Sharing water: engineering the Indus Water Treaty

When Pakistan and India achieved independence in 1947, their boundaries and the disputed state of Kashmir lay directly across the vast and vital Indus river basin. This quickly led to a still-simmering row over territorial rights and a similarly entrenched but more resolved conflict on water rights. During ten years of negotiations, which involved engineers rather than politicians and using the World Bank as mediator, the two countries finally concluded the Indus Water Treaty in 1960. This paper describes how the treaty was arrived at, its provisions for separate management and water sharing, the many, often massive, control schemes that have been built or attempted since and the lessons learned for future cross-border water disputes.