Enviro journalist & researcher, think tanker @ The Stimson Center, @ Center for Climate & Security, @ECDPM. Author of 'The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence'
published on New Security Beat on Sep 25, 2026
As the full horror of August’s disastrous floods in Nepal became apparent, the social media inquest began. Many armchair commentators were quick to blame China, accusing it of withholding all-important warnings. Some even alleged that Beijing had inadvertently triggered the culpable rockslide in the first place (improbably, through construction work many hundreds of miles away).
But while much of that chatter was conspiratorial and seemingly grounded in geopolitical biases, there was at least some cause for suspicion. Recent reports suggest that China had been reluctant to share data on glacier movements and water levels at meetings held earlier this year. Its officials, wed to their habitual secrecy, have done themselves few favors through their smothering of news from the Tibetan side of the disaster zone. Moreover, the very fact that the incident took place just as the weaponization of water appears to be surging globally made it all too understandable that some Nepalis assumed hostile intent. Many times bitten; consistently shy.
Much of this focus on water in war centers on explicit forms of targeting, notably in the Gulf where Iran and the US have both attacked desalination facilities. But largely overlooked, if arguably no less important, is the intangible side of this trend. As water becomes less predictably available, more states appear to be withholding data indispensable to downstream parties. More states appear to be deploying it to sometimes-aggressive ends. The consequences of this new-ish spin on an age-old tactic may ultimately pose as serious a challenge to inter-state relations as the use of more overt violence.
Not all of these incidents constitute willful weaponization, of course. The maxim about never attributing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence applies as much here as it does in many other domains. Water data frequently doesn’t exist. In many poorer states in particular, officials may not admit to deficiencies for fear of underscoring their limited capacity. But when failures to divulge strategically vital information at politically febrile times in already-contested river basins lead to patterns of harm, parties to these disputes forfeit the presumption of innocence.
Not all of these incidents constitute willful weaponization, of course. The maxim about never attributing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence applies as much here as it does in many other domains. Water data frequently doesn’t exist. In many poorer states in particular, officials may not admit to deficiencies for fear of underscoring their limited capacity. But when failures to divulge strategically vital information at politically febrile times in already-contested river basins lead to patterns of harm, parties to these disputes forfeit the presumption of innocence.
Naturally, forms of water data weaponization vary from place to place. Sometimes it involves countries neglecting to inform downstream peers about imminent releases from dams after heavy rainfall. Among many examples, Egypt and Sudan have repeatedly held Ethiopia responsible for deadly transboundary flooding. Most recently, late last year, the downstream states accused Addis Ababa of overwhelming flood defenses and compromising their own hydroelectric generation. Though such acts are not necessarily deliberate, downstreamers may be disinclined to give upstreamers the benefit of the doubt if these fallouts dovetail with pre-existing negative expectations of the other’s behavior. In other words, whether actually hostile or not, such actions are liable to be interpreted as such.
Conversely, failures to manage cross-border surges of water can sometimes fuel domestic fury. Nigerians have condemned their officials’ apparent inability to handle releases from Cameroon, which have inundated vast tracts of land.
Sometimes data weaponization involves upstream states hoarding drought figures, leading to unexpectedly severe downstream water shortages, as Iraqi policymakers have frequently alleged of neighboring Turkey and Iran. These “crimes of omission,” as opposed to the ‘crimes of commission’ that come with unreported dam releases, are harder to prove, but can still prompt equal or greater anger. For years, Baghdad has complained about a lack of transparency regarding the quality of winter rains across the largely Turkish headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which officials say has sometimes left them with insufficient time to manage shortages, especially at the height of ISIS’s ascendancy when Iraqi officials lacked access to many of their own river gauges. Iraqi environmentalists say something similar of Iran. Around Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, they’ve periodically relied on friends or colleagues over the border to report back on the upstream health of cross-border waterways, such as the Sirwan River.
Amid intensifying great power games and other geopolitical competition, this trend can even encompass disrupted flows of previously shared climate data––with all the impacts on water cycles that might accompany that. For example, ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has withheld data from almost a quarter of the field bases on which scientists rely for data. In the process, it may have compromised the accuracy of some of the models that European governments require to better understand the impact of a region that has an outsized impact on drought and floods across the continent.
Tracking Trends in Withholding
But despite the context-specific nature of much of this weaponization, a few common threads run through it all. First, this phenomenon is particularly pronounced among authoritarian states. In general, these nations often see data as something to be guarded, rather than shared. This is especially true for upstream riparian states, which naturally feel they have more to lose from transparency.
For example, China is broadly perceived as deliberately denying downstream Mekong basin peers access to data from its dams––both because obfuscating the facts serves it and its tremendous appetites well, and because, like other upstream behemoths, it simply can vis-à-vis smaller neighbors. Given that democracy is seemingly ebbing in many regions, and that there are more states with zero-sum––and zero-information––mindsets, these attitudes may become more pronounced over time.
Data opacity can also be a means for upstreamers in contested river basins to muddy the metaphorical waters and deny downstreamers a firm grasp of how much water they’re actually retaining, especially during periods of scarcity. Without universally accepted figures, states may lack definitive proof that they’re losing out, however strong their suspicions might be. This, too, is nothing new, of course. Knowledge is power, etcetera, etcetera. But it’s becoming more problematic as climate stresses intensify, with at least 100 large, globally significant rivers experiencing severe and often-unpredictable fluctuations in their flows.
Above all, this data weaponization can be a way for hostile parties to keep one another on their toes, or to strike blows in a broader tussle, without displaying provably belligerent behavior. After all, who’s to verify that a destructive flood was an act of aggression, rather than a blameless and unfortunate act of God?
Certainly, New Delhi felt that it had been on the receiving end of Chinese hydro-aggression in 2017 when, hot on the heels of a tense military standoff on their shared border, Beijing began withholding data from the Brahmaputra River. According to reports, China blamed the cutoff on infrastructure renewal work, while simultaneously transmitting data to Bangladesh, further downstream. When a flood struck the Indian state of Assam soon afterward, dozens died and hundreds of thousands were displaced in a disaster that officials maintained need not have been as devastating had local forecasts been supplemented with upstream data.
Not that India is necessarily above playing such games itself. Bangladeshi officials have hinted that their citizens suffered from similar shenanigans following the 2024 toppling of the government of Sheikh Hasina, which was aligned with India. Once-regular updates about water releases on shared rivers became less regular. Weeks later, millions of people were affected by a deluge worsened by the sudden and unexpected release of water from behind an Indian dam.
There’s reason to believe that the situation may worsen. Water weaponization, once widely practiced, can be hard to suppress, especially amid a general breakdown in international human rights law. Like copycat crimes, the weaponization of water data can––and seemingly is–– begetting more acts of this nature. The climate backdrop really isn’t helping either, both because these shocks and stresses increase the danger of non-cooperation and because they can maximize the incentive to withhold information during increasingly frequent and intense droughts.
But there’s also genuine cause for optimism. Independent mechanisms, such as the Stimson Center’s Mekong Dam Monitor, have helped empower vulnerable downstreamers by equipping them with data that upstream hegemons often won’t. The use of AI may further reduce the cost of access for some data-poor riparians. And for every instance of states reducing or instrumentalizing water data, there are cases of others persisting through hostilities, as India and Pakistan have broadly done in maintaining most water cooperation through a recent war, or even reviving dormant ties despite political pressure to do otherwise. Overcoming mutual political suspicion, Iraq and Syria restarted some Euphrates water data sharing this year. The arrangement may have yielded immediate benefits, with Damascus’ warnings seemingly pivotal to preventing the kind of downstream losses that Syria itself sustained.
Over the coming years, there’s every chance that water will emerge as an even bigger bone of contention between states––and within them––than it has been in recent decades. Data weaponization is liable to surge accordingly. As this practice proliferates, it will be incumbent on the governments and organizations that remain invested in data transparency to help fill gaps. Without that assistance, the damage could be considerable.