Growing miracles

Climate change pushed Chakwal’s farmers to the brink. Now, they’re pushing back.

For Jehan Khan, the greatest miracle he has seen in his 35 years of life is the small green patch growing outside the thatched hut he calls home.

For him and his fellow farmers, all residents of Ghool village in the arid district of Chakwal, these sparse fields are a sight they never expected to see in their lifetimes.

“Growing vegetables and fodder in any village in the entire Tala Gang tehsil was impossible, simply because we rely only on rainwater and the rains just haven’t been coming,” says Jehan Khan.

Now, things are different. “Look at my potato crop,” he says with obvious pride.

“This is the first time that I cultivated potatoes this year in the month of May and my crop is now nearly ready for harvesting.”

A farmer checks the quality of his potato crop

Located at the beginning of the Potohar plateau and the Salt Range, the Chakwal district is a purely rain-fed area. Stretching over 6,524 square kilometers with 1,371,228 inhabitants, the terrain of the district is hilly and covered with scrub forest in the southwest and leveled plains interspaced with dry rocky patches in the north and northeast.

Nearly 86 per cent of the population of the district lives in the rural areas, eking out a livelihood from agriculture and livestock.

For these poor people, climate change came as an unprecedented disaster. In the past, the average rainfall in the district was between 559mm to 635mm, but according to Arif Mahmood, director general of the Pakistan meteorological department, it has now declined to between 300mm and 400mm. Just five years back, one could find underground water at a depth of 100 to 200 feet. Now you can drill down to 500 feet and still come up dry.

A young girl and her donkey  fetch water from the rainwater pools

It gets worse. Ghulam Hussain, a senior meteorologist at the PMD says that while rainfall has declined, temperatures have shot up. “Chakwal’s temperature used to hover between 33 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius. But now it surges beyond 48 degree Celsius in July,” he says.

Most of the water sources in this area are scattered natural rainwater ponds. Donkeys laden with plastic water-filled cans on their backs, once a common sight, are now increasingly rare.

Women tying dried fodder before sending it for sale in the local market

“Women and children of Ghool had to walk miles to fetch water from distant rainwater ponds. But, now most of these ponds have dried up because of the lack of rain,” says 49 year old Aslam Bibi, “At a time when people are struggling to find drinking water, thinking of growing vegetables in our parched fields was just impossible.”



As a result, agriculture and livestock rearing activities took a huge hit, causing poverty, hunger, malnutrition and disease to spiral out of control. Faced with the choice of staying and starving, many locals decided to pack their meagre belongings and try to find work in the towns and cities. An unprecedented exodus began.

Khalid Iqbal harvests his fodder crop

But now, as the field outside Jehan Khan’s home testifies. Things have changed. A revolution has come to Chakwal.

“I am able to grow this crop only after water was available from the check dam constructed this year in our village,” Jehan Khan says with a smile.

Check dams are small dams that serve as reservoirs of rain water. Such dams are also critical for recharging ground water and raising the underground water level.

Thanks to the construction of these mini-dams and also the construction of a pipeline network, life for the villagers of Chakwal has been transformed. Many have given up their migration plans and many farming families, which had migrated to nearby urban areas in search of livelihood, are returning to the area after hearing that water is, at long last, available.

View of a check dam for storing rainwater built in July 2012 in Ghool village

Given that it’s their own lives and livelihood at stake, villagers pool money every month to buy fuel for a diesel engine which pumps water from the dams and into farmlands and households in the many villages of Tala Gang tehsil.

For Khalid Iqbal, 32, this translates into a saving of Rs18,000 to Rs20,000 that he previously used to spend buying fodder for his five cows and two goats.

“After finding myself unable to cultivate our four-acre plot for the last two years, I had decided to migrate along with my family to Rawalpindi to find a job in a factory or hotel. But not that we’re finally getting enough water, I’m staying put,” he says with a pleased smile.

This dam, and others like it, have been built thanks to the Rs64.867 million ‘Drought Mitigation and Preparedness Project (DMPP) that the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) has implemented through the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP).

“So far we have constructed 28 rainwater harvesting ponds, eight mini dams, six check dams, two wells and have implemented 33 pipeline schemes to supply water from these dams and rain ponds to agriculture lands and villages. Nearly 2,716 households are benefiting from these total 79 uplift schemes,” says Kamal Afridi, the senior water and energy expert at the PPAF.

Of the total amount being spent on the project, Rs52.014 million has come from the World Bank, but Rs12.853 million has been contributed by the local community.

According to Raja Munir Hussain Janjua, NRSP’s regional programme officer, this is just the beginning. “Our plan is to build 16 mini dams, install 100 biogas plants, and to install 30 solar water pumps to replace the diesel ones,” he says.

But the dams are only a stopgap solution, says Muhammad Javed Malik, former deputy commissioner of Chakwal. The real challenge is water conservation.

“One cannot allow wastage of rainwater in these areas,” he says. “Yet, over 50 to 60 per cent of the rainwater is wasted because of inadequate rainwater harvesting arrangements in the district.”

While he agrees that more ponds and mini-dams need to be built, he stresses that the residents of Chakwal also need to harvest every single drop that comes their way.  “The promotion of house-level rainwater harvesting systems, with a major focus on roof-top rainwater harvesting can help tackle water woes in the area,” he says.

In the meantime, the villages of Chakwal have been saved from decimation, as families who had migrated to urban areas return to their homes and fields. The success that this project has had in this remote area is proof that, if climate change cannot be avoided, we can certainly learn to mitigate its worst effects.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 6^th, 2013.

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