For people living in coastal areas rivers and lakes are not ubiquitously available. They thus depend on groundwater for their needs, which leads to probabilities of saline water ingression. Groundwater close to the coast can be easily laden with salt, especially when the equilibrium between coastal aquifers and sea water is disturbed.
N.C. Mondal, V.P. Singh, V.S. Singh and V.K. Saxena in their paper titled ‘Determining the interaction between groundwater and saline water through groundwater major ions chemistry’ (2010) analyze that salt water ingression due to this mixing can occur due to a variety of pathways, and the degree to which this interaction can occur depends upon topography, sub-surface hydraulic properties, temporal variation in precipitation, local groundwater flow patterns, tidal and estuarine activity, sea level rise, low filtration, and excessive withdrawal.
They also opine that sea water can also reach inland aquifers through extraordinary events such as natural hazards i.e, through tsunamis and hurricanes. Apart from contaminating the groundwater, saline water ingression also affects the fertility of the soil, stunting agricultural production and ecosystems.
In a separate paper by V.K. Saxena, N.C. Mondal and V.S. Singh, titled ‘Identification of sea-water ingress using strontium and boron in Krishna Delta’ (2003) talk about the decrease in the fertility in the soil in the Krishna river delta in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh due to rapid sea water ingression.
Although known for high agricultural yields, over 70 per cent of the population in the Krishna river delta depend on groundwater for their water needs, and employ hand pumps, dug wells and dug-cum-bore wells for this purpose. Increasing salinity of groundwater over decades is turning most of the fertile land into wasteland and it is reported that there has also been a decrease in the cultivation rate.
The authors cite the chief causes for saline water ingression in the region as (i) increasing urbanization, (ii) an increasing number of bore wells, dug wells and hand pumps put to use. They note the chief cause for saline water ingression in the area as the pumping out of excessive groundwater through hand pumps, dug wells and dug-cum-bore wells.
India’s sea boundary is about 7500 km in length, stretching from the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat to the Sunderbans in West Bengal. The continental shelf in the western coast is much narrower than the eastern coast, and is littered with backwaters and mud flats, while the eastern coast is composed mainly of river deltas and estuaries. In India, according to data from the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), saline water can lie over an aquifer, freshwater can lie over saline water, or an alternatively arranged sequence of freshwater and saline water aquifers can occur (CGWB, 2017).
Two areas in India face the most acute problem with saline water ingression, namely, Minjur, Tamil Nadu and the Chorwad-Porbandar belt in the Saurashtra coast (Ground Water Quality Features of the Country, CGWB, 2017).
Saline banks descending inland are present in an 8 to 10 km stretch in Odisha in its Subarnrekha, Salandi and Brahamani regions. The Pondicherry region also reports marked saline water ingression, eastwards from the Neyveli lignite mines (CGWB, 2008).
Conserving India’s Groundwater
S.C. Dhiman and D.S. Thambi in their paper titled ‘Groundwater management in Coastal Areas’ (2010) suggest several measures for the management of aquifers in India –
- In the event of severe groundwater problem, an alternative water source or a suitable remedial measure must be found.
- Restrictions must be placed on groundwater withdrawal in these areas to prevent over-exploitation of groundwater sources.
- Awareness must be created among the masses about groundwater quality in these areas.
- A policy document, like the Model Groundwater Regulation Bill, must be instituted for equitable distribution of the resource.
- Threatened aquifers require the establishment of a buffer zone along the coast.
- The Coastal Regulation Act must include proper provisions for saline water ingression.
As groundwater accounts for about 85 per cent of rural drinking water, and bore well irrigation increased by 60 per cent between 1960-61 to 2006-07 (CGWB, 2017), the Indian government has increasingly felt the need for management of groundwater resources. This is especially pertinent in a country largely with seasonal rainfall where agriculture meets its water requirements mostly with groundwater.
With these considerations in mind, the government under the Central Ground Water Board instituted the National Project on Aquifer Mapping in the 12th and 13th Five Year Plan under the Ministry of Water Resources.
This undertakes documentation of aquifers combined with mapping, management and implementation of its goals. The project is meant to pave the way for a participatory groundwater management programme that is based on comprehensive coordination at all levels such as between government institutions, research institutes, civil society and local level operatives garnering raw data.
The government has also instituted the Indian National Committee on Groundwater (INCGW) for research on groundwater resources (CGWB, 2017). Although it is not known how far reaching the participatory programme will be in practice, these represent a tilt in policy towards proper enumeration and management of groundwater resources in India, that could eventually steer the policy infrastructure towards management of saline water ingress in India, that acts to reduce soil fertility in certain regions, thus hampering agricultural productivity.
However, groundwater resources are not fully documented in India and its management is quite nascent. The Ministry of Water Resources drafted the Model Bill for Conservation, Protection and Regulation of Groundwater in 2016 with the purpose of moving groundwater away from the Easements Act as private property to groundwater held by government as a public trust (Vishwanath, 2016).
Part of its stipulations include the notification of certain areas for the management of groundwater to be undertaken by State governments, with a clause that withdrawal from aquifers shall not disturb the natural equilibrium of water in these aquifers. This could establish limits on the otherwise excess extraction that frequently causes sea water to rush into aquifers, thus increasing saline water ingression.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.