Opinion (Spotlight Weekly)

Landlocked Austria's Lessons For Nepal

By A.B. THAPA

Nepal and Austria, both landlocked countries, have been raising their voice on rights of such countries in various international forums and meetings. Inland waterways can greatly facilitate landlocked countries to get easy access to the sea. Thus, Nepal and Austria both have given priority to waterway development in their national policy documents.

Austria has left no stone unturned to translate the policy into deeds. A master plan covering the whole Austrian reach of Danube navigation was prepared immediately after the Second World War. Stage-wise implementation of the master plan has been in progress since 1953.

As far as Nepal is concerned, the development of inland waterways has remained an empty rhetoric. The 1997 Indo-Nepal agreement to conduct a detailed feasibility study of a navigation canal linking Nepal through India with the Ganges is a major landmark. This agreement has paved the way for developing the most effective means of transportation to provide Nepal an access to the sea. India has endorsed the Nepalese proposal to build a 165-km navigation canal out of which 120 km would be in Indian territory. India has also agreed to bear the entire cost of the feasibility study.

Nepal should have promptly taken the initiative to conduct the feasibility study. We should also be encouraging government organizations and academic institutions to be involved in studies necessary for comprehensive planning of the Kosi canal waterway. The National Planning Commission should play the lead role. Regrettably, hardly any institution in Nepal is showing interest in pressing ahead with the navigation canal studies.

Nepal can learn a great deal from Austria's long-drawn efforts to develop the Danube waterway to overcome some of the difficulties it was facing as a landlocked country. The Danube waterway development has taken place in two stages. Originally, it was connected only with the Black Sea. After the completion of the Danube-Main Canal recently, this waterway has been connected with the North Sea also.

The Danube River

The river Danube enters Austria from Germany. The length of the Austrian reach of the Danube is about 350 km. After crossing several countries, this river empties into the Black Sea.

Before the First World War, the total annual traffic on the Danube was estimated at 13 million tons. In 1966, the tonnage transported on the river was 45 million tons. Of the great European nations, Austria alone had been interested in the early nineteenth century in Danube trade. At that time, a free Danube was more vital to Austria than any other European nation.

The Austrian reach of the Danube has an average gradient of 0.04 percent. The high gradient involves not only a high energy potential but also a small channel depth due to high flow velocities. Multipurpose projects on the Danube could provide the required improvement for navigation as well as hydroelectric energy. A master plan covering the whole Austrian reach of the Danube was prepared after the Second World War. The plan, subsequently modified, has identified 12 dam projects with power stations. Among the existing Danube projects, the Melk Project has the lowest head (mean) of 8.4 m. The Project Aschach has the highest mean head of 15.3 m. Freudenau is the most recent low-head scheme to be completed within the city of Vienna. The project development authority, in cooperation with the City of Vienna, following strong public opposition to plans for the construction of a dam on the Danube at Hainburg in the 1980s, developed the Freudenau scheme in such a way that, as the design was presented, 72 per cent of the population who voted approved the scheme.

The dimensions of the locks for shipping on Danube have been laid down by the International Danube Convention. It requires that twin locks 24 m in width and 230 m in effective length be provided within the Austrian reach of the Danube. One of the two chambers will be 34 m wide and 275 m in effective length up to Vienna. All the locks are to be designed for an uniform filling time of approximately 15 minutes so as to accomplish a uniform capacity of about 40 million tons for each scheme on the river Danube.

The Rhine-Main-Danube Link

The Main-Danube Canal has already opened in Germany. Now Vienna Harbour has year-round direct navigation access to all the main western European river ports and the North Sea. The Rhine-Main- Danube Link project comprises of several components. They are the canalization of a 301-km stretch of the Main from Ashaffenburg, improvement on a 208 km long stretch of the Danube between Kelheim in Germany and the Austro-German frontier near Jochenstein, and construction of a 168-km Main-Danube connecting canal from Bamberg to Kelheim in Germany.

The implementation of the Main-Danube waterway began in 1921 with the creation of a German company that would canalize sections of the Danube and Main rivers and also build a canal between Bamberg and Kelheim to link these two rivers. Stairstep locks on the Main River lift barge traffic to Bamberg, northern entry point to the canal. From there 11 locks raise ships to the highest point on any commercial waterway in Europe. Five more locks then lower vessels to Kelheim, the southern terminus of the canal. Some works to build this link canal was started as early as 793 AD by the Franco-German Emperor Charlemagne, but he abandoned the project after two months. In 1837, King Ludwig I of Bavaria also tried but he too virtually failed. The remnants of the Ludwig Canal can even now be seen.

Kosi Canal Waterway

The Kosi navigation canal could open up exciting possibilities for the expansion of trade and industrial growth in Nepal as well as North Bihar. It would greatly help to improve the economies of our region. Therefore, the Kosi canal waterway is important not just because Nepal is landlocked. The Kosi canal waterway could provide Nepal and North Bihar an exceptionally cheap mode of transportation particularly for bulk cargoes if this canal waterway is developed on a par with the Farakka navigation canal and structures in size.

The Kosi canal waterway can be developed for the operation of big barges at a relatively low cost as one of the components of the multipurpose Kosi development scheme. The Kosi waterway can provide access to the industrial and commercial centers at Calcutta and Haldia on the downstream side of the Ganges river. Similarly, centers like Patna and Allahabad on the upstream side of the Ganges would also be linked. Normally by comparison with roadway or railway the waterway distance is much longer, but luckily for us, the distance by Kosi canal waterway from Nepal to Calcutta or Haldia will almost be equivalent to the distance by railway or roadway.

The Kosi canal navigation as perceived by the Water and Energy Commission would be on a par with the shallow draft water carrier operation in the United States where a standard depth of 9 feet has been adopted. Operation of inland navigation on this scale would be very convenient for moving goods and equipment that are too big and heavy. This is a very big advantage for any landlocked country. The United States had used the barge service to transport the Saturn space vehicle boosters built at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. No other means of transportation had the capacity to move them. On its 2,261-mile journey to Cape Kennedy in Florida, the Saturn traveled by a special modified barge down the Tennessee River and the Ohio River.

Nepal should draw the important lesson from Austria that big water resource projects in general and the inland waterway in particular cannot be developed overnight. A very long period of dedicated and sincere work would be needed.

(The writer is water resource expert)