Water Security in Pakistan
According to the Wikipedia,
water security is defined as "the reliable availability
of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods and
production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks."
Obviously, the phrase about reliable availability of acceptable quantity and
quality of water for all stakeholders provides critical substance to ensure
water security within given confines of any country.
Do we have reliable availability of water in
Pakistan? This question has both regional and local dimensions. In a country
where its 75% water share originates from the foreign lands and the same amount
of renewable water is already being used, nothing can be said with confidence
about the future reliability of water in terms of as, when and acceptable quantity
and quality required.
In an article
published in the Dawn on 3rd December 2012, Ashfak Bokhari has
written about our collective failure to defend our riparian water rights. This conclusion is drawn by presenting India’s well documented and consistent efforts
to build as many dams as possible along three western rivers allocated to
Pakistan.
No doubt that there is a
special provision in the Indus Basin Treaty of 1960 to let India build
run-of-the-river dams to generate electricity but within specified storage
limits along each tributary to the main rivers. However, the same term, the
run-of-the-river, also means that India must not influence the quantity of
water flowing in time. As India is bent upon to build dozens of such dams,
without even informing Pakistan in most cases, the capacity being developed to
influence the stated principle will jeopardize the water security of the lower
riparian state of Pakistan.
Along with India, we
should also share the blame regarding the unreliable water availability in time
for the users. Our river flows are highly skewed on seasonal basis. From summer
to winter, our river flows amount approximately 85 to 15 percent, respectively.
Before blaming outsiders, we should question ourselves: Did we do enough to
make these most uneven river flows even to address the emerging crisis about
the water security in the country? Obviously, we have failed.
What to speak of time
based reliability, our provincial irrigation departments have messed up even
water availability on spatial basis. In 1984-85, a CSU team conducted flow
measurements along 4 secondary canals, one in each province, for many months
using data-loggers. Data show that every referred canal was drawing more than
its due designed discharge, about 50 to 120%, but all canals had their tail
sections, 25 to 40 %, dry when required and fully flooded when there was
rainfall in the area. .
Do we have acceptable quantity and quality of water
for health purposes? To be fair, serious
efforts have been made in this context but a lot more is still needed.
Most of the densely populated area of Punjab that
was served by the Sutlej and Ravi rivers has brackish groundwater that is not
fit for drinking as well as for irrigation. Moreover, large cities in the upper
sections of these rivers keep pouring their almost all untreated sewerage and
industrial wastewater into these dry rivers. This practice has a devastating
impact on the health, livelihood and environment on the downstream side of the
two stated rivers.
According to
some case studies conducted by the International Water Management Institute
reveal an alarming increase of water born diseases in Bahawalnagar area. This
is happening because of polluted water being used for drinking as well as for
other livelihood uses like washing of clothes, taking shower, sanitation, etc.
In case of living rivers, this pollution gets diluted but it still does not eliminate
serious health concerns.
Generally, it is true for all contexts but for the arid
and semi-arid countries, in particular, water security is huge risk factor for
food security. What does this
unreliability of water availability mean in the context of food security?
Globally, about 70 % water is consumed in agriculture sector but an arid or
semi-arid country like Pakistan has 90 to 97% water reported to be consumed
meeting crop-water requirements. Since unreliable water availability creates a
rain-fed scenario, it becomes a serious risk factor for food security by not availing
the full potential of irrigated agriculture. This is why a water security
crisis is really termed as food security crisis in developing countries where
local agricultural production supports food needs of the entire population.
In 1996, the National Defense College of
India defined national security as "— (It) is an appropriate and
aggressive blend of political resilience and maturity, human resources,
economic structure and capacity, technological competence, industrial base and
availability of natural resources and finally the military might."
Obviously, the mention of natural resources in the stated definition, water
security is made part of national security.
However, in the context of Pakistan,
water insecurity becomes even a serious threat to the national security where we
need guaranteed control over water resources to keep the defense lines functional
on our eastern borders based on a system of canals and rivers. Letting control
of water slip away even for a month or just for few days can have serious
consequences for the country.
Whether it is a challenge of food security or of
national security, the importance of water security can only be overlooked by
risking perilous consequences. In reality, the crisis relating to water
security is essentially an outcome of an absolute absence of political will and
poor water governance at different levels of water supply system.
. In an hostile environment, an upper riparian may
take advantage of its position but who stops lower riparian to counter such
tactics by taking proactive actions at right time instead getting embroiled in
a futile blame game? For example, we
can easily frustrate most of the manipulations of the upper riparian states aimed
at affecting the run-of-the-river flows through appropriate proactive actions
like building reservoirs and / water banks on the lower riparian side. The same
logic can be extended to the national as well as provincial levels. However,
there is tendency to hide inactions, incompetency and poverty of innovative
solutions by hiding behind a victim’s syndrome.
As Syed Mohibullah
Shah said (4th December 2012, the News): “Every organization in the world, corporate or public - including the
government - has instruments and procedures embedded in its internal structures
and operating systems. These procedures protect the interests of 'the owners' -
shareholders in case of corporations and citizens in case of the state - from
being hijacked by their 'agents', corporate or government leaders respectively.” The same is true for the state of water
governance in this country. What Mr. Shah has said about the corporate or
public governance, with slight adjustments, it can apply to the water
governance as: “The problems of water governance in Pakistan have
multiplied over the years because ‘the agents’ have managed to become 'the
owners', disabling internal checks and balances embedded through laws and the
constitution to prevent ‘the agents’ from misusing powers and resources of 'the
actual owners / water users’ - the people.”
Since there is a lack of
knowledge about the state of water governance at different levels, the “agents”
are either incapable or negligent, under an environment of disabled checks and
balances, for defending the rights of lower riparian at the international level
or pure greedy and blinded by the self-interests at national and provincial
levels for failing to ensure water security of Pakistan.
For effective water
security governance, the starting point is to establish centers of excellence
or institutes for water security policy and research to generate authentic body
of information for taking proactive actions to safe-guard the rights of
stake-holders. At present, our reluctance to take effective counter measures
need hard facts instead of ongoing political rhetoric. There is no alternative
to a body of highly competent professionals and researchers to produce
documents on hard realities and different options to address such challenges of
water security. By behaving like an ostrich, how long can we afford to keep
hurting our own interests?
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