river Brahmaputra will not negatively affect the Tibetan region, lower riparian states like parts of India and particularly Bangladesh.

Tibet being the fiefdom of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese authorities have not bothered to offer any elaboration how many people in Tibet the project will displace and how it will affect the fragile ecosystem of the plateau, one of the richest and the most diverse. A smaller hydro electric project, the Zam hydro power station, has already been set up on Tsangpo in the Shannan prefecture; leading to loss in aquatic biodiversity. The International Campaign for Tibet has mentioned about the construction of a dam of the hydro electric project at Khamtok in the Derge county in eastern Tibet leading to the forcible expulsion of thousands of Tibetans, destruction of their villages and the demolition of centuries-old Buddhist monasteries. The plan for the construction of 34 hydro power dams across Tibet is further going to displace about 150,000 native Tibetans.

A group of U.N. experts in a report, quoted by the International Tibet Network, has said that dams for hydro-electric projects threaten not only the fragile biodiversity of Tibet but also contributes to worsening climate change. Large hydro-electric dams are known to increase greenhouse gas emissions and magnify natural disasters like landslides and floods, they say. At any rate, it is definitely a fact that large hydro power projects magnify the impact of quakes many times, majority of the casualties results mainly from landslides, demonstrated by a tremor of high magnitude in 2011 that devastated north Sikkim, the Indian Himalayan state closest to the Shigatse region.

The massive project announced by China to dam river Brahmaputra where the river, known as Yarlung-Tsangpo in Tibet, takes its “great bend” to leave the plateau of Tibet and enters India. The extreme danger to which the Indian states of Arunachal and Assam and much of Bangladesh will be exposed to in case the proposed mega dam on river Brahmaputra collapses, be it for some natural or man-made reason, has again been amply demonstrated by the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood in Sikkim, India in 2023. However, bowing to public opinion, the Sikkim Government is no longer pursuing the construction of any hydro power projects.

But the communist regime in China is no respecter of public opinion and does not care if common innocent people suffer because of its policies. On one hand, it is not known how much water China will divert to its mainland from the dam to meet its own industrial needs, but this will cause water scarcity downstream. China has always believed in the concept of reversing the flow of Tibetan water from the south to the north, known as the “Shou-tian Concept,” to meet the water needs of mainland China.

Such an eventuality will pose serious environmental risk to the ecosystem of the river and the forest cover and also be a threat to Bangladesh. Analysts say that the potential of the dam to alter the flow of the river could lead to reduced availability of water in the river systems in Bangladesh. Since these rivers finally flow into the Bay of Bengal, a reduced availability of water in them could lead to intrusion of saline water from the sea into the rivers during the high tide and threaten livelihood dependent on agriculture and fisheries particularly in the coastal areas of Bangladesh.

On the other hand, an enhanced discharge from the dams in Tibet could add to the risk of floods, Bangladesh being already flood-prone. As analysts have pointed out, the size and the scale of the dam will enable Beijing to flood the border areas across in terms of hostilities by releasing huge amounts of water. Moreover, the dam may disrupt the natural flow of water of the river; with adverse impacts on the ecology of Brahmaputra river basin including inside Bangladesh where it is known as Jamuna which further on its course joins the Padma – Meghna river system before ending its journey in the Bay of Bengal. Jamuna contributes 51 percent of the water discharge of Padma. As the final downstream recipient of the water of the Tsangpo – Brahmaputra river system, Bangladesh faces compounded risks from the dam which China plans to build in Tibet. A sudden release of water from the dam may trigger massive floods downstream severely impacting the agriculture dependent rural lives and densely populated urban centres spread across the riverine country of Bangladesh and its struggling economy due to political instability.

The Chinese plan to set up the mega hydro power dam on river Brahmaputra, if materialized, will definitely have adverse impact on the ecological and environmental balance as well as hang as a constant risk factor on the economies dependent on the river and can turn into a nightmare for millions of people living in harmony with nature in the entire geographical region.