Water tensions in the Himalayas

Hi there Intriguer. North Korea’s list of its top ten businesses just dropped, and it includes a British brewery shipped brick-by-brick from Trowbridge and reassembled in Pyongyang. Poetically, state media once described how the country’s leader visited the spot and watched with “great pleasure” as “good-quality beer came out in an uninterrupted flow for a long while”.

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• ⛰️ Water tensions in the Himalayas.

• 🇨🇱 Does Chile’s new constitution stand a chance?

• ➕ Plus: The cost of smoking, how the papers are covering a new Russian naval base, and what to do in Athens this weekend.

1. 🇰🇵 North Korea: Authorities have reportedly halted the nuclear reactor at North Korea’s main nuclear complex in order to reprocess its spent fuel rods. Reprocessing fuel rods is the first step towards enriched plutonium, which is one of the primary inputs for nuclear weapons.

2. 🇪🇺 EU: Countries in the EU have agreed on new rules overhauling the bloc’s migration policy after Italy unexpectedly blocked an earlier draft last week. The new regulations extend the time to complete asylum and repatriation procedures.

3. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh: Dhaka is struggling with its worst-ever dengue fever outbreak, which has left at least 1,000 dead. The World Health Organization earlier warned that higher temperatures could spur more cases of the mosquito-borne disease.

4. 🇧🇴 Bolivia: President Luis Arce has been expelled from his own party amid an internal power struggle for leadership between Arce and his predecessor, Evo Morales. Both Morales and Arce are vying for party control ahead of the 2025 elections.

5. 🇮🇷 Iran: The US has transferred to Ukraine 1.1 million rounds of ammunition it seized from Iran last year. The US Navy intercepted the cargo in the Persian Gulf, reportedly on its way to Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

🌊 India | Geopolitics

Hydroelectricity in the Himalayas

At least 14 people have died and over 100 are missing in the north-east Indian state of Sikkim, after a cloudburst caused a glacial lake to break its banks and overflow into the valley below.

The flash flood washed away key infrastructure, including the Chungthang / Teesta III Dam, which is one of 5,000 dams in India.

Why does India have so many dams? Like other Himalayan neighbours, such as China and Nepal, India has sought to harness its thousands of rivers for water reservoirs and sustainable energy. Delhi is hoping to generate up to 8.5% of India’s electricity through hydroelectric dams by 2030.

But that’s not easy:

• 🌊 The Himalayan basin is prone to flooding, and it’ll get worse as temperatures rise (a 2014 piece eerily predicted this week’s flood)

• ⚔️ Water scarcity exacerbates regional rivalries: Pakistan often accuses India of diverting water from their shared rivers in violation of the Indus Water Treaty, while both India and China are planning new dams along their own contested border, and

• ⚡ Dams often come with economic and social costs, including the displacement of local communities.

Intrigue's take: We’ve mentioned water a bit lately. We’re not taking money from Big Water or anything. We’re just observing reality as we see it, particularly as it relates to our area of expertise (geopolitics).

India’s energy consumption is projected to rise faster than anywhere else in the world. So the place clearly needs more energy. And it makes sense to harness its own mountains and rivers to help.

But when you start tinkering with a Himalayan biosphere on which 1.9 billion people rely, including your two nuclear-armed neighbours, there are risks. And we’ll be seeing this kind of dynamic play out almost everywhere.

Also worth noting:

• Unlike India and Pakistan, India and China have no water sharing arrangement in place.

• The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (based in Kathmandu) has found that glaciers in the region disappeared 65% faster in the 2010s than in the previous decade.

📰 How newspapers covered…

The announcement of a new Russian base on the Black Sea

* Aslan Bzhania is the de facto leader of Abkhazia, a separatist region of Georgia which declared independence in 1999. 

We want to thank our readers!

🇨🇱 Chile | Politics

Chile considers another constitution

Chile’s Constitutional Council, a body charged with proposing a new constitution, submitted a new draft Wednesday ahead of a nationwide referendum in December.

Sound familiar? In 2019, amid widespread social upheaval, Chileans set out to replace the constitution first written under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. But last year, voters rejected a draft which would’ve (for example):

• 🏥 Implemented a state-funded health system

• 👫 Mandated gender parity in government and companies, and

• 🐮 Recognised animals as sentient beings to be protected.

So now a new Council is proposing this second draft, which (for example):

• Exempts principal residences from property taxes

• Prohibits workers in certain sectors from striking, and

• Expels foreigners who enter unauthorised (except in asylum cases).

According to polling (🇨🇱), just 24% of folks support this draft.

Intrigue’s take: In 2020, almost 80% of Chileans agreed via referendum that the country needed a new constitution. That was the easy bit.

The hard bit was then agreeing what exactly a new constitution should say (and not say). And these days, how do you even do that? Our above random sample of last year’s 178 page draft, and this year’s shorter draft, captures just some of the deep philosophical and ideological issues at play here.

So when, as seems likely, Chileans reject this latest proposal, it might be a reminder for us all that constitutions are hard.

And that’s partly why they’re valuable.

Also worth noting:  

• President Boric has ruled out (🇨🇱) a third referendum if this one fails. That would leave Chile with its current constitution, which has been amended dozens of times since promulgation in 1980.

• France has had 15 constitutions since 1789.

🎧 Today on Intrigue Outloud

An interview with the former foreign minister of Northern Cyprus: is there any hope of resolving the conflict?

➕ Extra Intrigue

Some weekend recommendations if you’re in 🇬🇷 Athens.

• Entertainment: Load up on LoLs at the Athens English Comedy Club, the first purely English comedy club in Greece.

• Culture: Swing by the Hellenic Motor Museum if you’re looking for something to mix it up a little in amongst all that ancient Greece.

• Eat: Looking for an authentic Greek taverna lined with wine barrels and faded family portraits? Give Leloudas a try.

Do you have any weekend tips for folks in your city, anywhere in the world? Just hit reply and send them in! We’ll aim to spotlight a different city each time.

💬 Quote of the day

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced a plan to incrementally raise the smoking age to eventually eliminate cigarettes altogether. The World Health Organization estimates the global economic cost of smoking at around $1.4 trillion per year, or 1.8% of global GDP.

🗳️ Quiz time!

Answers: 1-b, 2-a, 3-c.