From water scarcity to surplus

With political commitment, efficient management and new technologies, water balance can tilt from scarcity to surplus.

The issue of increasing water scarcity in the country is being raised frequently. With deficit irrigation in agriculture, urban water shortages and inadequate access to safe drinking water in rural areas, the challenges seem daunting and complex. These issues, however, are largely solvable. Many countries around the globe, such as Australia, Singapore and South Africa, have far less per capita freshwater availability than Pakistan. Yet, they have shown that water needs can be addressed through progressive policies, sound management and modern technologies.

In Pakistan, the water sector — once the proud custodian of engineering marvels of large dams and canals — needs an injection of new spirit and a sense of purpose. Currently, crop yields have stagnated, electricity production is inadequate and the Indus basin ecosystem and environment is stressed due to reduced water flows, overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers and toxic chemicals from industrial and urban waste.

The Indus river system should be viewed not simply as a lifeline in this largely arid country, but as a ladder for inclusive socioeconomic growth. Currently, water is a vastly underexploited and over-abused resource in the country — its full economic potential is largely untapped while it is stressed with pollution and unsustainable over-abstraction. A federal policy must lay out an enforceable and equitable legal framework. The 1991 interprovincial water accord must now be refined, including the possibility of interprovincial trading. This may allow for greater equity. For instance, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan (that are often unable to use their allocated water share due to lack of infrastructure) may benefit by selling their unused shares to the other provinces.

At the provincial level, authorities should boldly explore new possibilities that break free from historical legacies and harness their unique local geography and hydrology. Punjab, with its flat, fertile plains, has a natural advantage for establishing a large-scale, modern, efficient agricultural enterprise that feeds the nation and supplies industries with critical raw materials for manufacturing high-value exports.

Sindh — generously endowed with the Indus delta — hosts a large, untapped potential for fisheries and related processing industries. It can embark on an agenda to save water in its low-performing agriculture sector through efficient irrigation technologies and use the water savings from agriculture to supply and reinvigorate the dying delta. New life to the Indus delta, that creates productive estuarine fisheries, can transform the conditions of the local poor and impoverished.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan — with high altitude topographies that make canal-based irrigation infeasible — are naturally endowed with forests (now severely threatened by uncontrolled logging). The authorities could consider using hydropower (and potentially interprovincial water trading) earnings to rejuvenate the forest lands and develop a well-managed timber industry and controlled eco-tourism in the alpine slopes.

At the municipal level, water shortages in piped networks should no longer be acceptable. With over $100 billion cubic metres of fresh water coursing through the surface water channels of the country, urban residents should not be resigned to a fate of daily water scarcity. A new future of water security will take shape with courageous leadership, rule of law and in concert with policies of social welfare, economic development and scientific progress. With political commitment, efficient management and new technologies, Pakistan’s water balance can tilt from scarcity to surplus.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2014.

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