Expert warns of worsening groundwater crisis

ISLAMABAD:

Groundwater depletion becomes worse as it reaches dangerous levels in various parts of Pakistan because of excessive domestic, agricultural and commercial use without any strict regulation against extraction.

While speaking at the second leg of a Special Talk on 'Water Resources Management in Pakistan', organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), renowned water expert and SDPI Senior Advisor Naseer Memon said on Monday that depleting groundwater was a serious cause of concern.

Memon cited the statistic that Indus Basin aquifer which primarily covers Pakistan has been ranked as the 2nd most over-stressed underground water reserve in the world. He said that this issue needs the government's immediate attention.

He said that the exponential growth of Pakistan's urban population was the single largest concern that demanded special attention of policy makers to ensure water security.

He shared that in Quetta, the water table has dropped from about 50 metres in 2000 to over 150 metres by 2023, in Lahore, the water table drops by an average of 2.61 feet annually, in Rawalpindi, it has been decreasing by approximately 30 feet since 2013 while Karachi only receives 650 MGDs against a daily demand of over 1,200 MGDs.

He maintained that over one-third (35 to 40 per cent) of piped water is wasted through leakages and theft in the water distribution networks, which needs to be checked and stopped. He said that agriculture alone consumes over 90 percent of the extracted groundwater whereas over 60 percent of irrigation requirements are met by pumping water from the Indus Basin.

The number of agricultural tubewells in Punjab has soared from 334,000 in 1994 to over 1.2 million in 2024, which collectively withdraw over 51 MAF of groundwater annually.