The region’s 1.7 billion people face rapidly dwindling water resources, pushing South Asia on top of water stressed regions in the world.
About 4,500 years ago, the Indus Valley civilization that had flourished in northern and western parts of the Indian subcontinent disappeared.
Almost four millennia later, the area that was home to this civilization is facing another existential threat and once again due to scarcity of water and climate change.
On top of the increased consumption, global warming and climate change has led to erratic rainfall and melting of the hundreds of glaciers that feed the rivers flowing through the basin, dramatically reducing the availability of fresh water in the entire Indian subcontinent.
As a result, the three countries in northern part of the subcontinent, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are now amongst the eight most water stressed countries in the entire world.
Measuring the waters For South Asia, the Himalayas are the only permanent reservoir of water, ensuring year-round flow in dozens of rivers that flow through these countries and provide water to the hundreds of millions of people living in the Indo-Gangetic river basin for all their needs.
Even under the most conservative climate change scenarios, net cereal production for South Asian countries is expected to tumble by at least 4 to 10 percent.
The worsening water shortage is likely to heighten tensions between India and Pakistan and water could turn into a flashpoint between the two nations, who have had trouble over sharing natural water resources, especially of the six rivers flowing from India into Pakistan, from the time of independence.
Now, the two countries are battling over a couple of hydroelectric projects that India is constructing over the Chenab river, even though the waters of the Chenab were meant to be exclusively for use by Pakistan.
While the two nations are trying to resolve the dispute over Chenab, a planned dam in Afghanistan has again dragged the two nations in a verbal duel.