Water governance crisis

Sindh's water problems are usually framed as scarcity caused by upstream issues - too little snowmelt, too little rainfall, or too little water released downstream. However, some criticis have noted that this line of argument conveniently absolves the Sindh government of fault in the problem - snowmelt and rainfall are climate change effects, and water release and upstream consumption fall on the federal and Punjab governments. A new study by the FAO agrees with the critics, noting that while the province is short of water, the reasons are far more complex, and even basic things like accurate data are hard to come by. Meanwhile, modern water management rules are a far cry.

The FAO's "Water and Land Accounting in Sindh" report also paints a system that is desperate for meaningful upgrades and reforms. Canal operations, for example, still assume a single-use, gravity-fed irrigation network, yet urban supply lines, local dams, lakes and pumping stations are integral to the system. None of these additions are properly reflected in allocation or monitoring systems. Worse still, the Crop Reporting Service's irrigated-area estimates do not even align with the irrigation department's canal command areas, leaving policymakers to plan based on wildly inaccurate numbers. When data is this unreliable, scarcity is quietly compounded by misallocation.

The consequences are visible on the ground. Tail-end farmers watch water disappear into seepage and unauthorised diversions before it reaches their fields. Sindh's barrages have recently recorded shortages of 43% at Guddu, 44% at Sukkur and 62% at Kotri, while growers accuse the irrigation bureaucracy of corruption and inefficiency. Per capita water availability has fallen to just 1,169 cubic metres in Sindh, edging the province closer to absolute scarcity.

But reforms and infrastructure development are not the only needs of the hour. Until water data collection is improved and accountability in resource management becomes standardised, supply problems will continue getting worse for tail-end users, while powerful interests will continue to profit from disorder.