Tabarrok - Rivers Are Now Battlefields (2025)
Publication: Works in Progress, Issue 20 (September 2025) Author: Connor Tabarrok URL: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/rivers-are-now-battlefields/
Summary
Tabarrok argues that transboundary rivers have become acute geopolitical flashpoints because dam infrastructure gives upstream nations coercive leverage over downstream populations. The centrepiece is China’s position atop the Tibetan Plateau, which sources water for nearly two billion people. China’s dam-building programme — including the planned Yarlung Zangbo dam (three times the Three Gorges) and diversions totalling 200.6 billion cubic metres per year — represents an unprecedented concentration of water control.
International governance has comprehensively failed: the 2013 Beijing-Delhi MoU was non-binding, the 1995 Mekong Agreement collapsed. The proposed solution is solar-powered desalination, which could make downstream nations independent of upstream control by providing an alternative freshwater source.
Key Claims
- China controls chokepoints affecting water supply for ~2 billion people → water-as-geopolitical-weapon
- The Three Parallel Rivers corridor enables inter-basin diversion at continental scale
- Diplomatic solutions have structurally failed due to asymmetric leverage
- Solar-powered desalination could bypass the geopolitical impasse → desalination-as-geopolitical-bypass
- China’s own water crisis (28,000 of 60,000 rivers lost) drives diversion domestically
Methodology / Approach
Geopolitical analysis combining hydrological data, infrastructure assessment, and diplomatic history. Case studies of the Indus Waters Treaty, Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Mekong dams, and Daryan Dam.
Limitations
Underestimates the gap between coastal desalination and inland agricultural water delivery. Rivers provide sediment, fisheries, transport, and ecosystem services that desalinated water cannot replicate. The strategic geography may persist even with desalination. Understates the degree to which China’s dam-building serves genuine domestic needs rather than being purely coercive.