Water

The current furore over the Chashma-Jhelum link canal is a sick sign of these increasingly water-stressed times: times which will become dire indeed as climate change – read drought for Pakistan – increases on an unprecedented scale in the years to come. Agriculture, on which over half the population depends for a livelihood and on which we all depend for food, currently uses over 70 per cent of the country’s available freshwater, managing to waste approximately 41.4 per cent in the process — if the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council is to be believed.

The farmers who are yelling and screaming for water right now would thus be better employed doing exactly what they will have to do in the long run — vastly improve their water efficiency as, while everyone does have an indisputable right to water, no one has the right to waste it. The agricultural community is far from being alone in its wanton wastage of a disappearing commodity that has always been taken for granted by a certain percentage of the population. Industry also uses far too much water for its own sustainable future and further aggravates the situation through the release of billions of gallons of untreated, therefore heavily polluted, ‘used’ water back into rivers, streams, aquifers and, obviously, into both agricultural and public drinking water supplies.

We are not yet on par with China when it comes to industrial water pollution — 50 per cent of their fabled Yellow River is so seriously polluted that it can no longer be used for agriculture and over 50 per cent of the surface water in the Hai River Basin is now too dangerous to be used for anything at all. And unless things alter dramatically the Indus River, our country’s lifeblood, could eventually follow suit. Back in 1947 the annual per capita water availability was over 5,000 cubic metres and now – with a population of somewhere around 170 million which is expected to increase to 209 million at least by 2025 – the annual per capita water availability has shrunk to 1,100 cubic metres, just a mere 100 cubic metres above the ‘cut-off’ line marking extremely serious problems and yet nobody, including the powers that be, is taking the matter as seriously as they should.

The country actually needs a 23 per cent increase in available freshwater supplies in order to meet the projected demand 15 years hence. There is, and always has been, talk of constructing more incredibly expensive dams: the construction of which floods untold hectares of land, displacing entire communities who then sing until the proverbial cows come home for compensation which they rarely, if ever, get and still the water situation deteriorates as sinful profligacy continues unabated.

First and foremost, agriculture needs bringing to heel. Then, cropping patterns, along with the very nature of crops themselves, must be altered with drought and saline-resistant species replacing traditional thirsty crops such as rice and cotton. Irrigation practices must also be completely reviewed. Lining canals to stop leakage is simply not enough. Laws must be introduced on harvesting and storage of rainfall it such strategies are to be effective, And the government must loosen its purse strings to assist and teach farmers how to survive these challenging times. Industrialists must be forced to tow the line and face heavy fines for water inefficiency and pollution. Householders should not escape the net either and every single person in this soon to be drought stricken, therefore economically impoverished country, must somehow be made to realise that water is really running out.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2010.