Pakistan- the time to focus on infrastructure is now
Zofeen T. Ebrahim, October 1, 2016
India-Pakistan tensions have brought the Indus
Waters Treaty in focus, but experts say that what Pakistan really needs to do
is build and maintain its decaying and weak water infrastructure
As tensions rose between India and Pakistan after a recent
terrorist attack on an Indian Army contingent, focus shifted to the Indus
Waters Treaty. As Indian commentators asked for the scrapping, or suspension of
the treaty, and the Indian Prime Minister is reported to have said, “Both blood
and water cannot flow,” anxiety increased in Pakistan. Pakistan is the
downstream riparian to India, and is critically dependent on the Indus, Chenab
and Jhelum – all of which flow through India – for its freshwater resources.
So
far, though, India has chosen to do little on the Indus Waters Treatybeyond
suspending fresh meetings between the Indus Water Commissioners and suggesting
it will utilise its water storage rights under the treaty better.
Mirza
Asif Baig, Pakistan’s Indus Water Commissioner, said that India would avail all
the opportunities provided by the treaty to develop its hydropower and
agricultural projects to maximise its benefits. “If the projects conform to the
design and operational criteria specified in the treaty Pakistan cannot object
on those.”
However,
he added, “We see a persistent attitude of India that it designs projects in a
manner as if the treaty does not specify any design and operational
restrictions and tries to justify such designs on the basis of site conditions
and maximisation of benefits.”
Giving
an example of the Kishanganga case, Baig said, “The Court of Arbitration in
Kishanganga’s case has clearly held that absolute optimisation of benefits is
not permitted by the treaty; India can optimise the projects only under the
regulatory constraints of the treaty.”
But
India being the upper riparian and an angry one at that can tamper with the
water, conceded Khalid Mohtadullah, Pakistan’s top water expert.
And
if India does take the drastic step of “bottling up the river water to prevent
it from flowing downstream, Pakistan could face utter devastation,” explained
Michael Kugelman, a senior associate at the Washington DC based Woodrow Wilson Center.
However,
Mohtadullah, also a senior advisor to the Global
Water Partnership (GWP) and International Water
Management Institute (IWMI), said Pakistan need not buckle under the
pressure [referring to threats of revoking the Indus Water Treaty] and give its
water rights away. “India has gone on a rampage for nothing,” he added.
Agreeing
with Mohtadullah, Baig explained, “The IWT deals with only the matters related
to sharing of waters of the Indus basin between India and Pakistan. The treaty
insulates itself from all the external matters including the dispute over
Kashmir. Hence the present attitude of India is clearly against the treaty’s
provisions.”
“It
is hoped that India would realise that fair and honest implementation of the
treaty is in its own interest. Respecting Pakistan’s rights and honouring its
obligation would be beneficial for the peace and prosperity of the region,”
Baig told the thethirdpole.net. He was in Washington where
he had gone on an already scheduled meeting with the World Bank officials.
And
while India can stop the water; it will take time.
“It
would take at least a few years for India to create enough storage to prevent
water from flowing downstream to Pakistan,” agreed Kugelman and, therefore,
Pakistan would have time to adjust.
“India
cannot stop water in a few weeks or months. It takes years to build
infrastructure that will stop, reduce and/or divert water,” agreed geographer
and water conservation expert Simi Kamal. She hoped sanity will prevail before
that stage is reached but added, “To face the possibility of reduced or blocked
flows in the Indus system, we have to plan to manage with less water in the
long run.”
The
imminent threat has also provided a rude nudge to Pakistan to wake up from its
complacent slumber, do a bit of introspection to take its water resource
management more seriously. It also gives an opportunity to experts to question
the government whether it has a contingency plan ready if such an eventuality
arises.
“Every
drop we store is a drop saved,” emphasized Mohtadullah, adding, “Then if such
shocks arise, Pakistan is better prepared to absorb them. Irrespective of the
current situation, we need to make our water use in agriculture efficient,
through improved water management,” he said, referring to the fact that 95% of
water is used for irrigation, an unsustainable proportion.
Unfortunately
there is little new thinking in the government on how to tackle the crisis.
Mohtadullah
suggested Pakistan could grow crops other than sugarcane and rice (both of
which need a lot of water), appropriately zone its agriculture so that the
right crops are grown on the right soil in optimum environmental conditions,
and consider moving towards precision agriculture based on scientifically sound
research. “The water saved thus can then be diverted to the parched areas like
the lower reaches of Sindh, southern Punjab and eastern Balochistan to
alleviate poverty,” he said.
But
most importantly, said Mohtadullah, the need of the hour was storage. “In the
form of field storages (ponds), small dams, big dams, all kinds of dams and
everywhere,” he said.
“We
are letting a lot of water – beyond the environmental flows necessary to keep
the rivers healthy – go to waste,” he said.
No
major dams have been constructed in Pakistan since the Tarbela in 1976. Along
with Mangla the two major reservoirs in the Indus basin store only 14 million
acre feet (MAF) of the 145 MAF that flows through Pakistan annually, and that
too only for 30 days.
The international standard is 120 days.
According
to a 2015 IMF report
Pakistan’s demand for water is on the rise and is projected to reach 274 MAF by
2025, while supply is expected to remain stagnant at 191 MAF, resulting in a
demand-supply gap of approximately 83 MAF. “The single biggest reason for the
drastic reduction in our per capita availability of water is our runway
population growth,” pointed out environmentalist Shafqat Kakakhel, who has
served as the deputy executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
and as UN Assistant Secretary General.
At
present the country’s population is estimated to be around 190 million. By 2030
it will grow to 244 million, and by 2100, Pakistan’s population is projected at
364 million, states the World Population
Prospects 2015. With a
rising population the demand is going to increase.
Pakistan
is already a water-desperate country, said Kugelman. According to Ghulam Rasul,
the director general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), it
will become water scarce by 2025. In Pakistan water availability per person
annually is just 1,017 cubic metres, dangerously close to 1,000 cubic metres
under which limit a country is considered water scarce.
“Reductions
of water from its chief water source could amount to a nightmare scenario.
Farmers already struggling with the realities of a disappearing Indus in Sindh
could find themselves without water at all, for example,” pointed out Kugelman.
“In
an ideal world, the mere threat of shutting off the tap would prompt the
Pakistani political leadership to take drastic measures to safeguard its
precarious water security – such as by developing new pricing plans that
penalise consumers for using too much water, rolling out plans to subsidise
water-saving drip irrigation, and so on,” said Kugelman. But he concluded, “The
reality is that in Pakistan, I imagine, the response will simply be angry words
and threats issued to India, with little introspection about what Pakistan can
do to make itself less vulnerable to India’s water machinations.”
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