Context: Across the globe, the availability of freshwater, both for ecosystems conservation and for meeting people’s needs, is facing a massive crisis. The same is true for the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), or the “Water Tower of Asia”.

About The ‘Water Tower of Asia’

• Mountains play a role in the birth and growth of human civilisations. This role is particularly observed with respect to the flow of rivers originating from the mountains, thus earning for these mountains the name, “Water Towers of the World”.
• In Central and South Asia, the imperative is clear for the governance of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH)—a mountain range that stretches 3,500 km and straddles eight countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Bangladesh.
• The HKH is the source of 10 large rivers of Asia, serving the water needs of 16 countries; at least 2 billion people live in these basins. For the sheer size of the HKH, and that of the population it serves, these mountains are known as the “Water Tower of Asia”.

The river basins are: Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Amu Darya, and Tarim. Their total area is 8.99 million sq. km, of which 2.79 million sq. km lie within the HKH region.

• Today the HKH is a hotspot for water crises and their impacts. As early as in 1992, the idea of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has been proffered as a strategy for managing water resources in a holistic manner and thereby avoiding resource challenges from escalating into crises.
• IWRM has remained marginal in its utility, however. This report builds on existing knowledge about integrated governance and offers a framework for bringing IWRM closer to practice in managing the HKH.

Significance of HKH Region

• The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) mountains provide two billion people a vital regional lifeline via water for food (especially irrigation), water for energy (hydropower), and water for ecosystem services (riparian habitats, environmental flows, and rich and diverse cultural values).
• Glacier and snow melt are important components of streamflow in the region; their relative contribution increases with altitude and proximity to glacier and snow reserves.
• Groundwater, from springs in the mid-hills of the HKH, is also an important contributor to river baseflow, but the extent of groundwater contribution to river flow is not known due to limited scientific studies.
• Knowledge of the amount and distribution of precipitation at higher altitudes (above 5000 m above mean sea level, masl) in the HKH is poor.
• Groundwater, from springs in the mid-hills of the HKH, is an important contributor to river baseflow, but the exact extent of this contribution is not known due to limited scientific studies and evidence.
• Agriculture in the high mountains and the mid-hills tends to be largely rainfed with supplemental irrigation in the mid-hills. Agriculture in the plains is mostly irrigated. The nature and dynamics of the region’s agriculture are shifting in response to climate and demographic changes.

Challenges

• There are very few meteorological stations at these altitudes and those that exist may not consistently provide data. The lack of reliable data has led to significant anomalies in observed rain and snow data and in observed glacier mass balances.
• The challenge becomes even more acute amidst the impacts of global warming dictating the temporal and spatial flows as well as extreme weather events.
• Synergy and support between state and informal water-management institutions is often lacking. Gender inequity is prevalent in both formal and informal institutions and translates into inequity in access to water.
• Burgeoning cities and small towns in the HKH confront severe water stress from urbanization, which is often unplanned.
• The role and contribution of springs to overall water budgets in the region is poorly understood. Groundwater is overexploited in the western plains, while it remains largely untapped in the eastern plains.
• Among the leading causes of poor water governance in the HKH are constantly changing conditions in the ecologically fragile sloping landscape, dispersed settlements, unequal power dynamics, centralised decision making, inadequate opportunities for local communities to influence their water-security decisions, despite the presence of local institutions.
• Pre-monsoon flows are expected to decline, with implications for irrigation, hydropower, and ecosystem services.
• Another use of water—hydropower—is mostly non-consumptive. Yet hydropower can change the timing and location of river flow thereby disrupting natural flow regimes, which can harm other water users, such as local irrigation, capture fisheries and ecosystems.
• The important role of HKH rivers in providing ecosystem services is not well appreciated. Present law and policy frameworks are not adequate to ensure that infrastructure development does not impinge on ecosystem services.

Steps Taken

• In 1983, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development was established in Kathmandu, Nepal, to balance environmental preservation and the need for economic activities for poverty reduction in the region.
• Following the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development and the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the principles of “integrated development” and “sustainability” were declared to be intertwined to encompass ecological, social, and economic imperatives.
• This report assumes the principle that nature organises itself in a systematic and integrated manner I.e., reductionism that has predominated contemporary governance paradigm that interrupts nature’s systems. This new framework for integration of knowledge system is identified in this study as the System of Integrated Knowledge (SINK).
• SINK provides a new paradigm for the governance of water systems. It draws on other disciplinary knowledge systems, including indigenous/local/traditional knowledge; the creation of new knowledge is taking place largely in specialised areas of research. 
• In the past several decades, integration of knowledge at various levels has been thought of, but the articulation of the steps for integration has not progressed to create any significant impact in practice.
• Water governance in the HKH is characterised by hybrid formal-informal regimes with a prevalence of informal institutions at the local level and formal state institutions at national and regional levels.

Steps to be Taken

• To respond to the challenge of a global water crisis, there is a need for a new approach to water governance replacing the present one which is based on a reductionist paradigm. This new approach will have to be based on holistic, inclusive and integrated knowledge.
• The need for a shift has become more urgent in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• A dynamic and symbiotic relationship between such realms of disciplinary knowledge will lead to the synthesis of specialised knowledge and the creation of integrated knowledge. Indeed, water governance experts should manage the integrated and inclusive knowledge through a model of a “knowledge pyramid”: the most consolidated and synthesised knowledge is at the top–often characterised as wisdom.
• The reward system in academic institutions tends to encourage “traditional” research as they are often easier to get published.
• Funding organisations tend to support projects that are practical and time-bound, rather than those that push for the development of integrated interdisciplinary frameworks which are inherently slower and more uncertain.
• To counter the formidable and immediate threats to water security posed by human drivers including climate change, equitable, productive, and sustainable water use should be promoted through decentralised decision making, effective management of urban pollution, improved infrastructure planning, and enhanced regional cooperation.
• Ensuring regional and local water security requires proactive HKH-wide cooperation, specifically in open data sharing among scientists and ministry or agency personnel; conflict management via regional platforms; and investment of public- and private-sector funds for generating and exchanging knowledge, enhancing public awareness, and stimulating action.
• Trade-offs between upstream and downstream water uses; between rural and urban areas; and among irrigation, energy, industrial and other sectors must be carefully managed in order to enhance water security.
• More stations at higher altitudes are urgently needed. We urgently need better scientific knowledge of groundwater in the HKH—especially because millions of mountain people depend directly on springs. More is known about groundwater endowments in the plains.
• Appropriate benefit-sharing norms are needed to ensure that mountain people also benefit from the region’s vast hydropower potential.
• To overcome such reductionist thought, for instance for water resources, the imperative is for the creation of a knowledge system that integrates disciplinary knowledge to generate a holistic understanding.

Road Ahead

• To ensure water security in the HKH, adequate water availability alone is not enough—what is needed is good water governance. Such governance must be politically and culturally tailored to the local, national, and regional contexts.
• SDG Goal 6 is entirely focused on water. While drinking water and sanitation rightly remain central to SDG 6, other considerations have gained importance as well: water quality, wastewater management and reuse, transboundary cooperation, ecosystem services, capacity building, and cooperation. Water security has emerged as a subset of human security.
• Such dependence on the HKH, and the growing demands of freshwater in all the river basins of the HKH, necessitates that it be governed in an informed manner in order to mitigate potential disputes and environmental degradation.