Pakistan’s alarming cost of food exports

A ground-breaking study published recently in the Nature journal has some alarming revelations for Pakistan’s already precarious state of water resources. The paper titled “Groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade” aims to highlight the impact of global food consumption on ground water depletion (GWD).

It is pertinent to mention that more than 40 percent of crop irrigation is done through underground aquifers which are being utilized faster than they can replenish because of unsustainable extraction rates to fuel production of crops.

According to the researchers almost eleven percent of the non-renewable groundwater use for irrigation is part of the international food trade with two-thirds being exported by Pakistan, America and India alone.

Furthermore, India and Pakistan are the biggest users of GWD at 30 and 11 percent respectively whereas Pakistan is the largest exporter with an alarming 29 percent of global GWD trade volume followed by USA at 27 percent and India at 12 percent.

Even though Pakistan is one of the leading exporters of rice, the country does not account for the huge environmental cost it is bearing for these exports. According to various estimates including UN-Water it takes around 3500-5000 liters of water to produce just one kilogram of rice.   The paper points out that Pakistan exports rice to Iran that have been irrigated using “Upper Ganges and Lower Indus aquifers” which are overexploited by a factor of 54.2 and 18.4 respectively”.

It should be a major concern for policymakers that in the long term the tremendous pressure being exerted on these aquifers will outweigh the short term benefits of export of crops. The paper also correctly points out that importers could share responsibility for environmental damage and reduced water availability in their trade partners.

So for Pakistan it is imperative to realise the true cost of exporting crops such as rice which currently bring in much needed foreign exchange but in the long run threatens to ruin the water eco-system as well as production of these crops.

Interestingly, the research also shows even though the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China rank amongst the top ten consumers of unsustainable water in agriculture they also feature as the top importers of crops produced with these rapidly diminishing water resources.  Therefore, placing responsibility in this complex web although difficult has major implications for global as well as domestic food security.

In a way this study confirms the notion that the true cost of foodstuff export is drastically higher than nations realise. Pakistan could well be indirectly exporting precious and massive amounts of water through its rice exports. Alarm bells should resonate in the ears of policymakers because the long-term implications of this research could undermine not only exports but domestic food security for Pakistan.