It may seem ridiculous to think about the possibility of water scarcity in Pakistan amid the recent horrific floods but the reality is far more horrible.
According to the Water Resources Institute (WRI) 2021 report, Pakistan ranks 14 among 17 highly water-risk countries. Having a mere hereness of 0.5 percent of renewable water resources for 2.8 percent of the global population, the country ranks 36th in the overall renewable water resources (PIDE 2022). But what is driving this upcoming disaster? Before diving into it, we need to understand Pakistan’s water sources, use, and management system.
Pakistan, being an agrarian society like most South Asian countries, is heavily reliant on water, which mainly consists of groundwater and the surface water in the form of rivers, lakes, and canals. Approximately 60 percent of groundwater is used for agriculture, while 70 percent is for domestic purposes and industry depends 100 percent on rapidly depleting groundwater resources. While Pakistan’s dependency on the single water system of the Indus River was less risky, another terrible situation is that most of her water resources originate from the neighbouring territories. This surface water is used for 27 percent of irrigation, with groundwater extraction accounting for the remaining 73 percent. (MPDI 2022).
Such a huge use for agriculture contributes 18.9 percent to GDP and employs 42.3 percent of the labour force. And despite using 90 percent of agricultural water, our four major crops of wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton contribute to a mere 5 percent of GDP. This biggest sector of Pakistan is a clear reflection of underutilisation of labour, lack of technology, and the usage of huge inputs, mostly water and human labour, while providing only a few outputs.
This lack of output generates poverty in the rural areas, thus promoting urbanisation and the more extensive extraction and use of water. The more unfortunate situation is that we lack industries to employ this migrating labour force, thus resulting in more poverty. It also causes a lack of output and capital, which then result in lack of industries, lack of technology in agriculture, irrigation system — and extensive use of water which gets wasted due to poor techniques.
This vicious cycle of poverty and poor management of water leads to another problem of ‘lower water tariffs’, thus the cheaper the water the more it gets wasted, while also leaving the government with low capital to utilise.
This vicious cycle of poverty and poor management of water leads to another problem of ‘lower water tariffs’, thus the cheaper the water the more it gets wasted, while also leaving the government with low capital to utilise.
Another issue related to urbanisation is the rapidly increasing population and its dependency on water which underlines another contemporary major issue of global warming and climate change. Our surface water is derived from the melting of glaciers, and these glaciers amid global warming and climate change are melting at a faster pace than they are being replaced. Not only is melting at a rapid rate a problem, it also causes catastrophes in the form of floods, since our dams lack the storage capacity.
While dams on their own are problematic, and not a solution for flooding, as Dr. Hassan Shah from The Third Pole explains, “ Dam is not the solution for flooding,” he said during an interview with The Centrum Media, “the disadvantage of the dam is that it can stop small floods but the large ones when coming out of sudden, cause more destruction.” According to him, our rivers entering the dams contain a lot of soil from our erosional mountains, this soil when stopped by dams to enter rivers reduces the storage capacity of dams by creating a deposition regime in dams.
It is the need of the hour to understand that Pakistan is on the brink of water scarcity and by 2050, there will be extreme unavailability of water even for domestic purposes. Changing cycles of monsoon, melting glaciers, and inadequate water management, as well as a lot of water being squandered in the ocean, with little to no recycling, are important concerns driving this crisis.
Just like the floods have made thousands silent forever, it is not far away that water scarcity will be another grim reaper. Adding fuel to the fire, the present political leadership appears to be more concerned about conspiracies than predicaments of poor impoverished civilians.
