Deepening water crisis

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Pakistan is hurtling towards an environmental emergency that demands urgent national attention. At the heart of this looming disaster is the rapid and largely unregulated over-extraction of groundwater, a practice that is steadily depleting aquifers and pushing vital freshwater ecosystems towards collapse. The threat is not distant; it is unfolding before our eyes.

Scientists warn that nearly half of the world's population could be living in water-stressed river basins by 2030 if current trends persist. For Pakistan, where water availability per capita has already plunged to alarmingly low levels, such projections translate into a fight for survival.

The country's water crisis is aggravated by climate shocks that are growing in frequency and intensity. The 2022 monsoon floods remain a grim reminder of how fragile our water systems have become. These disasters are not isolated events but symptoms of a deeper malaise. When ecosystems lose their ability to regulate water flows, the consequences are deadly, resulting in destruction of livelihoods and worsening of food insecurity.

Yet policy responses remain reactive, piecemeal and politically expedient. Groundwater extraction is still treated as an infinite entitlement rather than a finite resource that must be managed sustainably. Licensing and monitoring mechanisms are either absent or unenforced, while development priorities continue to favour short-term gains over ecological resilience. In many regions, water use is dictated by individual capacity to drill deeper rather than collective responsibility to preserve the commons.

What Pakistan needs is a decisive shift to a nature-positive approach — one that restores wetlands and recharges aquifers while protecting river systems from pollution and encroachment. This requires integrating ecosystem protection into agricultural, industrial and urban planning policies, backed by strict regulation and public accountability. The country must choose whether to bequeath future generations a landscape of thriving rivers and fertile fields, or a barren land where water wars replace the flow of life.