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,

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 .

. 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 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.

Pakistan’s Political Economy Perpetuates Its Water Crisis

Pakistan’s water crisis relates to equity, access, and intersectoral distribution–not a Malthusian notion of water scarcity

By Uzair Sattar

In South Asia

November 27, 2023

Millions of Pakistanis remain water insecure despite the country having abundant water resources. Elite interests tied to water-intensive agriculture have stymied necessary reforms in the political economy. International lenders have also failed to prioritize water security when providing external assistance to Pakistan for decades. Pakistan’s reliance on cotton-based goods perpetuates the problem due to the crop’s high water footprint with little economic benefit. As climate change impacts worsen, addressing structural issues in the agricultural sector becomes paramount to safeguard Pakistan’s collective water security and avert broader regional instability.

Introduction

As political instability, economic uncertainty, and climate shocks consume Islamabad’s policy bandwidth, another long-term challenge remains neglected–Pakistan’s water crisis. Unequal access to clean water is deepening existing socioeconomic disparities and holds the potential to catalyze civil unrest amid macroeconomic instability. Aging infrastructure, weak water governance, and the unpredictable impact of climate shocks could solidify water security as a threat multiplier for the state and society.

Elite interests tied to water-intensive agriculture stymie the reforms necessary to address structural fault lines in the political economy that perpetuate water insecurity. Also complicating reform efforts are uncertain political timelines and a lack of policy continuity from one government to the next. International lenders, meanwhile, have failed to prioritize water security when providing external assistance to Pakistan for decades. As a result, existing agricultural policies are geared toward maintaining the status quo by borrowing resources–both economic and water-related–from current and future generations.

A confluence of domestic and international factors suggests the current moment may offer an opportunity to address these enduring challenges. Water insecurity is likely to gain increasing domestic political salience as the impacts of climate change are felt by vast swaths of the country, which were seen most dramatically in the aftermath of the devastating floods in 2022. International financial institutions and foreign investors, meanwhile, are demanding demonstrable policy changes and greater accountability.1

Pakistani policymakers can improve domestic water security through policies that incentivize intersectoral transfers within Pakistan’s water-intensive agricultural sector, increase export competitiveness in nonagricultural industries, and revisit the colonial Canal and Drainage Act (1873)to equitably tax water usage. International financial institutions and bilateral lenders can also incentivize such policy changes through adopting environmentally conscious lending, trade, and investment practices. International financial institutions can channel donor states’ voluntary Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) based on demonstrated progress on environmentally focused Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).2 Bilateral partners seeking to invest in Pakistan’s agricultural sector through the recently created Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) can choose to channel resources into non-water-intensive crops.3

Without meaningful structural changes in Pakistan’s agricultural sector, the water crisis will likely become one of the country’s most consequential domestic challenges going forward, with implications for broader regional stability.

Pakistan’s Water Crisis

Pakistan has enough water to meet the needs of its population many times over, yet millions of Pakistanis remain water insecure (Figure 1). According to the World Health Organization, 50 to 100 liters of water per person per day enables conditions for a human to live a dignified life.4 Based on Pakistan’s population, the country requires between 3.5 and 7 million acre-feet (MAF) of water to meet its collective domestic demand every year.5 While estimates range, Pakistan’s collective annual water availability roughly amounts to 193 MAF.6

Pakistan’s water crisis relates to equity, access, and intersectoral distribution–not a Malthusian notion of water scarcity.

The United Nations estimates that 40 percent of all annual excess deaths in Pakistan can be directly or indirectly attributed to an insufficient supply of clean water.7 Less than 40 percent of households have access to piped water in Karachi, the world’s seventh most populous city.8 Drought conditions are endemic in rural Balochistan and Sindh, constituting a push factor for increasing rural-urban migration.9 Meanwhile, Pakistan is seen as a booming market for water-intensive urban beautification and horticulture projects as a result of a surge in upscale private housing societies across the country.10 Pakistan’s water crisis relates to equity, access, and intersectoral distribution–not a Malthusian notion of water scarcity.

Agriculture and the Water Crisis

As one point of comparison, Jordan’s per capita water availability is roughly 140 cubic meters per person (whereas Pakistan’s is 1,000 cubic meters per person).11 In other words, Jordanians have roughly seven times less available water per person than Pakistanis. Instead of growing water-intensive crops, 30 percent of Jordan’s agricultural output is tomatoes, a far less water-intensive product.12 To produce 1 kilogram of tomatoes requires 180 liters of water while producing 1 kilogram of cotton requires 9,800 liters of water.13

The helpful but inexact concept of virtual water helps illuminate the water used in a product’s production cycle (Figure 3).1415 Pakistan devotes almost three-quarters of its water supply to cultivating its water-intensive crops: approximately 23 percent for wheat, 21 percent for rice, 19 percent for sugar cane, and 14 percent for cotton (Figure 4).16

Existing policies encourage the cultivation of water-intensive crops primarily because water is not priced into the agricultural cost of production. Pakistan’s Canal and Drainage Act (1873) enables consumers of canal irrigation to pay an annual abiana (water tax) charge for water usage.17 Under the Act, the Government of Punjab, for instance, charges flat fees ranging from Rs. (Pakistani Rupee) 400-550 ($2-3) per acre of farmland for a year of effectively unlimited water use.18 By comparison, households in Karachi without municipal water supply typically pay more than Rs. 3,300-4,500 ($12-16) for a standard water-tanker service every week.19

Toward Agricultural Reform

Policy prescriptions in the agricultural sector require nuance to reflect the importance of individual crops. Rice and wheat (roti) are essential crops because they are food staples in the national diet. The government’s stated policy is to prioritize maintaining sufficient stocks to ensure food security, either through domestic production or imports.20 Conflict in Ukraine and recent global supply shocks have increased the domestic focus on ensuring food security through local production.21 While policymakers could consider importing greater quantities of rice and wheat to alleviate domestic stresses on water security, such a policy is not realistic given Pakistan’s foreign exchange shortfall.22 Instead, Pakistan’s cash-crop sector represents a riper target for reform efforts. Pakistan’s primary cash crops, sugar and cotton, collectively consume almost a third of its water resources.23 A recent analysis found that sugar cane alone consumes about 42 percent of the total annual household water demand in Pakistan.24

Pakistan’s primary cash crops, sugar and cotton, collectively consume almost a third of its water resources.

Of the two crops, reforms within the sugar sector are more challenging because Pakistan’s sugar barons wield significant political influence. Sugar mills partly bankroll all of Pakistan’s mainstream political parties. A study found that around 40 of Pakistan’s 89 sugar mills are owned by the political elite and their families,25 whose corporate farming practices have helped Pakistan become the fifth-largest sugar producer in the world.26 Sugar cultivation is entrenched in Pakistan as a result of decades of favorable government laws and policies, such as subsidies and price fixing, which reward uncompetitive practices and artificially prop up sugar’s domestic profitability.27 Phasing out sugar production would inevitably encounter severe pushback from the political elite because of the crop’s importance to their businesses and political stature.28

Beginning reform efforts in the cotton sector could minimize political resistance, while catalyzing a much-needed policy debate about the salience of broader agricultural reforms down the line. Like sugar, cotton is a nonessential, water-guzzling cash crop. State incentives to produce cotton could be feasibly phased out over time in favor of export alternatives–such as high-value goods, services, and information technology–that are more sustainable for Pakistan’s long-term economic and water security.29

Exporting Water

Pakistan’s reliance on water-intensive cotton exports has made it the largest exporter of virtual groundwater in the world, ahead of the United States and India.30 Pakistan roughly exports 13 MAF of its total water supply through cotton-based textiles annually.31 In other words, Pakistan exports between two or three times the amount of water it needs to satisfy domestic demand yearly (Figure 5).

One key challenge to reining in cotton production is the outsized role the crop plays in Pakistan’s overall exports. The cotton industry contributed to almost 60 percent of the country’s total exports, making cotton an important source of foreign exchange amid recurring challenges to the balance of payments (Figure 6).32 Despite cotton’s importance in generating foreign exchange reserves, the cotton industry constituted only 0.3 percent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product, indicating that the country’s exports are of extremely low value both domestically and internationally.33

Recent macroeconomic challenges and low foreign exchange reserves have fueled policy impulses to double down on cotton and agricultural production. Pakistan plans to double cotton production by 2025 to increase exports and generate foreign exchange reserves.34 The military has launched corporate farming schemes in a partial bid to seek external assistance from the Gulf states.35 Punjab’s government recently announced cash rewards for cotton producers and related government departments.36

Pakistan’s reliance on water-intensive cotton exports has made it the largest exporter of virtual groundwater in the world.

Successive administrations have sought to increase Pakistan’s exports.37 International financial institutions have also pushed for market-determined foreign exchange rates to incentivize cheaper exports and increase competitiveness.38 Export-oriented policies should retain their primacy because they help increase cumulative exports and reduce stress on diminishing foreign exchange reserves. However, increasing exports while maintaining the current range of cotton-based goods will severely drain Pakistan’s water resources.

Navigating Challenges

While there are no easy fixes, Pakistan could minimize its reliance on cash crops and work toward long-term economic and water sustainability through forward-looking strategies that prioritize export diversification. The state can consider targeted initiatives, beginning with the cotton sector, to move away from the abiana levy and to price water into the cost of agricultural production. Targeted water pricing would create disincentives for producing cotton, while simultaneous incentives in other export sectors could help boost alternative high-value sources of foreign exchange reserves in the long term.

This could also help address exploitative formal and informal markets that limit domestic access to water. Costly water-tanker services already fill the supply void in water-stressed cities like Karachi, where municipal water lines are not reliable water-supply sources. Pricing water for nonessential cash crops such as cotton and sugar–instead of indirectly pricing water at exorbitant rates–can help limit the potential for civil unrest amid growing inflation.3940

Agricultural reforms, like all reforms, generate winners and losers. There are four key hurdles to instituting agricultural reforms in Pakistan: (1) pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves; (2) the impacts of reforms on national food security; (3) elite interests in cash-crop sectors; and (4) the impacts on farmers’ livelihoods. All these concerns, while valid, are not insurmountable, especially through a phased, iterative approach to specific cash-crop reforms.

First, the challenge with Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves is not the import bill, but rather low export receipts. Policies focusing on increasing exports through Pakistan’s current basket of cotton goods do not offer a viable solution for Pakistan’s long-term economic or water security. Cotton, the largest export product, has intrinsically low value in domestic and international markets but demands exceedingly high costs for Pakistan’s water security. At the same time, export quality has been improving in the services sector, according to the World Bank. Knowledge-intensive exports grew from 10 percent of all service exports in 2010 to 50 percent in 2020, which is now almost equal to all of Pakistan’s vegetable sectors combined.41 Policies incentivizing the trend of exporting high-value goods, services, and information technology should continue to be encouraged–rather than policies geared toward the export of knitwear, bedwear, or towels.

Policies focusing on increasing exports through Pakistan’s current basket of cotton goods do not offer a viable solution for Pakistan’s long-term economic or water security.

Second, differentiating between essential and nonessential water-intensive crops is important when delineating where the onus of reforms should fall. Cash crops do not significantly impact Pakistan’s food security. Like rice and wheat, sugar cane (importantly, not sugar) is a critical component of food security, too. Sugar cane’s high fiber content makes it a key component of diets in rural Pakistan. However, once sugar cane is processed into sugar, it becomes a cash crop. Policies related to agricultural reforms should not impact goods that contribute to Pakistan’s food security. Rather, they should seek to substitute the value generated by cash crops through long-term export diversification strategies.

Third, encouraging export diversification as an alternative to cotton production could partly assuage inevitable pushback from elite interests. Iterative reforms in the cotton sector would increase domestic water availability in the short term while giving policymakers time before initiating reforms in the more politically divisive sugar sector in the medium term. Simultaneous export diversification incentives for high-value goods and services would also attenuate stresses on Pakistan’s water sector while generating more foreign exchange reserves than current cotton-based exports.

Fourth, it is important to distinguish the impact of reforms on subsistence farming and corporate farming. Agricultural elites largely use corporate farming techniques that do not require subsistence labor, reducing the human impact of reforms relative to subsistence farming.42 Highly mechanized sectors such as cotton require relatively fewer labor inputs from small-scale subsistence farmers. Nevertheless, farmers have historically protested increases in production costs.43

A two-pronged approach might help mitigate economic risks to potentially vulnerable subsistence farmers through pricing water for cash crops. Deploying cash transfers could mitigate the immediate, short-term losses of farmers moving away from cultivating cash crops. Next, cash transfers could be coupled with land grants and voluntary training programs to ensure farmers could grow other crops. A recent survey indicated that more than 60 percent of farmers were willing to change their farming practices.44 Such flexibility was evident in responses to the 2020 locust attacks, which pushed farmers to adjust and explore alternative crop options, albeit through natural phenomena and not policy dictates.45 In addition, Pakistan should learn from other countries with similar climates and economies to seek less water-intensive crops more conducive to safeguarding collective water security.

Looking Ahead

Uncertain political timelines have historically dissuaded policymakers from engaging in structural reforms. Policymakers have relied on international economic assistance instead of instituting reforms to foment ostensible economic stability while protecting their political capital. Given perennial political resistance to reform implementation, the international community can play a role in incentivizing needed changes in the agricultural sector.

By guiding investment dollars toward more sustainable agricultural practices and rewarding reforms with additional external support, international donors and lenders can partner with Pakistan in mitigating its growing water scarcity. This should be a key objective of the U.S.-Pakistan Green Alliance given its focus on climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, and water management in service of climate resilience, energy transformation, and inclusive economic growth.46 Pakistan’s Gulf partners have also reportedly expressed notional interest in investing $6 billion in military-run corporate farms over the next five years.47 Should Pakistan’s international partners choose to invest in water-friendly farming practices with a focus on less water-intensive crops, their investments could pay dividends in incentivizing water-conscious agricultural practices domestically.48

Given perennial political resistance to reform implementation, the international community can play a role in incentivizing needed changes in the agricultural sector.

International financial institutions assisting Pakistan often neglect the environmental impact of their policies, particularly those promoting the expansion of cotton-intensive exports, which harms Pakistan’s water security. Recent developments, such as the voluntary reallocation of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, present opportunities for positive change.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) SDRs are reserve financial assets that supplement foreign exchange reserves, with advanced economies receiving most of the SDR allocation.49 In 2022, G20 finance ministers supported voluntarily channeling their IMF SDRs through international financial institutions to countries facing liquidity challenges.50 However, there has been a lack of leadership in redistributing SDRs through international financial institutions, which, if addressed could create new opportunities going forward.51

The United Nations and the World Bank are well-positioned to allocate SDRs based on countries’ progress in achieving water-related Sustainable Development Goals. This approach could incentivize countries like Pakistan, facing liquidity challenges, to implement essential policy changes and adopt water-conscious practices in anticipation of progressive lending strategies.

Civil unrest, economic challenges, political fragility, and transboundary water disputes already plague Pakistan. Water insecurity, if left unaddressed, could exacerbate any or all of Pakistan’s existing challenges as a threat multiplier with dangerous downstream implications. The alternative is for Pakistan’s policymakers to center the public, not cash-crop-producing agriculturalists, as the primary beneficiary of the country’s ample water resources through iterative agricultural reforms.

Javed's Blog

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Water Depletion in Pakistan and Solutions