The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) between India and Pakistan, often celebrated as a model of conflict avoidance, masks a deeper tragedy: the ecological collapse of the Indus Basin.
By rigidly dividing rivers without regard for their natural rhythms, the treaty has systematically dismantled one of the world’s great river systems.
Under the IWT, India gained control of the eastern rivers—Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej—while Pakistan received rights over the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab.
Crafted with World Bank input to prevent future wars, the treaty treated rivers as divisible commodities rather than interconnected ecosystems.
Seasonal tributaries, vital floodplains, and aquifers were over-looked, with devastating consequences.
Among the gravest omissions was the Hakra River.
Originating in Haryana, India, the Hakra once coursed through Rajasthan, Cholistan, and Tharparkar, feeding the Rann of Kutch delta.
It served as a critical floodway of the Sutlej, recharging aquifers and sustaining life in the de-serts.
But with no mention in the treaty and rampant upstream diversions, the Hakra was cut off and eventually dried up, leaving communities without their historical water lifeline.
The ecological toll has been staggering.
In Cholistan, groundwater levels have plummeted beyond the reach of even mechanized borewells.
In Rajasthan and Gujarat, vast diversions of Sutlej waters through the Indira Gandhi Canal have yielded meagre benefits, irrigating less than one percent of the desert, with huge water losses to evaporation and seepage.
Crucially, the destruction of floodplains has devastated traditional livelihoods and biodiversity.
Once dynamic ecosystems that absorbed floods, filtered sediments, and nurtured fisheries and pastoral economies, the floodplains have been turned into dry wastelands or chemically dependent monocultures.
Pastoralists lost grazing grounds, farmers lost nutrient-rich soils, and fisherfolk saw breeding grounds vanish.
Dis-possessed and impoverished, many have been driven to urban migration.
Further downstream, the Indus Delta, once fed by 25 million acre-feet (MAF) of freshwater annually, now receives less than 5 MAF.
Over 90 percent of wetlands have dried up.
Mangrove forests have withered, and seawater has intruded 80 kilometers inland, destroying agricul-tural lands and displacing communities.
Once Pakistan’s richest fishery, the delta now teeters on the brink of collapse.
This is no natural disaster; it is a political artifact.
The treaty’s zero-sum logic prioritized control over sustainabil-ity, ignoring shared groundwater, sediment flows, and the vital role of seasonal rivers like the Hakra.
Today, ground-water depletion and arsenic contamination threaten the region’s survival, with Punjab’s water table dropping a meter annually.
Repairing the damage demands more than tinkering with the old treaty.
It requires recognizing the Indus Basin as a single ecological entity.
Environmental flows for rivers and the delta must be restored.
Reviving the Hakra corridor, safeguarding aquifers, and managing sediment must be prioritized.
A new ecological annexure to the IWT, focused on resilience and biodiversity, is essential.
Survival in an age of climate disruption demands not just avoiding conflict, but restoring life to rivers that sustain over 300 million people.
The Indus must be reborn as a shared ecological trust not a divided relic of geopolitics.
—The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
