Death of mangroves

Letter November 03, 2012
We badly need more dams but by blaming existing dams for our water shortage troubles we are cutting our own feet.

LAHORE: Several reports in the media in Pakistan have said that dams and irrigation canals reduce the amount of water reaching our mangrove forests in the country’s south. This is contrary to the facts, since the very purpose of building dams is to increase the availability of water.

The Mangla dam was built to replace the waters lost to India as part of the Indus Waters Treaty. Also, did not the Tarbela dam increase supplies to Pakistan’s irrigation canals by 25 per cent. As a result of  Tarbela, Sindh began receiving an additional seven million acre-feet of water, which it used to cultivate an additional 2.7 million acres of land.

The total cultivated area in the country increased from 19.5 million hectares before Tarbela to 22 million hectares after the dam was built. Take away Mangla and Tarbela dams and Pakistan will become a desert. Dams and barrages work in tandem. Surplus flood water is stored in the dams from where it flows down to the barrages. The dams feed the barrages which in turn feed the irrigation canals. It is not at the dams but at the barrages that rivers get depleted. However, without the barrages, there would be no irrigation. We badly need more dams but by blaming existing dams for our water shortage troubles we are cutting our own feet.

Engr Khurshid Anwer

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2012.