Pakistan has just finished its chaotic elections and is lurching into political instability through yet another hybrid government. The country must go to the IMF for an economic lifeline sooner than later. The Pakistani Army seems to be a divided house with inquiries against corps commanders and other senior officers who did not ensure that the PMLN won. The TTP and Baloch rebels are on their merry spree of perpetuating havoc along Pakistan’s western borders and targeting Chinese interests. If one thinks that the Pakistani cup of sorrow is overflowing, there is more to come. It comes from water or lack of it.   

The country is slipping effortlessly into the zone of absolute water scarcity any time now. Look at the water availability graph of Pakistan above. In the 1990s, Pakistan became a water-stressed nation (water availability less than 2000 m3/ per capita). Around 2005, it entered the water scarcity zone when the availability became less than 1000 m3/ per capita. Soon it is going to dip below the absolute water scarcity line when the availability of water falls below 500 m3/ per capita. The situation ahead (not too far) is scary. A contracting economy with increased military spending is a recipe for disaster. It is well known that the nation needs the lifeline drip of a 23rd IMF bailout to survive. What is not well known is that the bailout will not cater to its water scarcity.  Every penny spent on purchasing arms and ammunition arms is a penny less for water. Most of the water-related projects have been pulled out from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Those under progress are meant for water to be given to the thermal energy projects. Loan/aid from Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and China does not cover water. Pakistan’s slide into water scarcity is unchecked with no solution in sight. Once the absolute water scarcity level is hit, the situation will become irrevocable despite the Diamer Bhasha Dam which is being built (with Chinese help). Pakistan faces an existential crisis. Not from India but from water, rather the lack of it! The werewolf is within! 

What is ironic and paradoxical is that Pakistan is well endowed with water. As per a World Bank Report of 2019, only 16 countries have more water. However, due to its exploding population water availability per person is low and will become even lower. There are 32 countries with less water per person than Pakistan. However, across all these countries, the average per capita GDP is 10 times that of Pakistan. Only six African nations of these 32 water-scarce countries are poorer than Pakistan. Pakistan’s water consumption is dominated by agriculture, which contributes around 1/5th to GDP. The four major crops (wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton) consume 80% percent of all water but generate under 5 % of GDP.

This poor situation is getting worse due to climate change, global warming, population increase and lopsided economic growth. It means that more water is needed in an uncertain environment. Accelerated glacial melting has increased flash floods risks in the upper Indus Basin. In the lower Indus Basin reduced flows of the river due to upstream dams have resulted in extensive seawater intrusion into the delta and increased salinity in coastal groundwater. If sea levels rise, the problem will compound. Pakistan is also susceptible to heavy and extensive flooding due to unseasonal rains like last year. Pakistan’s water security is steadily going downhill as the squabbling politicians and greedy Pakistani Army generals look at all other threats except the werewolf within the country and in plain sight.     

Pakistan’s water security has two dimensions – poor water resource management and poor water service delivery (irrigation, drainage, domestic water supply and sanitation). The water problems faced by Pakistan, are extensively outlined in great detail in a 2005 World Bank report titled  Pakistan Country Water Resources Assistance Strategy, Water Economy: Running Dry.  

The First problem is that Pakistan is solely dependent on the Indus River Basin. That is a single source, high-risk fate, thrust upon it by geography and Partition. It has no additional water sources which can be brought into the system. Second, while its population is exploding, its water availability is depleting. Third, Pakistan does not have adequate water storage capacity. It has only 30-days water storage capacity. The USA has 900 days capacity, South Africa has 500 days capacity and India has 120-220 days capacity. Fourth, Pakistan’s two major water reservoirs, Tarbela and Mangla, are silted up. Both dams dip to dead water levels in summer. The under-construction dam at Diamer Bhasha will not even compensate for this loss of capacity.

Fifth, the conveyance of available water was only about 40 percent efficient in 2005. It could have only depleted even further. Sixth, severe degradation of the resource base is unchecked. Depletion of groundwater levels (once the saviour of Pakistan) is alarming due to over-exploitation. All freshwater bodies are shrinking.

Nearly 70 percent of underground and lake water is unfit for drinking and harmful to crops. It is contaminated with bacteria, arsenic and other toxic substances. As per a UN report, Pakistan’s economy is the most water-intensive and dependent in the world. Its water withdrawal as a percentage of total renewable water resources is 74 percent as compared to Iran (67 percent), India (40 percent), Afghanistan (31 percent) and China (19.5 percent). Seventh, flooding and drainage problems are set to increase in the lower Indus Basin due to a combination of building embankments to restrict meandering of the river and rising bed levels due to silt collection. Eighth, climate change is going to take a toll on the variability of water flows in the rivers. This will either cause floods or droughts unpredictably. Evidence of this has been seen and experienced in the Himalayan region. Ninth, Pakistan has not built a knowledge base about the complex Indus system. Infrastructure is in a poor state of maintenance. Governance deficit is high and project implementation is poor.

Lastly, Pakistan is broke. No one pays for water ever since Pakistan obtained its ‘freedom at midnight’ on 14 August 1947. Pakistan has never upgraded its system or met its financial challenges. The 2005 World Bank report also came out with a set of solutions that were probably never implemented. They reappear in the 2019 report. Add to this, the rate at which urbanisation is taking place is unsustainable. Most urban areas and big cities of Pakistan suffer from poor water infrastructure. What does the future hold for urban areas sans water?

In 2014, Pakistan came out with a grandiose document called ‘Pakistan Vision 2025’. One wonders where it is? In any case, no one has time for it.  It had seven pillars. Pillar No. 4 is Energy, Water and Food Security. As far as water was concerned, it aimed at tripling storage capacity to 90 days, increasing water usage efficiency in agriculture by 20 percent and ensuring clean drinking water to all Pakistanis by 2025.

Ever since then, the situation has gone only from bad to worse like everything else in Pakistan. Except of course its military which thrives and prospers. It is universally known that Pakistan must solve two basic problems to come out of this tangle. One is to reduce or control the population. The other is to increase water storage capacity. When Zia-ul-Haq Islamised Pakistan, population control went out of the window. The population graph has zoomed up and will continue to do so. Pakistan is bang on target to reach the 250 million mark by 2025. If water availability remains as it is, the water security problem will keep compounding geometrically beyond 2025.

Turning to water storage. Pakistan had two projects to increase water storage are the Kalabagh and Diamer-Bhasha dams, both on the Indus. The Kalabagh Dam was proposed to be built at Mianwali first in 1979. However, in the past four and half decades, the project has been announced and closed cyclically despite assurance of World Bank assistance. No visible solution is in sight. However, the Diamer Bhasha multi-purpose mega-dam is now being built by Chinese on Indus near Chilas. It falls in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan areas.  The financial outlay was $12-14bn. It will have a power generating capacity of 4.5GW and a water storage capacity of 6.4 million acre-feet of water. The dam only compensates for the progressive loss of storage capacity due to the silting of older dams at Tarbela and Mangla among others. Even this will decrease progressively due to sedimentation. Pakistan’s overall storage capacity is likely to remain below 30 days only.

It was announced on 27 Jul 20, that the dam is ready for construction. The project is in its preliminary stages of construction. The Diamer Bhasha Dam is controversial.  It is located in Indian territory. It is in a high seismic zone and its height (272m) is of serious concern. The weight of the large water body in the catchment area could trigger sympathetic tremors during any regional seismic activity. It will have an ecological fallout like unseasonal rains, landslides and floods that might affect the adjacent areas in Pakistan as well as in India. 

The dam faces local resistance since it will submerge about 50 villages upstream. More than 35000 people will get displaced and sent to areas afar. There is also a dispute between local tribes over the compensation. There is a domestic dispute between Gilgit Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over claims on the royalty from the dam. There is a grouse that Punjab will be the main beneficiary. Residents are also protesting the destruction of historical Buddhist sculptures, inscriptions and petroglyphs in 50 villages, which will be submerged once the dam is operational. 

World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other financial institutions including those in the Gulf countries have consistently refused to finance the dam. They wanted an NOC from India being in disputed territory.  Initially, this project was part of CPEC. It was withdrawn from the CPEC in 2018, due to China’s strict conditions. Thereafter a crowdfunding exercise was started at the behest of a Supreme Court judge. That failed.

Out of the blue, a  joint venture between Power China ( a Chinese state-run firm)  and Pakistan’s Frontier Works Organization (a commercial arm of Pakistan’s military) signed the contract for the Dam construction. The contracted sum is $2.75 billion whereas the original outlay was $14 billion. 70% share is Chinese and 30% Pakistani. The details of funding as usual were opaque and fishy.

In December 2023, Pakistan’s caretaker PM went to Kuwait to raise funds for the dam with no tangible outcomes. From all inputs, this dam might not even see the light of the day. It appears that all the hullabaloo of this dam construction was only to facilitate the presence of Chinese personnel in Gilgit Baltistan. Overall, water storage in Pakistan is unlikely to increase. In fact, it will only get worse.    

Pakistan can focus on water management to improve the situation. However, it involves water discipline, water payments, water recharging, waste water recycling, ground water usage regulation, changing lifestyles, changing cropping and agricultural patterns, industrial and effluent control so on so forth. However, that needs political sagacity and effective law and order cum tax collection machinery. In the current scenario of hybrid governance, political inability, economic chaos and military usurpation of resources, all this is la la land dreams.

So where does it leave Pakistan? Nowhere, really. What will the fallout be? As time marches, the cycle of water scarcity, droughts, floods, domestic mismanagement will shorten, and the frequency will increase. That will lead to social tensions at one level. At another level, the political turmoil will increase between states. This will be based simply on (non) availability of water. Pakistan went into a ‘cash crop’ ‘high yield’ agriculture system as has been the global trend.

Modern agriculture needs adequate quality and quantity of water. Absence of both could lead to disaster. Agriculturally, Pakistan will take a huge hit. Agriculture contributes 20 percent to the national GDP. It remains the biggest employer in Pakistan (40 percent). Both will be adversely affected. Estimates are that climate change will reduce agricultural output by 8-10 percent. Add an equal amount due to water shortage. That means 20 percent reduction in agricultural output. It translates into a compounding GDP loss of 4-5 percent. Factor in a young population, poor education and the economy unable to turn around. Turmoil is around the corner. In the absence of any solution on the ground and Pakistan continuing in its merry militaristic geopolitical ways, the whole system is at risk of collapse despite the best efforts of the West, Gulf countries and China. The real werewolf waiting to prey on Pakistan is within!  

From an Indian perspective, one must monitor the situation very carefully since internal turmoil in Pakistan will have a fallout here. Pakistanis must be made aware that the water crisis they are in is of their own making. Pakistan can afford water and other necessities if only it reduces military expenditure. It means that the long-term key to alleviating Pakistan’s water problems lies in peace with India. That is anathema for the Pakistani Army!

Image source: Newstrack