Pakistan will touch absolute water scarcity line by 2025: study

Pakistan will touch the absolute water scarcity line by 2025 if population continues to grow at the present rate and continual stress on water resources remains unabated, said a research conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR).
The report pointed out that it is true that our irrigation system is one of the largest, but the fact remains that it is not one of the best managed. Therefore, water scarcity stands out as the most important issue.
According to Dr Muhammad Ashraf, Chairman PCRWR, Pakistan will only be left with 500 cubic meters per person per day in any such situation. "We have already touched water scarcity line in 2004-2005. A few current initiatives to counter this issue include the establishment of a dam fund by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the approval of National Water Policy 2018," he added.
Some other experts are of the view that Pakistan had almost lost 90MAF of water in the aftermath of recurring floods in 2010, 2011 and 2014.
As per the World Bank, saving 1 MAF of water means saving US$1 billion. The loss extends to massive devastating effects on agriculture, livestock, human life, and infrastructure. The root cause of this issue is the inadequate water storage facility. The water received in wet years transforms into floods instead of being saved. Almost 0.2 MAF of water is lost per year to sedimentation in storage reservoirs, said Engineer Suleman Najeeb Khan, an expert on dams, adding that Pakistan has so far lost 6 MAF. He said Pakistan has more than 18 MAF water in unutilized potential.
Dr Ashraf said non-conventional water practices result in low water productivity. In the absence of sufficient surface water, he said, reliance increases on groundwater, whose water table is depleting at more than 26 canal commands. In urban areas such as Lahore and Islamabad, water table is reducing at an annual rate of 1 meter per year while in Quetta it is around 6 meters per year.
He said Quetta faces an additional challenge of the exhaustion of groundwater for general consumption to the extent of puncturing the hard rock for fossil water.
He said due to the lack of water regulatory framework, anyone in Pakistan can install tube wells of any size and can pump any amount of water. He said rich farmers are taking the most advantage of such a state of affairs. They pump water and sell it to poor farmers who cannot dig a tube well for their own use. In order to reduce the gap between water supply and demand, almost 10 MAF of drainage affluent and 6 MAF of waste water needs to be managed.
He said in terms of governance, ground and surface water provided to farmers, industries, and domestic consumers is almost free, at less than one dollar per acre per year. According to him, a model can be followed for establishing industries for maintaining a sustainable water level for a longer period. If the water level is 100 feet at the time of an industry's foundation, it should stay the same in the next 10 or 15 years. The industry will either reduce the extraction or will have to increase charges in those areas. The water table will otherwise deplete in about 15 years and the industry will shift elsewhere, he warned.