With the climatic change phenomenon being a fact of life, we do expect floods to increase in the near future due to excessive glacier-melt & erratic but intensive rainfalls in the watershed areas & beyond. Every year in Pakistan, we face the same incidents, we suffer huge losses of life and property, do hardly anything to prevent floods and then wait for the next year for the same kind of calamity. What a vicious cycle that we got in.
Our national leadership being from the vocal & organized urban setting, there is hardly any real concern about the loss of valuable lives & the destruction in the rural sector what to speak of preventing the flood-water, a blessing if conserved in a water-short country, to remain a permanent bane for us. If any doubt about this observation, just look at the party manifestos issued before the recent general elections, hardly this issue was even mentioned; committing to a solution package, it would be just expecting too much anyway.
Deteriorating watershed conditions are further aggravating the situation that the climatic change brings in for us to face. An effective one way to lower the impacts of extreme consequences of the referred happening, floods & droughts, is to ensure watershed management. For such desired management to succeed, there has to an effective watershed governance. In a country with all institutions in place, the national governance is just next to nothing; how can we expect a good news from the water sector where hardly serious attention has been paid to even conceive an effective water governance structure?
Moreover, Pakistan's 75% renewable water resources originate from the foreign lands, India & Afghanistan. Having not-so-friendly relationships with the both countries, it is hard to initiate any joint efforts to govern & manage the respective watershed regions of different rivers to allow maximum seepage of snow & rainwater in the ground to minimize the incidents of floods/ flash floods.
Unfortunately, the trans-boundary watersheds are located where an unrest & insurgency abound. This is another factor that has made things bad to worse. Our watersheds were already in bad shape because of illegal logging in connivance with the corrupt officials, dependence on wood-use for cooking and warming rooms by the inhabitants of the regions, with no watershed governance put in place and criminal negligence by all concerned entities. However, with the onslaught of sharia-brigade, there is no will & writ left to set things right even within the watershed regions that fall within Pakistan.
So, the on going extremism / terrorism is clearly linked & impacting upon our water resources in creating both acute flooding as well as acute drought conditions. If flooding results because of not enough time & space for water to seep into the ground to minimize over-surface flows; droughts happens when river flows drop to 15 % in winters and there is no significant contributions from the seeping water in the ground or the water storage facilities on-ground.
To be continue------
Our national leadership being from the vocal & organized urban setting, there is hardly any real concern about the loss of valuable lives & the destruction in the rural sector what to speak of preventing the flood-water, a blessing if conserved in a water-short country, to remain a permanent bane for us. If any doubt about this observation, just look at the party manifestos issued before the recent general elections, hardly this issue was even mentioned; committing to a solution package, it would be just expecting too much anyway.
Deteriorating watershed conditions are further aggravating the situation that the climatic change brings in for us to face. An effective one way to lower the impacts of extreme consequences of the referred happening, floods & droughts, is to ensure watershed management. For such desired management to succeed, there has to an effective watershed governance. In a country with all institutions in place, the national governance is just next to nothing; how can we expect a good news from the water sector where hardly serious attention has been paid to even conceive an effective water governance structure?
Moreover, Pakistan's 75% renewable water resources originate from the foreign lands, India & Afghanistan. Having not-so-friendly relationships with the both countries, it is hard to initiate any joint efforts to govern & manage the respective watershed regions of different rivers to allow maximum seepage of snow & rainwater in the ground to minimize the incidents of floods/ flash floods.
Unfortunately, the trans-boundary watersheds are located where an unrest & insurgency abound. This is another factor that has made things bad to worse. Our watersheds were already in bad shape because of illegal logging in connivance with the corrupt officials, dependence on wood-use for cooking and warming rooms by the inhabitants of the regions, with no watershed governance put in place and criminal negligence by all concerned entities. However, with the onslaught of sharia-brigade, there is no will & writ left to set things right even within the watershed regions that fall within Pakistan.
So, the on going extremism / terrorism is clearly linked & impacting upon our water resources in creating both acute flooding as well as acute drought conditions. If flooding results because of not enough time & space for water to seep into the ground to minimize over-surface flows; droughts happens when river flows drop to 15 % in winters and there is no significant contributions from the seeping water in the ground or the water storage facilities on-ground.
To be continue------
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