Water down the drain

Water is once again at the top of the national agenda, though there is little by way of perceptible urgency in addressing the water crisis at governmental level. Pakistan is losing millions of gallons of valuable water and it need not. A seminar titled “International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development 2018-28” heard on Thursday that Pakistan is storing only 10 per cent of the water that passes through; and it needs to store 40 per cent if it is to stave off an existential water crisis that is going to peak in 2025 — a mere seven years away.

It is estimated that Pakistan has lost $90 billion worth of water in the recurrent floods since 2010. There is an urgent need for dams, a groundwater regulatory framework and an urgent brake applied to population growth. Individually and collectively these present a set of challenges that far outweigh anything that terrorism and extremism can inflict upon the population — even were a Taliban government to take power tomorrow the water crisis would still have to be addressed, it is impervious to ideology.

Priorities need to change, long-held positions politically reviewed and the nation needs to be walked back from a course that is unsustainable whatever the politics or ideology of the individual. This cannot be emphasised more strongly or urgently. Obsolete agricultural practices are depleting the groundwater and accelerating the salination of otherwise fertile soil. Every new mouth human or animal is going to need water all its life. Those that are expert in water management opine that it is possible to head off, for the most part, the more damaging elements of the water crisis. Never has the Indus Waters Treaty been more important, formulated as it was in the days before global warming and climate change were understood as they are today. Pakistan cannot afford the luxury of prevarication because time is running out as fast as the water that drains into the Indian Ocean. Act now.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2018.

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