Groundwater Governance & Management in Pakistan-3: Post #11

C: Do We have Groundwater Management Crisis?

Groundwater crisis, in general, refers to the scarcity of good quality and quantity of groundwater from a basin-wide common aquifer relative to the demands of land and water users. Obviously, in case of ineffective groundwater resources management, imbalance of recharge and discharge from an aquifer occurs that can have two kinds of consequences: (1) if recharge is in excess of discharge, the result is water-logging and salinity like areas where our surface water duties are too high and groundwater extractions are minimum; and (2) if discharge from aquifer is more than recharge, the potential outcomes are a drop in water-table and the rise of saline-fresh water interface from the lower depths (dominant case in our context)  to push up  pumping cost higher and to cause quality deterioration. Because of pumping phenomenon, brackish water intrusion into relatively fresh groundwater is happening both vertically as well as horizontally because of brackish groundwater in nearby locations as we observe in many of our areas between two rivers in the Indus Basin.

Obviously, we are facing severe groundwater crisis mainly on two main fronts: (1) Lack of supply-side groundwater management where over-abstractions are causing excessive stress on aquifer conditions by dropping water-tables and quality deterioration and (2) absence of demand-side groundwater management is causing unbridled greed for more and more water extractions by the land-owners and other and water users as population keeps exploding.

As reported by Usman Karim (Imno25@hotmail.com), there were 1000 tube-wells in 1950, 0.5 million in 2000 and 0.7 millions in 2008 just alone in Punjab and total numbers of tube- wells in Pakistan  are reported to be 1.1 million (2008) as per the same estimate.  At present, based on the trend derived from the referred data, we can expect more than 1 and 1.2 million tube-wells in Punjab and Pakistan, respectively. With this unplanned and free-for-all regime is causing over extraction of groundwater to push down water-tables, the rise of saline-freshwater interface and saline-water intrusion to effect the quality of this on-site resource. Moreover, according to a book authored by Qureshi andBarrett-Lennard in 1998, 70% of tube-wells pump sodic water in the Indus Basin.

Because of excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, industrial waste-water and sewerage water, excessive aquifer pollution is happening. As a consequence of this phenomenon, the contamination of ground and surface water is causing huge health hazards. Some reports suggest that 40% of prevalent diseases and 20-40% hospitalization is mainly attributed to water borne diseases. Usman Karim also reports results of 747 samples collected from various cities of Pakistan. Water analyses show that 19% of total samples had nitrate concentration more than permissible limit of 10 mg/L. To be more precise, this concentration ranges from 11 to 160 mg/L. This contamination jumped to 23% for the water samples collected from Punjab and Baluchistan.

Groundwater use in all sub-sectors is under stress to an extent of crisis. This kind of outcome is mainly because of allowing an access that is free-for-all individuals to pump groundwater from a common pool without any restriction imposed through regulations or any institutional structures.