With our water resource rapidly depleting, wastage of this precious resource is posing serious challenges by pushing us towards water-scarce status from the existing water-stressed nation.
Our present per capita water availability has declined below 1000 cubic meter from 5600 cubic meter in 1950s with fewer reservoirs constructed since Pakistan’s inception. A major chunk of water resources continue to flow to the Arabian Sea and a vast quantity is wasted due to obsolete irrigation system. Multiple vested interests politicking on water issues since ages opposing different water reservoir projects and the big-big farmers managing much more water for their lands had inflicted irreparable loss to this resource and the nation. Despite having one of the largest irrigation systems and the fourth largest groundwater aquifer in the world, the per capita water availability declined below the scarcity threshold of 1,000 m3 /capita in 2010, stated Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resource (PCRWR). This places, Pakistan in the category of water-scarce countries, the PCRWR mentioned in its National Water Conservation Strategy prepared in February this year. For us, surface water has always been the main focus as we ignored issues like groundwater overdraft, salinity and water-logging, climate change and ecosystem deterioration. The findings revealed that with these challenges, water scarcity is going to increase further due to growing demand, mainly coming from a rising population with a growth rate of over two percent and rapid urbanization, exacerbated by the impact of climate change. Although scientific evidence has proved that water resource development and governance influence water security yet poor and outdated management practices exacerbate the water crisis. According to all indicators, Pakistan is fast becoming a water-scarce country, said Chairman PCRWR, Dr Muhammad Ashraf. But, there is little awareness of this looming disaster amongst stakeholders and policymakers who cannot foresee real picture of its repercussions on socio-economic fronts. He recommended to engaging policymakers on the basis of scientific evidence to make them realize the gravity of the situation and ensure the synthesizing of the latest methods of diffusion and adoption and scaling up of promising water management. Water management is part of Pakistan Vision 2025 that envisages improving water efficiency in agriculture, he said. Similarly, it is also part of Sustainable Development Goals 2030 that provides for managing water usage at domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Dr Ashraf said the Draft National Water Policy provides for establishing a National Water Commission as well as policy guidelines for sustainable management of water resources.
Province would develop their own strategies in line with this Policy. We need collective efforts for water resource management and a mass awareness campaign was direly needed to educate all stakeholders on this issue, he added. Since our agricultural sector is the major user of our water resource, there is a dire need to prudently using water for this sector by minimizing distribution, conveyance, and application losses, developing crop zones based on land and water resource availability, ensuring water efficient technologies at the village level, train farmers on efficient use of water, promote well-accepted irrigation methods like raised beds.
