Drought in the Galiyat

Surprising as it may sound, the Galiyat are on the verge of running dry — again!

Surprising as it may sound, even more so considering the time of year, the Galiyat are on the verge of running dry — again! Despite torrential summer rains recharging aquifers and water courses, the second relatively dry winter in a row has seen essential springs dry up and, currently, people are panicking at the prospect of long months of severe drought as experienced in the autumn and winter of 2009-2010 when household water supplies completely disappeared for, in severe cases, a full five months.

The climate has definitely changed: Dry periods are longer, spring and autumn storms rarely materialise now, average winter temperatures show a higher trend and, amazingly, summer ones show a decrease as monitored on the ground over the last fifteen years. Planting and harvesting times have altered too for the very few whom still work their land, and fruit crops are increasingly adversely affected at flowering time which, as a direct result of warmer winters, is happening anywhere up to six weeks earlier than in days of yore. But the most important issue for year-round residents is, of course, that of water.

Failure of anticipated precipitation is obviously a major factor of this worrying scenario but so too is population increase, exacerbated by the trend of year-round, rather than just seasonal tourism, as was previously traditional. Indigenous residents of the area have long respected the fact that water is an extremely fickle commodity and are quite used to making a little go a long way but this bent of mind does not, unfortunately, carry any weight with the vast majority of tourists. A high percentage of such visitors, be they staying in hotels or in their own holiday properties, do, as a matter of course, cope with sporadic water shortages in their permanent places of residence yet somehow, when on holiday, expect ample water to be part and parcel of the deal — blatantly refusing to accept that it could, and often is, an even rarer liquid in the hills than in the plains — water naturally percolates downhill after all.

Even when warned that water is in short supply, selfish visitors, on whom many indigenous people depend for cash income and therefore monetary survival, do not think twice about taking daily or even twice daily showers and, likewise, their unnecessarily repetitive toilet flushing wastes countless litres of water every single day.

Buying water from tankers is not an option in many parts of the Galiyat, large vehicles cannot travel on the often very narrow roads and tracks linking small settlements to main roads which may very well be some kilometres distant. Therefore, in times of drought, local people have to physically carry water home, in whatever containers they can rustle up, by hand and, as the drought intensifies, the nearest source of water, not always clean, can be very distant indeed. As is to be expected, local authorities claim that they can do nothing to ease the situation and yet, if they, along with the central government, actually did the job they are supposed to do, droughts such as this could largely be alleviated by introducing laws to make rainwater harvesting and storage mandatory in all categories of new construction, no exceptions allowed. When it does rain in the Galiyat, it is possible to harvest approximately 1,500 gallons of water from a roof measuring 33 feet by 33 feet in a matter of two to three hours and this water is, quite possibly, much safer to drink than that taken from open streams which double as latrines and refuse dumps. Rainwater harvesting is the need of the day.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2011.