No country can unilaterally exit the treaty, as there is no exit clause, according to Sheikh, who said that the countries “must agree on practical solutions”.
Delhi said Pakistan, which is due to hold general elections this year, is still recovering from devastating floods, and is grappling with a financial crisis and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, has “limited bandwidth to engage in water treaty talks”. Is”. —Omer Ahmed, an international relations analyst who has studied the treaty.
Ahmed Rafe Alam, a Pakistani environmental lawyer and activist, said that reopening the treaty is unlikely given Pakistan’s growing concerns and mutual suspicion between the two countries.
“But I understand (Pakistan’s) foreign ministry is preparing a response,” he said.
reduction of climate impacts
Pakistan’s Institute of Policy Studies said in 2017 that the Indus Waters Treaty now needed to be considered in the light of other international agreements such as the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, which both Pakistan and India signed Are.
“The treaty does little for the best possible use of the river system’s water resources, especially as we live in an era of climate change,” said Ashok Swain, a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University and president of the United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO. International Water Cooperation.
A 2015 study in the journal Water Resources Research found that in addition to groundwater inflows, the Indus basin’s underground water storage is the world’s second most “stressed”, with almost no new water in storage to offset withdrawals. Flows
The Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development warned in 2019 that even if global warming could be limited to 1.5°C, the glaciers feeding the Indus basin were projected to lose a third of their total volume by the end of the century Is.
Academics and analysts aren’t the only ones who have raised concerns about the water treaty’s challenges in dealing with the effects of climate change.
In 2021, an Indian parliamentary standing committee on water resources urged the government to initiate a process to renegotiate the treaty with Pakistan because “currently pressing issues such as climate change, global warming and environmental impacts are not being addressed”. given”. ,
Yet India has not yet cited climate or environment in any discussion around the treaty and that is unlikely to change, said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the New Delhi-based South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People, a research group. Said.
“The way it has unfolded…with all the hostility and lack of trust on both sides, there is little chance of an agreement on dispute resolution bilaterally,” he said.