Abstract

Downstream countries can experience a range of direct, indirect, and feedback effects from upstream water piracy. These consequences can range from economic decline due to decreased availability of water for agriculture and fisheries, to the disruption of ecosystems from alterations to water flows and ecosystems, to the potential for political tensions that arise due to unequal access to water resources. The upstream country backs the downstream country's government to serve its own interests. The loss of the heat-storing water medium of the Aral Sea due to the former Soviet Union pirating water from the basin's feeding rivers for cotton production has resulted in warmer summers and cooler winters in the region than before. India is turning the basins of the Ganges and the Teesta into another Aral Sea basin, while deluging the basins with recurrent floods through the sudden release of water from the Farakka and Teesta barrages, and other trans-border river barrages. India's threat to revoke the more than six-decade-old Indus River water treaty has put Pakistan at a severe disadvantage, as extreme climatic events and an increase in irrigation progression have been linked to an increase in lightning-related fatalities. Some Nobel Laureate Professors have mistakenly identified energy insolvency as the cause of water piracy amid the competing plans of building dams and barrages by India and China, which threatens to turn the lower Brahmaputra and Mekong basins into another Aral Sea-like disaster Climatologists should soon embark on a holistic study of CO₂ emissions and surface water exploitation in order to keep the planet livable, and use water for necessity rather than greed.

Key words: Water piracy, Aral Sea, Ganges, Teesta, Brahmaputra, Indus, Mekong, Indus water treaty, CO₂, Bangladesh, Farakka Barrage, Teesta Barrage, dams, barrages.