Pakistan needs smarter water management

Pakistan's recurring floods, chronic water shortages and increasingly unpredictable river flows are often cited as evidence that the country needs more dams – a perception which is being reinforced by the Indus Waters Treaty being held in abeyance by India. Storage is certainly important. But focusing only on storage is not enough. Pakistan also needs to become far smarter about how it measures, allocates and manages the water it already has.

Development agencies have long emphasised the need for systematic measurement of water availability, consumption and use as a prerequisite for better water planning. In Pakistan, some effort is now being made to use satellite imagery and remote sensing to manage water. But these efforts need to go much further.

At present, water-related data being gathered remain fragmented across federal institutions, provincial irrigation departments and disaster-management bodies. What Pakistan needs is an integrated national water-information architecture linking institutions such as WAPDA, the Federal Flood Commission, provincial irrigation departments and relevant disaster authorities. Data should not merely be collected, it should be standardised, integrated and made accessible to the institutions, researchers and planners who need this information.

This is where artificial intelligence can help transform water management. For Pakistan, potential AI applications could also be significant. Better weather and hydrological forecasting could help authorities decide when to store water, when to draw down reservoirs, and when to increase downstream releases. AI-assisted models could combine rainfall forecasts, snow and glacier melt, reservoir levels, river flows and historical patterns to improve flood preparedness.

Pakistan claims to be moving in this direction already with satellite imagery apparently being used to monitor potentially dangerous glacial lakes. Institutions such as SUPARCO are now said to be supporting early warning and preparedness for glacial lake outburst floods as well. The recent disasters in Chitral demonstrate the urgent need for making such collaborations more robust. Satellite data and multi-criteria modelling can identify high-risk glacial lakes in the Chitral River Basin. However, the challenge is also to convert such information into operational early-warning systems that can also reach communities in time.

Technology thus provides only half the solution. A genuinely smart-water strategy must also be socio-ecologically sound. Yet, Pakistan has often approached water development mainly as an engineering and economic problem. But rivers are not pipes, and water is not only an input into economic production. Rivers sustain entire delta ecosystems and millions of livelihoods.

Pakistan should apply a 'smart lens' to its water policy. Before approving a major project, policymakers should ask not only how much power it will produce or how much water it will store, but also what it will do to downstream sediment, groundwater recharge, fisheries, wetlands and riverine ecosystems.

Obviousness to these issues implies a major cost. The current state of the Indus delta offers a serious warning. Despite its own decade-long enthusiasm for dam construction, the World Bank recently noted that sediment discharge to the delta has fallen sharply after the construction of major upstream dams, which contributes to shoreline recession and other ecological harms.

Pakistan needs a wider portfolio of solutions to manage its water resources. Reservoirs are needed only where they make economic and ecological sense. Improved floodplain management, groundwater recharge, wetlands restoration, better drainage, rainwater harvesting and small-scale storage also need more urgent attention. Groundwater is especially important.

Pakistan must move from "more water infrastructure" to "smarter water management". Pakistan cannot control when the monsoon arrives or how quickly glaciers melt. But it can control how intelligently it responds to these changes.