Brahma Chellani's column: China's giant dams will prove to be a water-bomb for the world

Do you know which place China has chosen to build the world's largest dam? It is one of the most complex geopolitical and seismically unstable regions in the world. Just a few kilometers from the border with India, China is building an unprecedented project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. It is the world's highest-flowing major river. It is called the Brahmaputra in India. This huge dam will also leave China's Three Gorges Dam far behind in terms of power generation capacity, which is currently the largest dam in the world. Its reservoir will hold a huge reservoir of water above the population of millions living in India's northeast and delta Bangladesh. The most worrying warnings about this are coming from China's own scientists, not from foreign critics. A recent research paper has identified serious geological hazards at the construction site. Geologists conclude that the topography here is fragile. They warn that the upcoming earthquakes here could cause massive devastation, as they could endanger both the reservoir and the surrounding infrastructure. The authors recommend strengthening the reservoir's slopes, installing retaining structures, and redesigning key parts of the project to reduce the risk of disaster. When scientists working under a communist regime issue such warnings, the international community must heed them. The new dam is being built on the Great Bend of the Brahmaputra River, where the river descends with a steep slope through the world's deepest and longest canyon before entering India. It is located right in the middle of the Himalayan seismic belt, formed by the slow collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. It is one of the most earthquake-prone regions on Earth and has a long record of devastating earthquakes. The danger is not only that an earthquake could damage a dam. A huge reservoir itself can also trigger earthquakes by increasing the geologic pressure. One possible example of this was in China. In one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern China's history, the 2008 earthquake on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau killed many people, most of them in Sichuan province. Scientists still debate the reasons for this, but an influential research concluded that the massive weight of water stored in the reservoir of the new Jipingpu Dam may have increased the pressure on a crack below and may have caused that earthquake decades or centuries earlier. But instead of seriously confronting this scientific possibility, China has embarked on an even bigger dam project, in an even more fragile geologic area. But the Himalayan ecosystem does not care about national boundaries; Nor will the consequences of the collapse of a major dam. The powerful Myanmar earthquake in 2025 was a testament to the extent to which this seismic zone is interconnected. The tremors were felt as far as Bangkok, about 1,000 km away, where a high-rise building collapsed. The Brahmaputra is the lifeline of northeast India. In India, it irrigates farmlands, supports fisheries and is the basis of livelihood for millions of people. It is the largest source of freshwater in Bangladesh. Like the huge dams built by China on the Mekong River, this super-dam also threatens to alter the flow of the river across the border and reduce the reach of nutrient-rich sediment to the lowlands. Releasing stagnant water in the reservoir in an emergency situation can also cause catastrophic flooding in densely populated low-lying plains. What starts with an engineering failure in Tibet can turn into a human tragedy that stretches to Bangladesh. It is clear that China has made water another tool of diplomatic pressure. The Himalayan ecosystem does not respect national boundaries; Nor will the consequences of the collapse of a major dam. The Myanmar earthquake in 2025 was a testament to the extent to which this seismic zone is interconnected. (@प्रोजेक्ट Syndicate)