Water Depletion in
Pakistan and Solutions
Introduction
The Pakistan per capita availability of water drops to 908 cubic
meters in 2017; it was 990 cubic meters in 2013 as compared to 5,650 cubic
meters in 1947. While India has 1,600 cubic meters of water per person per year
while Major European countries have up to twice as much ranging from 2,300
cubic meters in Germany to 3,000 cubic meters in France. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) has placed Pakistan in red zone categorizing it as water-stressed country
which is likely to face an acute water shortage over the next five years due to
the lack of water availability for irrigation, industry and human consumption.
If the downward trend prevails, it is likely that ground water table will
nosedive more and in the result per capita availability will touch 800 cubic
meters by 2020.
The United Nations has lined up
Pakistan among the “water hotspots” of Asia-Pacific Region, saying that the
country faces major threats of increasing water scarcity, high water
utilization, deteriorating water quality and climate change risk. Of all the challenges Pakistan is facing, water is the most critical. The
country is among the leading five that face extremely high water stress and low
access to safe drinking water and sanitation, according to the World Resources
Institute.
Similarly, the United Nations categorizes Pakistan amongst those
few unfortunate countries where water shortages could destabilize and
jeopardize its existence in the next 10 years. Today a quarter to a third of
Pakistan’s population lacks access to safe drinking water. Both urban and rural
populations suffer from water contamination and waterborne diseases. The United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals require us to ensure access to water and
sanitation for all.
IMF report throws the severity of Pakistan’s water crisis into
sharp relief. Pakistan has the world’s fourth highest rate of water use. Its
water intensity rate — the amount of water, in cubic meters, used per unit of
GDP — is the world’s highest. This suggests that no country’s economy is more
water-intensive than Pakistan’s.
This aggressive water consumption portends catastrophic
consequences. According to the IMF, Pakistan is already the third most
water-stressed country in the world. Its per capita annual water availability
is 1,017 cubic meters — perilously close to the scarcity threshold of 1,000
cubic meters.
Back in 2009, Pakistan’s water availability was about 1,500 cubic
meters. According to projections from a study I produced that year, called
Running on Empty, Pakistan would not become water scarce until 2035. Instead,
thanks to lightning-fast consumption rates, Pakistan is nearly water-scarce
today. And yet it gets worse.
Water Depletion
New NASA satellite data of the world’s underground aquifers reveal
rapidly depleting groundwater tables. The aquifer in the Indus Basin — whose
rivers and tributaries constitute Pakistan’s chief water source — is the second
most stressed in the world (this means rapid depletion with little or no sign
of recharge). This shouldn’t be surprising; even seven years ago, groundwater
tables in parts of Lahore had fallen by up to 65 feet (20 meters) over a
five-year period.
Groundwater is water security’s last resort — it is what we tap
into when surface supplies run dry. And yet in Pakistan, this safety net is
fraying. The country’s water security blanket is in danger of being yanked
away. In sum, Pakistan is voraciously consuming water even as water tables are
plummeting precipitously.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation measures the pressure on
national water resources by calculating water withdrawal as a percentage of
total renewable water resources (TRWR). The stresses are considered high if the
pressure on the TRWR is above 25pc.
Pakistan’s water pressure amounts to an astounding 74pc. This is
alarming even when compared with neighbouring high-pressured countries like
India (34pc) and Afghanistan (31pc). Pakistan is expected to become water
scarce — or have less than 500 cubic metres per capita per year — by 2035, with
some analysts predicting 2020.
An analysis of the country’s water economy reveals some
interesting and critical aspects. For instance, Pakistan is one of the world’s
most arid countries with an average rainfall of under 240mm a year. The
country’s dependence on a single river system makes its water economy highly
scary.
The Indus river system draws its water from rainfall in
neighbouring countries and the melting of snow in the Himalayas.
The country’s water resources are being degraded on a large scale
by salinity, pollution and overexploitation. In addition, tens of thousands of
additional wells are being sunk into the existing groundwater aquifers. Climate
change is causing the glaciers of the western Himalayas to melt and retreat.
This is more likely to trigger devastating floods over the next decades.
Moreover, when glacier reservoirs get empty due to negative
glacial budget, the river flows will be dramatically decreased.
Available data suggest that the country’s population will reach
230m by 2025. This implies that the agricultural sector will have to grow more
than 4pc annually to meet the food requirements of the augmented population.
This requires prudent water usage and resource management.
Delaying efforts to address the situation will only intensify the
disputes between water stakeholders, and lead to economic vulnerabilities,
civil unrest and political fragility.
The major challenges to effective water management are the rising
water needs due to a rapidly growing population, lack of resource management
and policy approach, governance and political issues, climate change, and
natural disasters. Much of Pakistan’s water infrastructure is poor and lacks
modern asset-management planning.
As a result, the projects suffer from inefficiencies, poor
infrastructural maintenance services, completion delays, and cost overruns. And
the connection between energy and water has become an aggravating factor in
provincial disputes.
Meanwhile, water contamination due to industrial waste is also a
critical issue. Around 90pc of industrial and municipal waste, which is
generally untreated and highly toxic, is dumped into open drains and then
infiltrates into groundwater aquifers.
.
Few realise that the fresh water we receive through our rivers,
fed by glaciers and rain, is no longer enough to meet our needs. With the
increase in population and urbanisation, now more than 60pc of Pakistan’s water
is pumped from underground reservoirs. Some areas, such as in Baluchistan,
access to the water below ground has fallen to 1,000 ft. In Lahore, groundwater
tables have fallen in some parts by up to 65 feet in just the last five years.
But of all the cities, Karachi faces the acutest water. The poor have to queue
for hours to get drinking water. In the coming hot summers, water shortages
could lead to violence.
Our mega dams at Tarbela and Mangla are 40-50 years old and their
storage capacities have been falling because of silting and sedimentation. They
store only 30 days of average water demand, compared to 1,000 days for Egypt
and 220 days for India. After a hiatus of almost four decades, since Tarbela
Dam was built, it was decided in 2006 to build another major multipurpose dam
at Diamer-Bhasha. It’s been 10 years since then but construction has not yet
started and it could take another decade to complete.
But adding only one major water reservoir would not be enough. In
fact, it would only restore the storage capacity that Pakistan had three
decades ago. It is high time that the government focuses on construction of
other major dams. Kalabagh Dam would be the most doable. Since 1963, every
aspect of this dam has been explored by top national and international experts
and they have all been unanimous that this was the best option for providing
cheap hydroelectricity and water storage. Unfortunately it has been highly
politicised. The cost of delay has been Rs132bn per year only on account of
cheaper electricity. Unlike other more expensive and remotely located dams,
Kalabagh could be constructed in just four years.
The World Bank report says that 1.6 billion
people already live in nations that are subject to water scarcity. This group
of countries includes Pakistan. Depending on the precise definition of the
concept, other research has put that number even higher, up to four billion
people who could be affected by water scarcity during at least some part of the
year. Using its own definition, the World Bank fears that the number of people
living with potential water threats will double over the next two decades.
South Asia, Africa and the Middle East will contribute to this likely increase
in the number of people likely to be hurt
Reason for surface
and ground water depletion
According to Punjab irrigation department water table is going
down 3 feet per year. Quoting the example of Lahore, most urbanized and densely
populated city of Pakistan, it said that 20 years back water is extracted at 20
or 40 feet and now drilling has to be done at 800 feet to reach the water.
Unchecked installation of tube wells aggravated situation. As per estimates,
there is a continuous increase in the development of groundwater irrigation by
tube wells. In the country the numbers of public and private tube wells
installed (as per the source of Economic survey of Pakistan) in 2000-01 were
659,278 while in 2012-13 the amount of tube wells installed rose to 1175,073.
With this phenomenon annual extraction of water has swelled up to 51
million-acre feet of water.
There are multiple
reasons accounted for the water depletion.
The first and major reason is over-extraction or over-pumping of
ground water. Water is being sucked out but recharge system that refill the
ground water is not in place or mismanaged. Total discharge (withdrawal) of
ground water is at 37 Million Acres Feet (MAF) against recharge (refilling) at
30 MAF, it showed that a big gap is between discharge
and recharge system.
Second vital cause for water scarcity is poor planning to store
water. Pakistan has just 3 dams and scores of small barrages as compared to
china having 22,000 and India 4,200 small and big dams. “Pakistan’s storage
capacity is just for 30 days, whereas India has the ability to store water for
120-220 days,” Egypt has 1,000 days water storage capacity
only on River Nile, America 900 days on River Colorado, Australia 600 and South
Africa has the ability to store water for 500 days on River Orange.The per
capita storage capacity in the United States stands at 6,150 cubic metres, in
Australia 5,000 cubic metres but in Pakistan it is just 132 cubic metres that
show how vulnerable 180 million Pakistanis are in terms of water availability
The third reason for water depletion is that sedimentation is
also adding the existing problem. The WAPDA document discloses that Pakistan
has also lost its capacity to store water by 27 percent (4.37 million feet of
water) from 16.28 MAF to 11.91 MAF because of sedimentation, as 4.99 MAF gets
stored in the Mangla Dam alone. Tarbela was built in 1974 with the storage
capacity of 9.69 MAF, which has now reduced in 2011 by 31 percent (3.02 MAF) to
6.77 MAF. Mangla Dam that was built in 1967 with the capacity to store water of
5.87 million acres feet of water has witnessed reduction in its storage
capacity by 15 percent (0.88MAF) to 4.99 MAF, Mangla raising has increased
storage capacity to 7.30 MAF . .
Likewise, Chashma barrage was built in 1971 with the ability to store 0.72 MAF
water but owing to the sedimentation, its storage capacity has dwindled by 65
percent (0.47MAF) to just 0.25MAF.
Pakistan will lose more capacity to store
water by up to 37 percent (5.95MAF) in 2025, if water managers of the country
did not correct the policies and built the dams on Pakistan Rivers. It needs to
be mentioned that the disputed Kalabagh Dam if built will rise ground water levels.
The fourth reason for water depletion is cropping intensity Earlier cropping intensity was 66 percent
which means that we cultivate crop one time in a year and farmer needed average
water to irrigate lands. Now cropping intensity rose up to 150 to 200 percent
showing the fact that in one year more than 3 or 4 crops are cultivated and to
meet growing demand of water, excessive water has to be extracted In Pakistan Punjab, more than 50% of crop
water requirement comes from groundwater, producing the majority of food in
Pakistan. If irrigated lands suffer water shortage, Pakistan will have to face
massive food insecurity.
The sixth reason for water depletion is the non-existence of
legislation. Ground water makes up 55 percent and surface water accounts for 45
percent of total water. It is astonishing fact that there are lot of rules and
regulation for surface water but to regulate ground water, no law does exist.
None of successive government bothered to evolve even a basic infrastructure
for groundwater
The seventh reason from water depletion is that over extraction of ground water has caused
fast depletion of aquifer which has raised alarming levels of bacterial
contamination. Though, the surface water is available, but due to ill planning
and mismanaging the cheaper sources of surface water. There is a dire need of
switching from ground water to surface water, now with realization; Pakistan
has been blessed with abundance of availability of surface and ground water
resources to the tune of 128300 million m3 and 50579 million m3 per year
respectively (The Pakistan National Conservation Strategy,).
The eighth reason for water depletion as per Ministry of water
and power report (2011-2012) is that in Pakistan, water was excessively
wasted at houses, offices, markets and factories. Fresh and drinking water is
used for washing, gardening and other non-drinkable purposes. “Besides wastage,
burgeoning population, climate change, lack of water reservoirs and
manipulation of Jhelum and Chenab rivers by India are other key factors
squeezing water availability in Pakistan,” report claimed.
Impacts of water
shortages
WAPDA official also said that in 2010-11, around 54.5MAF water
went down to sea, which demonstrates the demand of the erection of huge dams on
the River Indus. The situation can only be improved by enhancing water storage
capacity in the country.
Currently, over 45 percent of Pakistan’s population does not
have access to safe drinking water. Since quality of drinking water supply is
poor, with bacterial contamination, arsenic, fluoride and nitrate, incidence of
water-borne diseases is increasing rapidly, . High population growth rate, urbanization,
industrialization and new environmental constraints are aggravating the
problem,
Pakistan will lose more
capacity to store water by up to 37 percent (5.95MAF) in 2025, if water
managers of the country did not correct the policies and built the dams on
Pakistan Rivers. It needs to be mentioned
Rainwater
Harvesting
An
increasing population makes it imperative to save each drop of precipitation.
As 80pc rainfalls occur during the monsoon season, within 2-3 months, the storage
of rainwater is the only way to address water and food security in the
country.. It is imperative that to store every drop of water, from households
to ponds and from ponds to dams. Urban
rain water harvesting also needs to be made mandatory , at least in the
better to do housing societies .
The biggest source of storing rainwater is by constructing big
dams which are imperative on a long term basis to address our current and
future energy and water needs.
Looking at the climate and topography, most of the rains occur in mountains followed by Potohar and then the plain areas. The range of rainfall lies between 200-1500mm per year, much of it in the short span of two months.The rainfall on mountain tops needs big dams while the monsoons in pre-mountainous areas can be stored in small ponds. There is a potential of over 13,000 ponds in just four districts of Potohar. Water stored in small ponds can change the traditional agriculture of the Potohar to the production of fruits and vegetables, not only for domestic consumption but also for export to the international market. Our agriculture is not merely canal based agriculture but relies significantly on groundwater extraction.The canal system was designed to irrigate only 70pc cropping intensity which has gone up to 200pc and most of the irrigation water is being pumped. This may eventually play havoc if not properly recharged. The rain-fed ponds also would address water recharge. The lack of groundwater recharge may lead to the dire consequences of desertification. Groundwater recharge can be done by various techniques such as rainwater harvesting at household level in urban areas, developing ponds in our parks and farms, plugging our flood drains and even diverting our river flows to facilitate artificial groundwater recharge. The most important concern is about water waste. The situation is further worsened as increasingly contaminated and brackish water is also left unattended, leading to groundwater pollution. Experiments conducted In the first stage a rainwater harvesting pond was developed at the university in order to store rain water from roof tops, roads and streets. In addition to groundwater recharge for existing tube wells in the university and nearby pumping units this water is used to irrigate plants, meadows and crop experimentation within the university. In the second stage five ponds have been built on the area of 2,200 kanal of land with collaboration of the Higher Education Commission. The 80-acre feet of water is stored at University Research Farms. The Agency for Barani Area Development has tried to store rain water in sloppy and low lying areas by building mini dams. It is very difficult to take downward water to upward areas, and thus the command area of Potohar could not be developed for fruit farms, flowers and vegetable farms. GIS and Remote sensing surveys reveal that as many as 13,000 ponds can be built in the Potohar. Collective efforts for rainwater harvesting even in the irrigated areas by individual farmers at their farms can bring a revolution in livelihood in this country along with a solution to the groundwater recharge for future use. We as a nation have to move for zero runoff at every level to minimize flood devastations in terms of precious lives, lands and infrastructure, and as an answer to our increasing water shortage. |
Collecting rainwater
for vegetable irrigation could reduce water bills, increase caloric intake and
even provide a second source of income for people in India, according to a new
study by scientists looking at NASA satellite data.
The study is based on precipitation data from the Tropical
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint mission between NASA and the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency, which provided observations of rainfall over the
tropics and subtropics from 1997 to 2015.
“We considered collecting water in a relatively small tank, and
it’s amazing the effect that doing something that small and simple can have on
the Indian people,” Stout said.
Rainwater harvesting is not a new concept, but researchers said
it is a largely untapped resource in India.
In the new study, the team examined the possibilities if Indians
collected precipitation in cheap 200-gallon tanks that they could easily
engineer to fit in densely populated urban areas, such as many of India’s
growing cities. The team analyzed satellite data of precipitation in different
areas to evaluate the availability of rainwater for direct harvesting.
The team used data sets provided every three hours from 1997 to
2011 to determine how much precipitation, on average, was available for
collection and supplementation in each of the six test cities: Bangalore,
Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Srinagar.
The team input TRMM data into algorithms that Stout developed to
determine the benefit to each of two scenarios: indoor use and outdoor
vegetable irrigation. They estimated each person would require an average of
about 35 gallons of water per day. For an average household of five people,
demand would be about 178 gallons daily. Outdoor vegetable irrigation would
require less water. The team calculated irrigation demands for a roughly
215-square-foot garden planted with tomatoes and lettuce. The team found
rainwater harvesting provided for nearly 20 per cent of the average indoor
demand overall, though some seasons, such as southern monsoon season, provided
more. Rainwater harvesting provided sufficient water source for vegetable
irrigation, which demands less water than indoor use.
While rainwater collection for irrigation resulted in fewer
water bill savings, it did provide vitamin—rich food, profit from selling
excess vegetables and a significantly shorter payback period for
infrastructure, operation and maintenance required for the endeavour.
This can help boost cost savings and increase quality of life in
India, researchers said in the study published in the Urban Water Journal.
After a one-year payback period, rainwater harvesting for
vegetable irrigation would provide a profit of between 1,548 and 3,261 rupees
per year and a total cost savings of between 2,605 and 4,522 rupees per year.
Water Policy
The last
government made an attempt at formulation of a a
water management policy, which Former Planning Minister Ahsan
Iqbal had called asked the provinces and
the federal ministries to send their representatives to work with other
stakeholders for a consensus agreement on the proposed policy.
A similar attempt was made during the Musharraf regime. But the
draft of the water policy was oriented more towards assigning a greater role to
the private sector in supplying water to urban and rural areas. It also
proposed reducing public spending on domestic water schemes and recommended
that there should be appropriate charges for water consumption, to be paid by
consumers.
Water availability in the country, according to the FAO, doubled
between 1968 and 1997, from 64 million acre feet (MAF) to 134MAF.As a result,
Pakistan made rapid progress in agricultural production from the 1960s to the
1980s. After the 1980s, however, serious supply-side constraints emerged in the
water sector, leading to stagnant agricultural production and yields.
Government policies in the past had been more of a response to
emerging problems rather than an attempt to pre-empt them. Hence, any future agriculture
strategy needs to recognize the importance of comprehensive water management.
The country’s per capita annual water availability dropped from
5,600m3 in 1,947 to 820 m3 today, and is poised to drop further under the
current infrastructure and institutional conditions.
Pakistan is among the world’s 36 most water-stressed countries,
with its agriculture, domestic and industry sectors scoring high on the water
stress index of the World Resource Institute. The policymakers face the
challenge of figuring out how water should be allocated across different
sectors.
Even though Pakistan has the world’s most extensive irrigation
system, this system is unfortunately marked by an inequitable distribution of
water, particularly to the tail-enders. Water flows to the farmers at the head
of the watercourse command is greater than to those at the end.
This anomaly has its historical roots. When the British initiated
the construction of the Indus basin irrigation system, they ensured that
farmers belonging to more ‘loyal’ tribes or castes were given preferential
access to the head reaches of the canals and the watercourses. The poor farmers
were allotted lands in the tail reaches where they had less access to water. As
a result, they resorted to groundwater pumping through increased use of
tube-wells. This water geography reinforces social stratification in irrigated
rural canal colonies and also reflects in the allocation of water to the
provinces.
An IMF document, released in June, recommends virtually a paradigm
shift in reframing the water policy and management in a national context and emphasizes
demand-side measures that will promote conservation and control of excessive
groundwater exploitation.
It says the thrust of policy reform should be on improving water-use
efficiency in agriculture, which continues to dominate consumption while
escaping taxation at the federal level and being lightly taxed at the
provincial level.
To make the water policy a success, the government must develop an
integrated approach to water resource management that gives priority to
conservation and sustainable use through improved cost recovery, upgrading
infrastructure and bringing agriculture under the tax regime.
Then, the tariff reform is unavoidable to ensure efficient water
use in both the agriculture and urban sectors. Canal water is highly
under-priced and the cost recovery is poor, resulting in highly inefficient
usage of water. The prevalent irrigation water charges (abiana) only recover
24pc of the annual operating and maintenance costs, and collection is only 60pc
of the total receivables.
The pricing structure for major crops is also uniform and does not
reflect their different levels of water consumption. For instance, rice
consumes 60pc more water than cotton. This has impeded the adoption of more
efficient technology and high-value crops.
A major problem that cannot be wished away is the need for
storages to conserve surplus water from rainfall and floods, which mostly goes
waste.Earlier this year, the Indus River System Authority suggested to the
government to freeze the country’s entire public sector development program for
five years and divert the funds towards the construction of major water
reservoirs on a war footing as a national priority.
Total dam storage in Pakistan represents only 30 days of average
demand, compared to 1,000 days for Egypt and 220 days for India.
In 2015, a
cloudburst in Chitral so intense and so sudden that the ensuing rainfall
triggered multiple simultaneous outbursts of glacial lakes, unleashing
torrential floods so powerful they destroyed an entire district in a single
night. The gathering clouds that caused the event did not even register on the
Met office’s radars, since the few radars that look west were either not
operational or did not have reach above the mountains where they gathered.
We are not as powerless before this elemental force of nature as
we might believe. Pakistan is a hydraulic society, driven by water, and it
possesses the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world. Whether
measured in terms of quantity of water commanded, or the acreage of lands
irrigated through the system, what has been built since Partition is a truly
massive and impressive water command system that underlies our food security.
There are two problems though: the water bureaucracy is unable to
come up with any suggestions for the future that are not technical, or
brick-and-mortar solutions like building more water storages, and it has
created the intractable problem of the politics of water sharing.
Once significant quantities of water in the Indus river system are
brought under human command, politics necessarily raises its head. Who gets how
much becomes a question only in an age when the mighty river has been chained.
One big failure in addressing this politics is the failure to bring about a
water-pricing regime, to replace bureaucratic decision-making on allocations.
Another big failure is the inability to generate more precise
measures of how much water is going where. The sad end to the telemetry system
installed in the early 2000s is testament to this: it had to be dismantled
because it began detecting and revealing the patterns of water theft by
powerful landed interests.
The last government did announce a new water policy( in 1918) but
it failed to address problems identified
above it just paid lip service to them,
especially considering the mounting scale of the challenges confronting our
water economy. Instead it skirts around them. It acknowledges the need for a
telemetry system, but leaves it indeterminate as to who will install and
operate it, and how its data will be used.
It mentions pricing reform, to sensitize the agrarian populations
to the preciousness of water, but adds the caveat that in irrigation water at
least (where 90 per cent of our water is consumed), the new pricing regime need
not follow the principle of ‘full-cost recovery’. The application of that
principle is left for urban consumers only, where the costs of urban water
distribution and sewage removal systems can be recovered fully from the
consumer.
Yet it calls for ramping up the scale of investments in our water
infrastructure, to reach 20pc of development spending by 2030. Aren’t this
urban consumers and taxpayers subsidizing rural consumers? Why is the principle
of ‘full-cost recovery’ being pursued so eagerly in the power sector, where
costs of future expansion are to be recovered from consumers, but not in the
water sector? If water is salient to our food security, power is equally
salient to our industrial development. Why this discrimination? .
The New Water Policy in
Brief : The Centre and the provinces agreed under the policy that
selection of water reservoirs would be made with consensus in line with the
1991 water apportionment accord and after thorough examination of their impact
on sea intrusion, environmental protection and provincial water rights to
secure surplus water in the
The policy acknowledges the need to adopt the NWP with an initial
target of increasing storage capacity from existing 14 million acre feet (MAF)
by immediately starting the construction of 6.4 MAF Diamer-Bhasha dam which had
already been cleared by the CCI back in 2009.
The meeting was told that Pakistan was rapidly becoming a
water-scarce country and obligations towards the Sustainable Development Goals
required adoption of an integrated water resource management. Population
growth and water demands for various sectors of the economy necessitate urgent
measures to enhance storage capacity.
The policy empowers the provinces to develop their master plans
within a national framework for sustainable development and management of water
resources. It concedes that water resource is a national responsibility, but
irrigation, agriculture, water supply, environment and other water-related
sub-sectors are provincial subjects.
Briefing the CCI, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Sartaj Aziz
said the policy covered all water-related issues, including water uses and
allocation of priorities, integrated planning for development and use of water
resources, environmental integrity of the basin, impact of climate change,
trans-boundary water sharing, irrigated and rain-fed agriculture, drinking
water and sanitation, hydropower, industry, ground water, water rights and
obligations, sustainable water infrastructure, water-related hazards, quality
management, awareness and research, conservation measures, legal framework and
capacity building of water sector institutions.
The CCI was told that implementation of the NWP would be
undertaken through a national-level body namely National Water Council (NWC) to
be headed by the prime minister and comprising the federal ministers for water
resources, finance, power and planning, development and reforms and all
provincial chief ministers. The NWC will oversee implementation of the NWP and
a steering committee, headed by the federal minister for water resources, will
monitor the implementation with representatives from federal and provincial
governments and the departments concerned.
The policy recognizes the need to provide at least 10 per cent of
the federal Public Sector Development Program to the water sector, gradually
increasing it to 20pc by 2030. The provinces will also increase expenditure on
the water sector as total allocation of Rs145 billion, 7pc of the combined
federal and provincial development budget for 2017-18, was inadequate to
address the challenges.
Under the policy, water losses currently estimated at 46 MAF a
year have to be cut by 33pc by 2030 through canal and watercourse lining. Water
efficiency will also be increased by 30pc by 2030 through improved technologies
like drip and sprinkler irrigation and more realistic water pricing policy.
To establish and maintain a reliable assessment of water resources
in the country, federal and provincial water sector organizations would develop
a standardized and uniform mechanism for data collection of various parameters
of water resources.
The policy also recommends that the federal government play a
leading role in facilitating regulations to ensure efficient and sustainable utilization
of ground water, industrial uses and waste water management. As food security,
water security and energy security are inextricably linked, the regulatory
framework must address all associated issues comprehensively, the policy says.
Times are getting serious and fierce. This is no time for half
measures, and vain attempts to safeguard vested interests. Nature’s fury is
indifferent to our politics; we might not be able to arrest its vengeance, but
we surely can do a better job adapting to it. A new water policy is where our
response to the challenges presented by the increasingly erratic weather
patterns begins, along with upgrading our forecasting capability. But in the
new water policy, it seems consensus has been forged at the cost of a robust
strategy to deal with the coming challenges.
Flood Losses
Floods have taken toll in each of the last five
years, causing loss of Rs334 billion a year in monetary terms to the country, according
to a recent report by the US World Resource Institute.
The study indicates that Pakistan’s GDP is affected by one per
cent annually due to river flooding. While the agriculture sector bears the
brunt of the blow, transportation sector also suffers and due to disruption in
supplies of goods, food prices start to run high. Food inflation which weighs
around 35pc in the CPI basket has the potential to lead to higher inflation.
The government has set an inflation target of 6pc for FY16. Until now, the
flooding this year has inundated around 200 villages, mainly those of Chitral,
D.I. Khan, Layyah, Muzaffargarh and Dera Ghazi Khan and around 0.3m people have
been rendered homeless.
“According to reports around 400,000 to 500,000 cotton bales,
which account for 4pc of cotton production, have been affected from flooding
which could marginally affect agricultural output and GDP growth
Economists believe that floods would be negative for cement,
fertiliser and insurance sectors and ‘neutral’ for the remaining sectors, such
as E&Ps, OMCs and refineries, power, banks, auto assemblers, telecom,
textiles and consumer goods.
16 b$ in last 5 years only in flood,
related damages, it would have been possible to build, Basha with that amount.
Time to, wake up Pakistan . Build Basha, a storage on Swat , at Chiniott , use
beds of Ravi and Sutlej to ,store flood and rain water for ground water
recharge purposes , this needs to be a priority
Recharge
The Punjab aquifer is at places depleting, water is being mined
, there is need to take steps to arrest and improve this situation , amongst other
measures, described elsewhere in this document, an effort to recharge the aquifer
needs to be made . The steps proposed are
: To build disputed Kalabagh Dam which amongst other benefits will
help rise ground water levels ; The
federal government is actively examining a project to create a lake in the bed
of Sutlej river near the city. The river has been dry for years with the
implementation of Indus Waters Treaty under which India has discontinued water
supply to it except during flood season. Resultantly, thousands of acres in
Bahawalpur division turned barren, severely damaging the economy. The project
envisages the development of a lake the lake was estimated to be developed on
2,000 acres in the dried-up bed of Sutlej ; a low level weir on Ravi River near
Lahore is also planning the weir will store flood water and rain harvested
water for the purposes of recharge ; a dam at Chinnot on Chenab River will also
besides additional water also help in recharge of the aquifer ; a study that
determined the depleting groundwater levels around :Lahore suggested that the
urban sprawl should not be allowed to continue to the East of Lahore, which
should be left un-urbanized, small ponds and green forested areas be developed
in this area left alone to allow recharge of the aquifer .
Benefits of storages
Dams add to the water availability, Sindh
which now claims that dams are not needed is a big beneficiary of Dams. the
record in the Sindh irrigation department will show that water available to the
Sindh canals have increased from the pre-Mangla 35.6 million acre feet (MAF)
level to the post-Tarbela 44.5maf — in other words, an additional 8.9maf .
Agriculture GPD vrs Dams present a simplistic but eye opening picture, this is
presented as follows:
The above suggests
that storage add to water availability in the irrigation system and add to the growth in agriculture output .
The above suggests that storage add to water availability in
the irrigation system and add to the growth in agriculture output .
. Pakistan incurred 16 b$ in last 5 years only
in flood, related damages, it would have been possible to build, Basha with that
amount. Time to, wake up Pakistan. Build Basha (KBD), a storage on Swat, at
Chiniot (On Chenab partly for water storage and partly for aquifer recharge) ,
use beds of Ravi and Sutlej to store flood and rain water for ground water
recharge purposes , this needs to be a priority, a policy is also awaited
Dams also provide energy that priced at resent
prices would be about 2 B $ per year per dam, that in present worth terms is 20
B $, the power output recovers the dam cost and provides a surplus. The avoided
flood damages and the additional eater available are benefits over and above
the power received; Dams are therefore a very lucrative economic intervention.
World Bank Report: `Pakistan Getting More from Water`.: says Pakistan gets a poor economic return from its significant
water resources, observing that the best use of water endowment is not made in
the country.The economic costs from poor water and sanitation, floods and
droughts are conservatively estimated to
be four per cent of the GDP, or around $12 billion per year. These costs
are dominated by the costs of poor water supply and sanitation. The economic
costs of degradation of the Indus delta are estimated to be around $2 billion
per year, while the costs of pollution and other environmental degradation have
not been assessed. The country does not make the best use of its water
endowment and the water use is heavily dominated by agriculture, which
contributes around one-fifth of the national GDP, but less than half of this is
from irrigated cropping. Irrigation contributes around $22 billion to annual
GDP.
The four major crops wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane that represent nearly 80pc of all water use generate less than 5pc of the GDP around $14 billion per year. Other economic contributions from water are difficult to accurately assess, but hydropower generation is economically significant, with a current market value of $1 billion to $2 billion.
The report says scant attention is paid to the environmental out-comes from water and water dependent ecosystems rivers, lakes, wetlands and the Indus delta-are in rapid decline. This decline is characterised by biodiversity loss, greatly reduced stocks of freshwater and estuarine fish stocks, and a loss of other ecosystem services, including the storm protection af forded by coastal mangrove forests. Excessive water withdrawals and widespread pollution are the main causes of decline, but river fragmentation by infrastructure and changed sediment regimes contribute.
Water security is undermined by poor water resource management and poor water service delivery including irrigation and drainage services and domestic water supply and sanitation services. In addition, some growing, long-term water-related risks are not adequately recognized and are poorly mitigated.
Water resource management is compromised by poor water data, information, and analysis; weak processes for water resources planning and allocation; environmentally unsustainable levels of water withdrawal; widespread pollution; and low water productivity in agriculture.
Inadequate monitoring and data management prevent robust water resource assessments and accounting to guide water planning and management and prevents reliable flood and drought forecasting.
Water resource planning has historically focused on supply augmentation and has not addressed sustainable resource use or been linked adequately to broader economic planning.
Although provincial water shares have been formally defined, they have been demonstrated to be economically suboptimal, and there is insufficient clarity on risk sharing during times of acute scarcity.
These deficiencies are expected to become starker with increasing water demands and climate change. Water resources management does little to protect water-dependent ecosystems either by way of environmental flows or pollution control.
The report points out that no formal mechanism exist within provinces for reallocating water between sectors to match shifting demands or to cope with extreme drought. Irrigation water allocation is suboptimal in terms of efficiency, equity, and transparency, contributing to the low productivity of irrigated agriculture and causing a lack of trust between farmers and service providers.
Irrigation service delivery is poor and contributes to low productivity. Hydraulic efficiency of water distribution is very low, and water delivery across command areas is inequitable.Irrigation services are not financially sustainable and financial performance is declining.Service tariffs are set too low and are decoupled from service quality, and the operational costs of service providers are far too high.
Climate change is the biggest longer-term and currently unmitigated external risk to water sector. Climate change is not expected to greatly alter average water availability over coming decades, but inflows will become more variable between and within years, increasing the severity of floods and droughts.Climate warming is expected to drive water demands up by 5pc to 15pc by 2047, in addition to the demand increases from population and economic growth.
In the upper Indus Basin, accelerated glacial melting will increase the risks of dangerous glacial lake outburst floods. In the lower Indus Basin, sea level rise and increases in the frequency and severity of coastal storms will exacerbate seawater intrusion into the delta and into coastal groundwater. In coastal Sindh, this will further degrade groundwater quality, ground water dependent ecosystems, and irrigation productivity.
A careful assessment of all water resources, drawing on a range of data and past studies, suggests that the current total average annual renewable resource is 229 billion cubic metres (BCM). Only 4pc of this is outside of the Indus Basin.
There is no single simple solution to address water security. It will take concerted effort on many fronts by all governments and water users over many years. Large infrastructure gaps must be addressed, which require significant financial resources.
Provincial-level water sector financing has increased in recent years, but federal financing has declined significantly in proportional terms. Collectively, sector financing is well below the recommended levels. This is the case for major infrastructure, reforms, and institutional strengthening; urban services; flood mitigation; and environmental management. The biggest challenges, however, are ones of governance, especially regarding irrigation and urban water. The governance challenges relate to inadequate legal frameworks for water at federal and provincial levels, and the incompleteness of policy frameworks and the inadequacy of policy implementation. The policy deficiencies stem from institutional problems, including unclear, incomplete, or overlapping institutional mandates, and a lack of capacity in water institutions at all levels.
The four major crops wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane that represent nearly 80pc of all water use generate less than 5pc of the GDP around $14 billion per year. Other economic contributions from water are difficult to accurately assess, but hydropower generation is economically significant, with a current market value of $1 billion to $2 billion.
The report says scant attention is paid to the environmental out-comes from water and water dependent ecosystems rivers, lakes, wetlands and the Indus delta-are in rapid decline. This decline is characterised by biodiversity loss, greatly reduced stocks of freshwater and estuarine fish stocks, and a loss of other ecosystem services, including the storm protection af forded by coastal mangrove forests. Excessive water withdrawals and widespread pollution are the main causes of decline, but river fragmentation by infrastructure and changed sediment regimes contribute.
Water security is undermined by poor water resource management and poor water service delivery including irrigation and drainage services and domestic water supply and sanitation services. In addition, some growing, long-term water-related risks are not adequately recognized and are poorly mitigated.
Water resource management is compromised by poor water data, information, and analysis; weak processes for water resources planning and allocation; environmentally unsustainable levels of water withdrawal; widespread pollution; and low water productivity in agriculture.
Inadequate monitoring and data management prevent robust water resource assessments and accounting to guide water planning and management and prevents reliable flood and drought forecasting.
Water resource planning has historically focused on supply augmentation and has not addressed sustainable resource use or been linked adequately to broader economic planning.
Although provincial water shares have been formally defined, they have been demonstrated to be economically suboptimal, and there is insufficient clarity on risk sharing during times of acute scarcity.
These deficiencies are expected to become starker with increasing water demands and climate change. Water resources management does little to protect water-dependent ecosystems either by way of environmental flows or pollution control.
The report points out that no formal mechanism exist within provinces for reallocating water between sectors to match shifting demands or to cope with extreme drought. Irrigation water allocation is suboptimal in terms of efficiency, equity, and transparency, contributing to the low productivity of irrigated agriculture and causing a lack of trust between farmers and service providers.
Irrigation service delivery is poor and contributes to low productivity. Hydraulic efficiency of water distribution is very low, and water delivery across command areas is inequitable.Irrigation services are not financially sustainable and financial performance is declining.Service tariffs are set too low and are decoupled from service quality, and the operational costs of service providers are far too high.
Climate change is the biggest longer-term and currently unmitigated external risk to water sector. Climate change is not expected to greatly alter average water availability over coming decades, but inflows will become more variable between and within years, increasing the severity of floods and droughts.Climate warming is expected to drive water demands up by 5pc to 15pc by 2047, in addition to the demand increases from population and economic growth.
In the upper Indus Basin, accelerated glacial melting will increase the risks of dangerous glacial lake outburst floods. In the lower Indus Basin, sea level rise and increases in the frequency and severity of coastal storms will exacerbate seawater intrusion into the delta and into coastal groundwater. In coastal Sindh, this will further degrade groundwater quality, ground water dependent ecosystems, and irrigation productivity.
A careful assessment of all water resources, drawing on a range of data and past studies, suggests that the current total average annual renewable resource is 229 billion cubic metres (BCM). Only 4pc of this is outside of the Indus Basin.
There is no single simple solution to address water security. It will take concerted effort on many fronts by all governments and water users over many years. Large infrastructure gaps must be addressed, which require significant financial resources.
Provincial-level water sector financing has increased in recent years, but federal financing has declined significantly in proportional terms. Collectively, sector financing is well below the recommended levels. This is the case for major infrastructure, reforms, and institutional strengthening; urban services; flood mitigation; and environmental management. The biggest challenges, however, are ones of governance, especially regarding irrigation and urban water. The governance challenges relate to inadequate legal frameworks for water at federal and provincial levels, and the incompleteness of policy frameworks and the inadequacy of policy implementation. The policy deficiencies stem from institutional problems, including unclear, incomplete, or overlapping institutional mandates, and a lack of capacity in water institutions at all levels.
The way forward
The storage capacity of the Indus basin irrigation system, which
commands 34m acres for irrigation, is only about 121 million acre feet (MAF)
per capita per year. The existing dams are rapidly silting, with Mangla and
Tarbela losing about 25pc of their designed capacity.
Furthermore, water losses from within watercourses and between
canal heads amount to about one-third of the total amount of delivered water;
an additional 25pc is lost within farms. Pakistan currently uses 97pc of its
allocated water resources to support one of the lowest productivities in the
world in terms of per unit of water.
It has been estimated that simply repairing and maintaining the
existing canal systems could free an estimated 76MAF of water.
Surface water storage can provide undeniable energy generation
benefits as the industrial sector is high electricity and energy costs which
makes these uncompetitive in International markets. In addition, groundwater
storage could help meet water demands for other purposes. More than 40pc of the
population does not have access to clean water in the country.
Companies should be involved in developing information systems to
detect and monitor water use along the entire length of a city’s distribution
system. Wastewater should be transformed into new sources of energy or fertilizer;
this would eliminate the waste stream in the process. More sophisticated water utilization
and management technologies should be adopted to optimize usage and enhance
sustainability.
Investment needs to be made in constructing large dams to enhance
the water storage capacity to match supply with demand. Water reservoir
de-silting projects should also be executed for the existing dams. In the
future, the de-silting plans must be integral to the designs of the dams for
maintaining their storage capacity.
National awareness about water scarcity needs to be created to
encourage responsible use of the resource. There is a dire need for an
efficient ‘national water management program to overcome the challenge of water
scarcity
The same solutions have been trotted out for years, many of them
problematic. Demand that India stop obstructing downstream river flows there
are other options that need to be addressed ;
Poor water governance ; rapid population growth; wastage of water ; poor
irrigation techniques used ; and climate
change effects , are also the reasons for Pakistan’s water crisis.
There is need to improve supply of eater by building dams but
there also is a need to use existing resources more judiciously, to
encourage this charge consumers a realistic price for their water. To that end,
the IMF report wisely calls for water pricing reform. This might be the best
way to ease the water crisis before it spirals completely out of control.
In Pakistan, as the report states, public water utilities tend to
set prices below cost recovery levels. Irrigation water charges recover less
than a quarter of annual operating and maintenance costs. On the whole,
agriculture is largely untaxed — and yet more than 90pc of Pakistan’s water
resources are allocated to that sector.
By charging more for water (ideally using a pricing scale tied to
income level), not only would consumers presumably use it more judiciously, but
the government would also gain desperately needed revenue. And this revenue
would enable Pakistan to pay for badly needed repairs. Water expert Simi Kamal
has estimated that repairing and maintaining the country’s existing canal
systems would free up about 75 million acre feet of water — close to the 83 MAF
water shortfall that the IMF projects Pakistan will face in the coming years.
This additional revenue could also be used to repair Pakistan’s
dilapidated large dams. Tarbela has lost nearly 30pc of its storage capacity
since the late 1970s. Pakistan’s total dam storage constitutes only 30 days of
average demand (the figure is 220 days in India). Revenue-generating water
pricing reforms would also provide Pakistan with funding to invest in new
infrastructure, water-conserving technologies, and — perhaps most importantly —
programs that help the poor pay for and access water.
Admittedly, all this makes for a very tall order. It presumes that
leaders can muster sufficient political will to implement pricing reforms and that
consumer have the ability and desire to pay more for water.
Back in 2009, the Running on Empty study projected that by 2025,
Pakistan’s water shortfall could be five times the amount of water that could
then be stored throughout the Indus River system’s vast reservoirs. It
estimated that the shortfall in 2025 would comprise almost two thirds of the
entire Indus River system’s current annual average flow.
Based on the IMF’s new estimates, it’s likely that these
projections would be even more alarming if calculated again today. In effect,
in the absence of immediate action, Pakistan could face the not-too-distant
prospect of becoming a water-starved wasteland.
The last government deliberated on a National Water Policy but more than half
way through its tenure it has failed to produce one. In September 2015, while
reiterating the importance of water issues, the federal minister for planning
and reforms promised to announce the long-delayed National Water Policy within
three months. He had added that the coming generations would not forgive us if
we do not take appropriate steps immediately to address water needs of growing urbanization.
Considering the enormity of the challenge and high cost of doing
nothing, it is time government accorded its highest priority to water issues.
There is a need to have a full time water czar. . What is needed is a full-time highly
qualified technocrat to handle this assignment.
There needs to be a two-pronged approach addressing supply side as
well as demand side issues. Over 95pc of Pakistan’s water is used for
agriculture. Due to poor farming practices and almost free availability, most
of the water is wasted. Even before water reaches the farms, almost 50pc is
wasted through the crumbling canal infrastructure. The Governments’ policy of subsidizing
water-intensive crops is another major factor, exacerbating the situation.
Development of water resources should receive priority over other
needs like roads. Accordingly it should receive more allocations than any other
sector be it roads.
The new government shoud be
looking at a national water policy,
which has clearly defined goals for improving water-use, efficiency in agriculture
and creating new water storage capacity that could at least provide enough
resource for 220 days as is the case with India. Water policy could not be
announced because after the 18 th. Constitutional amendments some aspects of
the water policy are Provincial subjects, the provinces now insist that the
whole water sector be financed by the
federal government , this is an unrealistic expectations . A comprehensive
water policy needs to be worked out at the earliest possible else investments
may be made that are not in the interest of the country.
A
World Bank Report cites . “Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding
cities will converge upon a world where the demand for water rises
exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain,” writes the
World Bank. The Bank believes that in the next 30 years, “the global food
system will require between 40 to 50 per cent more water, municipal and
industrial demand will increase by 50 to 70 per cent, the energy sector will
see water demand increase by 85 per cent, and the environment, already the
residual claimant,” may need more. Given these projections, what should be the
policy response in Pakistan?
These
challenges are not insurmountable, however, and smart policies that induce
water use efficiency, align incentives across regional and trading partners,
and invest in adaptive technologies can go a long way toward reducing or
eliminating these negative effects. Since much of the water Pakistan uses comes
down in the Indus River system, the country has to work with India, the upper
riparian, to ensure steady flow. This is one area where the two countries were
able to work together and agree on a water-sharing agreement. The 1960 Indus
Water Treaty signed by President Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
has survived two wars between the two nations.
The focus has been on the supply side. There has, however, to be greater focus on managing more
efficiently the available supply. It is well known in Pakistan that much of the
available water is wasted. Most of the water is used in agriculture where those
who use it pay very little. The cropping pattern favors water-intensive crops.
For instance, sugar cane cultivation uses a great amount of water but
notwithstanding that, public policy favors its production, primarily because
government fixes a price for sugar that is above International levels .Our farmer
practices are archaic. For example, when it comes to wheat (our biggest crop),
the best a progressive farmer has achieved is about 60 maunds per acre, and in
areas where the soil conditions are not so favorable, it goes down to 40 maunds
per acre. There is a lot of scope in improving yields; the potential is to improve by almost 50%,
within a five to eight year period. Another challenge is the support price
mechanism. For wheat, the support price is Rs 1,300, almost 30 to 40% higher
than international prices and the same goes for sugarcane. Then, to protect
local farmers, the government impose import duties ranging from 25 to 40%, which
has a reverse effect, because we end up growing more wheat and sugarcane than
we require. This leads to surpluses, the mills don’t pay the farmers and the
government has to intervene with subsidies to encourage exports, which is
inefficient, if only in terms of water management. We import almost $3 billion
worth of food stuff, such as sunflower, palm oil, canola, pulses and fodder.
Yet, we can grow a lot of these, but we don’t because there is no ready market.
Farmers prefer wheat, cotton and rice because they are cash commodities.
Conclusions
Considering the enormity of the challenge and high cost of doing
nothing, it is time government accorded its highest priority to water issues
There is a dire need to formulate a comprehensive national policy
on water as the country is going to face an acute water shortage in the near
future. The new water policy announced
by the last government merely skirts around the challenges that confront our
water economy. The last government solved the power
capacity and energy problems this one should take up the solution to the
loaming water crisis as its core issue
Water policy: July,
20.2019:
Pakistan cannot continue business as usual
water management. It is vital to reform water governance laws, policies, and
institutions and infrastructure investments. The National Water Policy 2018
needs to be implemented in letter and spirit. The state needs to end its
monopoly on water; invest immediately & heavily in storage capacity and
water enforcement. Pakistan needs to be prepared for India’s attempts of using
water as a coercive strategic tool. The state and citizenry need to become
water wise.
These were the recommendations put forward
by the speakers at the National Dialogue Series Roundtable on “Managing
Hyphenated Climate and Water Challenge: A Case Study of Pakistan,” organised by
the Islamabad Policy Research Institute here in Islamabad. . World Bank Sustainable
Development Program Pakistan Leader Lixin Gu outlined that the availability of
water is crucial for Pakistan’s agriculture growth. He informed that the sector
consumes around 95 per cent of the country’s water resources. At the same time,
per capita availability of usable water is decreasing, primarily because of
population growth, pollution and inefficient use of water resources.
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