Hydropower development in South Asia: Data challenges, new approaches, and implications for decision-making

In recent years scholars have advanced our understanding of the biophysical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical impacts of dams and hydropower infrastructure around the globe. Databases and maps have emerged that allow global comparisons between countries and river basins. However, reliable and freely available data do not exist for many regions. As a result, data limitations and quality issues persist, which limit the quality of analyses based on these datasets. This is particularly true in regions where hydropower infrastructure development is proceeding most rapidly, including South Asia's Third Pole region. We identify and describe serious quantitative and qualitative data dilemmas of existing databases. We divide these into location, size, type, and status. At the most basic level, these dilemmas mean that incorrect location and, more importantly, massive underrepresentation of existing and future projects generates incorrect conclusions. That underrepresentation results largely from uncritically equating absence of data with absence of infrastructure. We also argue that project function should be more reliably recorded (for both dams and hydropower projects), that project status should be clear (many existing projects are still passed off as future), and that smaller projects should be systematically recorded (their cumulative importance is often underestimated). These four dilemmas all have important implications for analyses based on existing datasets. The World Index of Hydropower, Dams, and Reservoirs (WIHDR) described here represents a major advance on all four points. For the first time, 652 existing hydropower plants (277 large and 375 small), 162 under construction, and 720 planned hydropower plants have been georeferenced and systematically recorded for the Indus-Ganga-Brahmaputra region.