A water-stressed nation

The per capita water availability in Pakistan is on a steep decline while the population growth is on an upward trajectory. In 1951, the country’s population was 34 million while per capita water availability was 5,260 cubic meters (m3). The situation has adversely changed to per person water availability of 1,032 m3 (2014) today while the country’s inhabitants have crossed 180 million.
The country is currently experiencing water stress conditions. According to the most commonly used water scarcity measure (Falkenmark Indicator), if the amount of renewable water in a country is below 1700 m3 and above 1,000 m3, the country is said to be experiencing water stress. The water availability in Pakistan is below 1,700 m3 since 1990 and pockets within Pakistan experience periodic water shortages.
The worrisome fact is that below 1,000 m3, the country may experience water scarcity. According to WAPDA’s calculations, by 2020 the per capita water will be 909m3 and by 2050 it would worsen to 769m3. Hence, the next generation (2020-50) will experience water scarcity deteriorating from water stress conditions (1990-2015). Thank God, the absolute water scarcity of below 500m3 is not on the horizon in our life time.
What is the policy makers’ answer to these alarming facts? Is there a focus on increasing storage or on the cautious use of water in the country? Is anybody running a meaningful campaign to inform the public at large about the ground realities?
Seemingly, nothing concrete has been done in the past few decades to address the issue and the nation itself is responsible for the shortfall we face today. The average annual flow of water of Pakistan’s Indus System is 140-145 million acre feet (MAF) while the country’s live storage capacity is mere 10 percent (14.06 MAF) with only three dams to do so.
The world average storage capacity is 40 percent with 20,000 MAF water availability and 8,000 dams in total. Nile river basin has storage capacity of 132MAF (281%) from 47 MAF annual flow while Sutlej Bias Basin in India, on average stores 35 percent of its 32 MAV annual flow. No wonder, like in many other areas, Pakistan is performing poorly in water management.
The country had huge (relative to its need) Sui gas reserves. However, poor management and absence of new discoveries has resulted in acute shortages of gas today. Experts fear that the same fate for water in coming decades, if the ostrich approach continues. Mind you, people can live without gas but water is the lifeline and it can trigger wars including inter-provincial rifts.
The immediate need is to enhance water storage and to put a stop to huge wastages. Out of the total 140 MAF surface water; 100 MAF goes to canals every year while only 60 MAF reaches the farm gate while 40MAF is conveyance loss. While the system losses are 10MAF. The canal losses can be minimized and system losses can be checked as well.
Yet the most worrisome fact is that the country on average lets 30 MAF flow into the sea while the ecological needs are less than 10 MAF – the 20 MAF. The current average loss per year is huge and coming generations will pay the cost of the incumbents’ neglect. The economic cost of water is estimated between $1-2 billion per MAF and by virtue of it, at the lower level, Pakistan wastes a potential of $20 billion (7% of GDP) every year.
The need is to build reservoirs to store water in years of high flow and use it in dry seasons. The water going to the sea has erratic trends depending upon the amount of rain and glacial melting in a given year. In the past 40 years (FY77-FY15), this flow ranged from one MAF (FY01) to 92 MAF (FY95) while the average is 30 MAF. The reservoirs can store water in days of high flow and that can be utilized in bad days. Additionally, electricity generation from this storage of water is a by-product and a dire need of the country.
The water that comes through the river basin originates from rainfall, snowfall and the melting of glaciers. There are concerns rising on the pace of glaciers melting. The glaciated area of the Karakoram of Pakistan is of 13,000 squared kilometers with 5,000 glaciers in the Indus catchments. The annual average glacier melt (1962-2005) is 40 MAF which flows through the Indus Basin.
But global warming is changing the equilibrium as according to a World Bank study, the Eastern Himalayan glaciers may retreat for the next fifty years and afterwards the river flow may decrease by 40-50 percent. In the days of high melting, floods may come and after that droughts may become the norm.
What are the remedies? The foremost is to build reservoirs. However, that would not be enough. The need is use water more efficiently and that can be done through pricing and well defined water property rights. There has to be reuse of water through desalination of the sea water.
What have been done on these fronts over the past many years as the mantra of water scarcity has persisted for long?
There was a report fifty years back that Pakistan should build a dam every decade yet the last dam was constructed in 1970s. Why has the country not built any dams or enhanced storage for the last 40 years? Why water is not properly priced and why not modernized irrigation systems? Why are desalination plants not being setup in Karachi? All these are queries which need serious pondering by policy makers. BR Research shall attempt to progress this discourse in subsequent columns.