What no one tells you about Pakistan’s water crisis

Dispelling the myths in the water sector and the dam debate

In the past couple of months, I’ve seen colleagues, friends and journalists share news and articles — with somewhat dramatic titles — about how Pakistan is running out of water and how water scarcity will pose an existential threat to the country. It has suddenly become a hot topic being picked up by those who’ve been oblivious to it for the past decade(s).

First, I decided to investigate whether there was any truth to this noise, or whether my social media newsfeed was being deceptive. So, I decided to go on Google trends and typed in “water scarcity Pakistan”. The results clearly indicate that there was a surge in Google searches for these terms following July 2018.

Figure 1: Google Trends for water scarcity Pakistan

As is evident from the chart, there has been an obvious rise in the level of interest in this topic.

That begged the question: why the sudden interest in water? What has changed now in the hydrological cycle that has warranted such concern? Yes, we are a semi-arid country and water has always been a large part of the development agenda, but have we reached some tipping point?

Unpacking the Water Crisis

(aka dispelling the water myths that make me want to pull my hair out)

For those who’ve been in the water sector, this increased interest might come as a pleasant surprise, especially since our lot has been harping about water issues for decades.

However, the only thing that is a little worrisome is that while people are showing concern about water, they are not investigating the actual problem (facepalm!). Instead, many are heeding blindly to newspaper titles and staying ignorant of the true water challenges.

Dramatic statements, such as “Pakistan is running out of water” and “India is diverting water” are not harmless. They are problematic because they end up misguiding us, making us support solutions that are untenable, and distracting us from the actual challenges that we are facing.

As a water engineer, I decided to focus on four common claims made about water, which we are misinformed about. These claims are:

that Pakistan is running out of water; that Pakistan needs more water to grow food, that Pakistan is losing a lot of water, and that Pakistan needs/doesn’t need dams.

The purpose of this exercise is to unpack these claims and to clarify some misconceptions around them so that the public is better informed and can focus on the right issues instead of blindly contributing to dam funds without a good understanding of the issue.

Claim 1: Pakistan is running out of water

I have been regularly hearing that Pakistan is running out of water, due to water scarcity. Perhaps, the thing to unpack here is the term water scarcity. Water scarcity isn’t the lack of water, but rather the lack of freshwater resources to meet water demands. Despite its frequent use, there is no universal definition for water scarcity. When one news piece talks about water scarcity, it may measure something entirely different from other news pieces. This creates confusion as to what water scarcity is and leads to different answers when asked the question of which regions are the most water-stressed.

Measuring Water Scarcity — Total Renewable Freshwater Resources

Let’s look at the way water scarcity is measured in Pakistan. The common indicator used to measure water scarcity is to look at water abundance. The indicator used is the volume of total renewable water resources. Pakistan has 246.8 km3 and that is fairly a high amount — only 34 countries have more renewable water than Pakistan. Just check here.

Many of the countries with more water are poorer than Pakistan. Then, there are many countries with less volume of water than Pakistan but many of them are richer. As you can see from Fig 2 below, countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have more volume of freshwater than Pakistan but are much poorer. On the other hand, countries like France and Sweden have less water.

Figure 2: Total Renewable Water Resources (1000 cubic meters)

Measuring Water Scarcity — Per Capita Water

Another indicator used to indicate water scarcity is the volume of water available per capita per year. If this number falls below a threshold of 1000 cubic meters per person per year — known as the Falkenmark Stress Index — then, a country is considered water scarce. To note, Pakistan has fallen below this threshold, with a per capita water availability of 296 cubic meters per year. However, this is because of a rise in population and not because the volume has decreased. Per capita water for almost all countries has been on a decline due to increasing populations.

Presently, there are 32 countries that have less water for each person than Pakistan, and many of these countries are wealthier than us and use less water for each person.

Water and Wealth are not correlated

A look into both these indicators will make you realize that Pakistan is not actually running out of the water, nor does it need a large amount of water to progress further. Even if these indicators suggest that Pakistan is water scarce, it is not indicative of our ability to produce more, have a higher gross domestic product (GDP) or lead a better quality of life. In fact, an earlier analysis done in 1997, shows that several high water–using nations have very low per capita GDP, and several of the wealthiest nations have very low per capita water use (Fig 3). To note, the per capita water availability per person has fallen significantly since.

As you can see, there is little correlation between how much water is available or used per person, and how much wealth that a country has. Rich countries can be endowed with a lot of water (US) or very little (Singapore).

Figure 3: GDP and Per Capita Water Availability

Why is this important for us to know?

Well, for eons, Pakistan has been managing its water, by focusing mainly on the supply side — i.e. augmenting water supply through dams and other big infrastructure. What’s actually needed is to shift our focus from the issue of scarcity to managing water demand and producing more from each drop of water. Because no matter how much water we may have, if we don’t learn how to use it better, we aren’t going to fare better on improving our lives in the long run!

Claim 2: Our economy needs more water to solve its challenges!

This takes me to the second claim, which is closely linked to the first one: We need more water to solve our food or energy challenges.

I recognize that water is important for the food and energy security of Pakistan — but I disagree that we need more water to solve our food and energy challenges. In fact, we have enough water to grow our food, and are already using a lot of water in agriculture.

The real problem is low water productivity — meaning that for every drop of water, we are producing very little output. A whopping 95 percent of fresh water in Pakistan is used for agriculture and still the country is among those with the lowest productivity. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) states we have the lowest productivity per unit of water i.e. 0.13 kg /m3 in the region, compared to India at 0.39 kg/m3 and China at 0.82 kg /m3. Just go over these numbers.

Why is this important for us to know?

Instead of harping about increasing water supplies, we need to focus on the problem of low productivity in terms of the yield and value of crops a unit of water used. There are many ways we can improve agricultural productivity, beginning with improvements in soil health, better seed varieties, and better marketing.

At the same time, we should also think whether allocating so much water for agriculture is justified at all. Most developed countries provide the first water claims to the cities, and then to the other sectors. In Pakistan, that is not the case, because the first claims to water are held by the agricultural sector, who pay next to nothing for using a large amount of water.

Is it optimal, that a city like Karachi, which is an economic hub of the country, and with millions of people, does not have sufficient water, but the farmers in the country, particularly the wealthy ones, can use a large amount of water, at very low costs, to grow crops that they’re going to export?

You tell me.

Claim 3: Pakistan is losing a lot of water

Another regular claim that is made is around water losses — those to the sea and those through seepage and to the ground.

Let’s look again at the numbers around these losses. The first losses we talk about are losses to the sea. Water losses to the sea are measured at Kotri Barrage, the southern-most point in the delta. If you look at Fig 3, you will see that the volume of water going downstream of Kotri has been decreasing, rather than increasing. Hence the supposed losses are in fact decreasing. Moreover, this volume of water going down the sea shouldn’t be called a loss. This volume of water is critical to ensure that alluvium is transported onto the delta, providing it the nutrients to support not just the ecosystem, but the livelihoods depending on the delta.

Figure 4: Water “Losses” to the Sea

The second losses regularly commented about are the seepages into the ground. When water seeps into the ground through canals and waterways, or even in farms, all the water either returns to the rivers or seeps into the groundwater. These are NOT losses. A simple hydrological cycle shows that water seeping into the ground ends up in the rivers, or in the groundwater, both of which are used either downstream, or through pumping.

Indeed, canal seepage and infiltration to groundwater provide water for the countless farmers who pump from the ground. If these losses did not occur, our groundwater would be severely depleted, and in some places permanently lowered.

Thus, losses such as those to the sea, and those to the ground are great and ensure ecosystem health and aquifer health! The only actual loss, I will argue would be evaporative losses. However, at the basin-scale irrigation, it is estimated that a very small proportion of irrigation water lost through evaporation and non-productive plant use.

Why is this important for us to know?

This issue of losses is important to understand because instead of focusing on reducing the water going down Kotri, or lining canals, which prevent groundwater recharge, we need to focus on the supposed “losses” — the volume errors that occur due to misreporting and illegal abstractions. A transparent water accounting system is needed for this, to ensure that those who are under-reporting what water they are using, or who are stealing or illegally abstracting the water, are held accountable, and priced for the water they use.

Claim four: We need big dams to solve our water woes

The fourth claim is around dams — and it’s a big one because it has divided the country along two lines: Those who want dams and those who don’t. Sadly, the debate doesn’t go beyond this topic and has become so political, that we’ve lost an understanding of storage in the first place.

Dams are used to buffer the variability of flows to match the time-varying pattern of demand.

In the Indus, flows do not vary greatly between years, they vary significantly by season. This means, that while Pakistan has little need for reservoir storage from one year to the next, it needs storage to even out within year variations associated with the monsoon. Given this amount of variation, smaller storages reservoirs and rainwater harvesting are better options for seasonal attenuation or storage, rather than large-scale, multipurpose and expensive dams.

Why is this important for us to know?

The very word ‘dam’ is so politically loaded, that one would think twice before using it in a country that’s already divided along ethnic and provincial lines. Put in this mix, a mistrust of our neighbors and we are in a state of constant inaction. There is a thing policymakers call the BATNA. It is the best alternative to no alternative. What it means is that sometimes, we need to stop running after grand dreams of big infrastructure for which we have no money or political will for — and focus on the low hanging fruits first.

Smaller dams will serve equally well for Pakistan in terms of providing seasonal storage, which is what the country needs, given our interseasonal variability. More importantly, they are more plausible than the large dams that have become so contentious and may divide the country further along provincial lines.

However, given the recent Chief Justice’s calls for a dam and crowd-funding for the Diamer Bhasha dam, a large dam might be in the works. The Diamer-Bhasha dam is not a new proposition — it has been in the works for a while. It is, however, important to note that this dam will not solve our water woes. It will provide additional storage, but that storage isn’t sufficient to meet the increasing demands for water. A dam can create a false sense of security, but the reality is that the storage from this dam can do little to protect us from a mega-drought. Pricing water in the agriculture sector, improving water productivity, and managing water demands through putting an economic price to water is perhaps the best and only sustainable way going forward.

Why does this rant matter?

The purpose of writing this article is to debunk some widely held beliefs around the water crisis in Pakistan. If our water scarcity challenges need to be addressed, they require us to understand how our own water systems operate, the decisions around water allocation that we’ve purposely made, and the hydrological cycle itself to understand the phenomenon of losses. This will help us realize that Pakistan’s challenges have less to do with water shortages, and more to do with inefficient water allocation.

Water supply doesn’t need to be augmented. Instead, our attention should be on managing demands, and ensuring that we are making the best economic use of the water we have. This includes improving overall water productivity, especially in the agricultural sector through improvements in soil health, better seed varieties, and better marketing. Moreover, water needs to be priced in a manner to reflect its true economic costs.

So, let’s not blame nature for what it’s endowed us with. That is unfair and shows how little gratitude we have. We have enough water to go around twice, and enough to become a rich country. But we need to focus on the real problem, not merely news headlines.

NOTE: Many publishers and newspapers refused to publish this article, owing to the controversial nature of dams in Pakistan, as well as the fact that by publishing this, the government might crack down on the main media outlets who cannot go against the government’s narrative on dams. I am not against dams — I’m just saying they aren’t going to solve the actual problem.

For some more objective and honest discussions about Pakistan’s water realities, read Bill Young’s Post as well: http://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/five-myths-about-water-pakistan