Damn our obsession with dams

Despite having freshwater resources in abundance, Pakistan is significantly water-stressed, and on its way to becoming a water-scarce country. The increasingly populous country has not been able to address unchecked exploitation of groundwater and the inefficient irrigational practices in agriculture, which uses up well over 90% of all the water consumed nationally. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which sustain the rivers flowing from the Indus basin via India into Pakistan, necessitates an urgent rethink of our existing water management strategies.

The World Bank-brokered Indus Water Treaty (IWT) of 1960 merely bifurcates the six major rivers flowing from the Indus. Pakistan has been allocated three western tributaries of the Indus, which allows it to use 80% of all the water flowing through the Indus. However, the IWT was put into effect when global warming was not a known concept, and the treaty itself enabled a spree of damming projects based on the ill-informed view that allowing river waters to naturally flow into the sea was a waste of freshwater.

With the support of donors, both India and Pakistan have now built numerous dams, barrages and canals on the Indus. Yet, the growing demand for water on both sides of the contested border has led to growing water disputes, and India has recently informed Pakistan that it wants to renegotiate the IWT's terms, to potentially allow India to build more infrastructure on the western rivers allocated to Pakistan.

Furthermore, water sharing disputes between Punjab and lower riparian province of Sindh and Balochistan are also a growing problem. Yet, Pakistan continues placing faith in disruptive top-heavy interventions to address its water woes. Various governments have poured money into the extension of the irrigation system that had been put in place by the British raj and commissioned the construction of new dams and barrages to harness river-waters for agriculture and to generate hydroelectricity. These infrastructural interventions have caused havoc for our river ecosystems and led to major waterlogging and salinity. Pakistan wants to construct more dams even though the existing river damming has significantly reduced the outflow of water into the Arabian sea, leading to significant sea water intrusion into coastal areas, which is contaminating underground aquifers.

Dealing with these complex challenges requires our policymakers to explore more sustainable means to utilise and conserve our precious rivers. There is growing momentum around the world to allow rivers to flow freely by removing intrusive infrastructure on major transborder rivers such as the Rhine and Danube in Europe. Nearly 2,000 dams have also been removed across the US in recent years. Although the lingering animosity between India and Pakistan does not allow the two neighbours to coordinate the removal of dams all along the Indus, Pakistan itself can explore this approach of restoring the free flow of the rivers given to it by the IWT.

Hydrologists like Hassan Abbas have been calling for ditching the dam-centric approach and instead adopting the flowing river model in an incremental manner by first removing downstream diversion dams, such as the Kotri Barrage. Instead of pouring money into rehabilitating Kotri Barrage and building more irrigational canals which waste water via seepage and evaporation, Abbas suggests using low-cost pipes to carry water to surrounding farmlands. It would be good to see the government assess the feasibility of such out-of-the-box proposals, and to gradually replicate them, if initial efforts prove to be more efficient in providing water to end-users, in addition to delivering varied environmental benefits.

Maybe the 'Living Indus' initiative, now working on a range of restoration measures including mangroves restoration and glacial grafting, can also pay heed to this possibility of restoring the natural flow of the Indus tributaries within Pakistan, which may pave the way for adopting a similar model within upper riparian India as well.