IT is a crisis rarely noticed until floods strike or droughts become impossible to ignore.
The Asian Development Bank’s latest water outlook for Pakistan reads like a medical report on a chronically unwell patient insisting everything is fine. Per capita water availability has fallen from 3,500 cubic meters in 1972 to around 1,100 in 2020, over 80 per cent of Pakistanis lack safe drinking water and more than $12 billion is needed to meet basic UN targets. Numbers, however, conceal daily struggles: women in rural Sindh and the hills of Kashmir walk long distances for water that may still sicken their children; farmers in Punjab drill ever deeper as the water table drops; Karachi residents rely on tanker mafias for deliveries. Chronic shortages, contamination and mismanagement persist, yet attention spikes only during disasters, leaving the underlying crisis largely ignored. None of this is new.
Every few months another report confirms what we already know. We are running out of water, much of what remains is contaminated and we are not responding with any sense of urgency. Between 2013 and 2025, rural water security stayed under pressure, urban water security improved only slightly, environmental water security declined and our ability to manage water-related disasters barely changed. In other words, we are not just standing still, on several fronts we are slipping backwards. The reasons are not difficult to understand. Our population has more than tripled since 1972, while our water resources have not. Climate change is no longer a future concern. The 2022 floods made that painfully clear. And then there is the management problem. We have very little storage capacity, almost no regulation of groundwater and a governance system so scattered that it is hard to see who is in charge.
Groundwater is a particularly worrying part of Pakistan’s water crisis. Millions of tubewells operate with almost no oversight and farmers pump water day and night, since agriculture consumes over 90 per cent of available water. Treated as free, there is little incentive to conserve, causing the water table to drop steadily. In some areas, constant pumping has stirred naturally occurring arsenic, threatening entire communities. Groundwater depletion is largely invisible—a dry riverbed can be seen, but a falling water table cannot. By the time tubewells fail or contamination spreads, the damage is often irreversible.
What makes this even more frustrating is that the solutions are neither new nor complicated. We need enough storage to hold monsoon water instead of letting it flow unused to the sea. We need to modernize irrigation systems that waste enormous amounts of water. We need proper wastewater treatment, so we stop polluting the water we depend on. We need rules for groundwater extraction before aquifers collapse. None of these is exceptional or unheard of. Many countries have done it. But it requires something we rarely show. Long-term planning and political courage to upset powerful groups who benefit from the present arrangement.
The governance structure makes everything harder. Water management is split between federal and provincial governments, ministries, irrigation departments and countless local bodies, often with overlapping roles. The Indus River System Authority tries to manage water distribution among provinces, but political pressures and historical grievances often outweigh technical assessments. Environmental concerns rarely prevail against short-term economic demands. We need more provinces and in each one a single centralized authority for water should be established, one body fully responsible for managing resources. Smaller provinces would make it easier to plan, regulate and respond effectively to water challenges.
And so, we continue as always, moving from flood to drought, treating symptoms rather than causes. After the 2022 floods there was a burst of activity, appeals, plans, promises, but once the water receded, attention faded and deeper problems remained. This is not unique to water. It is how we handle most long-term issues, whether climate change, education, healthcare or population growth. We delay action until a crisis forces us to respond, managing today by borrowing from tomorrow. But water is different. It cannot be postponed. When aquifers collapse, rivers shrink or people lose access to safe drinking water, the consequences are immediate. Economies stall. Disease spreads. People migrate. Conflicts rise.
The 2022 floods caused over $30 billion in losses and displaced millions, while waterborne diseases continue to kill thousands, mostly children and sicken millions more. Scarcity has already hurt agriculture and discouraged investment, but the costs—sick children, failed crops, neighborhoods dependent on tankers, another season of drought—are scattered, rarely sparking the political urgency needed for reform. ADB assessments warn that Pakistan may soon reach a point where it can no longer absorb such shocks. Whether action comes now or after the next disaster remains uncertain, though perhaps repeated warnings will finally compel change.
—The writer is a young activist who comes from Islamabad and now lives in Dubai.
