Essay#1: Pakistan – from a “Water-Stressed” to a “Water-Scarce” Country |

Complete Essay with Outline

By:*Syed Muhammad Abubakar

Introduction
Background of the Topic
Is a Single Dam Enough to combater Water Crises?
Pakistan at Water Stress Line
Main Sources that feed the Indus River System
The Situation of Ground Water
The Guidelines of Indus Water Treaty (IWT) – 1960
Main Issues of Water Scarcity
The Exponential Rise in Population
Water Losses
Inefficient Water Management Practices
Raising of Crops like Rice and Sugarcane
Unscientific Irrigation Methods
First-ever National Water Policy
Raising of Rice and Sugarcane – Bane or Boon?
The Pakistan Economic Survey, 2017-2018 Reports
Increase in production of Rice and Sugarcane (The High Water Need Crops)
More such Crops; More water Consumption
Policy Vs Reality (Suggestions to Curb the Scarcity)
Agriculture consumes 95% of Water
One Million Tube Wells
Wastage of Water
The scarcity of Clean and Safe Drinking Water
NWP Guidelines
The Promotion of Greater Urban Water Management
Revision of Urban Water Tariffs.
Enhancing Recovery
Reducing System Losses
Agriculture Sector needs More Focus
A need for Provincial Water Policies
Strengthening WAPDA
The need for Resources – CPEC, etc
The Need to Link Water Policies with Pakistan Vision 2025 and SDGs
Inefficient Consumption and Negligible Recycling
First Come First Serve Policy
The need for*Establishment of National Level Water Institutions
The Development of Sectoral and Implementation Plans
Conclusion
The year 2025 has been marked as the year when Pakistan — if it doesn’t mend its ways
soon — will turn from a “water-stressed” country to a “water-scarce” country. Warnings
about water running out have been issued separately by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources
(PCRWR). And as the alarm bells began to ring, the chief justice of Pakistan launched a
campaign to build the Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam. In his inaugural speech,
Prime Minister Imran Khan, too, has announced his backing for the plan.

Whether a single dam is a panacea to all of Pakistan’s water woes is, of course,
questionable.*Consider the facts: per capita surface water availability of 5,260 cubic
meters per year in 1951 turned into around 1,000 cubic meters in 2016. This is likely to
further drop to about 860 cubic meters by 2025. The PCRWR describe that Pakistan
reached the “water stress line” in 1990 and crossed the “water scarcity line” in 2005.

The Indus river system receives an annual influx of about 134.8 million acre-feet (MAF)
of water. The mean annual rainfall ranges from less than 100 millimeters to over 750
millimeters. Surface water comprises glacial melt up to 41 percent, snowmelt up to 22
percent and rainfall 27 percent.

In terms of groundwater, Pakistan is currently extracting 50 MAF from underground

aquifers — this has already crossed the sustainable limit of safe yield.
The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) enabled Pakistan to enhance water availability at
canal headworks to about 104 MAF through the construction of dams. However, this has
decreased due to increased siltation.

Pakistan’s water woes can largely be bifurcated into issues of quality and quantity. The
water coming into our systems over the past decades hasn’t changed much. But demand
has soared due to an exponential rise in population. Existing reservoirs’ storage capacity
cannot sustain this population boom while its capacity has also been reduced over the
years.

Meanwhile, the water reaching the end user has also decreased due to further losses along
the way.

While doomsday is just seven years away, it took over 70 years for Pakistan to draw up
its first-ever National Water Policy (NWP), approved in April last year. The policy is still
riddled with some significant gaps but at least, it lays out a few principles that ought to be
adhered to. But in some ways, it is merely a compilation of suggestions.

The Pakistan Economic Survey, 2017-2018 (prepared by the Ministry of Finance) details
the state of the economy over the past year. It announces that the agriculture sector
recorded a “remarkable” growth of 3.81 percent (as opposed to its targeted growth of 3.5
percent). The high water-need crops of rice (8.65 percent growth) and sugarcane (7.45
percent) both surpassed their respective production targets for 2017-18.

Prosperity brought by high water-need crops has meant that more farmers have preferred
planting more rice and sugarcane.

The Pakistan Economic Survey, 2017-2018 notes that while the rice was sown over 2,724
thousand hectares last year, it rose to 2,899 thousand hectares this year. “[H]igher
domestic prices and availability of inputs on subsidized rates, good advisory along with
an increase in export,” according to the survey, contributed to more land being used to
grow rice. This 6.4 percent increase ultimately yielded a production high of 7,442
thousand tonnes. Last year, 6,849 thousand tonnes of rice were produced in Pakistan.

Sown on 2.89 million hectares (about 10 per cent of total cropping area), it earned $2 billion
(around 8pc of export income) for the country.

The survey also shows that sugarcane was cultivated on an area of 1,313 thousand
hectares, an increase on last year’s area of 1,218 thousand hectares. “[G]ood economic
return encouraged the growers to bring more area under cultivation and [so did]
comparatively timely payments from sugar mills last year,” explains the survey. This 7.8
percent rise in acreage translated into a 7.4 percent hike in production: from 75.482
million tonnes to 81.102 million tonnes.
It follows, therefore, that a country tethering on the edge of water scarcity ought to de-
incentivize the growing of water-intensive crops. In practice, this means convincing the
farmers that they will not be hit by a financial loss were they to switch to other crops.

The NWP acknowledges that irrigated agriculture is the backbone of the economy and
consumes around 95 percent of the water resources.

Furthermore, around one million tube wells in the country pump about 55 MAF of
underground water for irrigation, which is 20 percent more than what’s available from
canals — signaling how highly water-intensive the agriculture sector is. This is all
unsustainable.

On the other hand, while there is great water wastage in the rural sector, providing
potable water to the cities has become a challenge.*One of the more achievable targets
set by the NWP is the access to clean and safe drinking water and sanitation facilities for
all.
Towards that end, the policy has also urged the promotion of greater urban water
management and revision of urban water tariffs. It also encourages enhancing recovery
and reducing system losses, treatment of industrial effluents and provision of the
sustainable supply of water for everyone.

But it is still the agricultural sector whose water utilization needs to be under the
microscope. Till now, the policy seems divorced from the financial compulsions of those
whose livelihoods are associated with the agricultural sector.

Dr. Pervaiz Amir, director of the Pakistan Water Partnership (PWP) believes that policies
are designed and implemented for the people and the civil society should have been
engaged in debates and discussions towards this end.

“Balochistan has already prepared its water policy whereas Punjab and Sindh are working
on theirs,” explains Dr. Amir. “It is very important that the provincial policies are
congruent and must not be in conflict with the national water policy of Pakistan.”

For him, the federal water ministry is weak and there is an urgent need to strengthen the
Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).
“Instead of reviving old horses, a better option is to establish a new institution which has
a diverse set of experts, not just engineers,” he adds.

The PWP chief points out that the policy fails to explain the most important question of
where the resources will come from. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is
one option; the Chinese are already operating a plant to provide potable water to their
engineers working in water-scarce Gwadar. But will such measures have broader utility?

“Through CPEC, investments are going to increase,” continues Dr. Amir, “and the
question about how CPEC is going to integrate with water demands immediate attention.
We should know the supply and demand side.”

Tahir Rasheed, CEO of the South Punjab Forest Company (SPFC), also laments the
absence of stakeholder consultations in all provinces, including Kashmir and Gilgit-
Baltistan. He sees the need for the water policy to be linked with national, regional and
international commitments such as Pakistan’s Vision 2025 and Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs).

“Integrated watershed management should be promoted,” says Rasheed, “including

ecological conservation practices in uphill watersheds, by exploring the possibility of
joint watershed management of trans-boundary catchment areas with neighboring. The
policy is also silent on reactivating centuries-old traditional wisdom of water
management and use of tools such as Rodh Koi system, Sailaba, Karez systems, etc. It
should also address the trans-boundary water pollution aspect, on which even the Indus
Waters Treaty is silent.”

Dr. Tariq Banuri, the founding executive director of Sustainable Development Policy
Institute (SDPI), a senior climate expert and currently heading the Higher Education
Commission (HEC) as its chairman, agrees that Pakistan is wasting its water resources
due to inefficient consumption patterns and negligible recycling.

When asked if the water policy will help address the indiscriminate wastage of this
precious resource, he said: “Our systems are inefficient. The National Water Policy does
spell a range of issues with respect to water but it doesn’t have details that can help to
operationalize it. Its strategic and operational steps are not devised as yet. The
environmental aspect of water in sustaining the environment has not been recognized in
the policy either.”

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, CEO of the Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD)-
Pakistan and a senior water expert, termed water a provincial matter and urged the need
for a national-level framework that acts as a guiding tool for provinces.

“The water policy is an enabling document,” comments Sheikh, “which will lead to the
establishment of national level water institutions, and unless the institutions are endowed
and empowered, we won’t be able to achieve desirable results.”

Ali urged the federal government to earnestly address the reservations of the provinces
concerning the water policy and also informed that the policy framework will make an
overdue start.

“The policy will require sectoral plans and unless they are developed for key
departments, things won’t go very far. First of all, there should be an overall
implementation plan and then sectoral implementation plans should be developed for
agriculture, climate, energy and other sectors,” sums up Ali.

While experts have termed the policy a step in the right direction, they have also
recommended some measures that will make it further inclusive and bridge possible gaps.
Now that the policy has been approved, the government must work aggressively to
implement it in letter and in spirit if it is serious to address the water crisis that the entire
nation is grappling with.
About Author:*Syed Muhammad Abubakar is an environmental journalist who works on
climate change, water, deforestation, food security and sustainable development. He
tweets*@SyedMAbubakar

Essay#2: Mega Dams and Donations. Can Mega Dams be built be donations?
By:*Khurram Husain

Outline

Introduction – Water Crises in Pakistan

Disagree with the Subject (Proceed with Thesis Statement)
Reasons for Negation
Mega Reservoirs need an enormous amount of money
Mathematically the collection will take 199 years (Rs. 20m/day)
The target for next year will be collected in 3.2 years
Double the Numbers – still 1.5 years
Infrastructure finance cannot be crowd-sourced
A common*doner lacks awareness
Who will be the authority to transact these funds?
What are the rules of business?
Who will supervise the proper utilization of funds?
Such JOKES of serious matters were done in past
Pervez Musharraf’s*President’s Relief Fund*after the earthquake of 2005
Nawaz Sharif’s ‘qarz utaro, mulk sanwaro’ scheme
Similar scheme by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Conclusion
Public finances cannot be run in this way, especially infrastructure finance.
One can appreciate the chief justice of Pakistan’s*sensitivity*to the growing*water
crisis*in Pakistan, but with all due respect, this is not how infrastructure finance is done.
You do not crowd-source a mega dam. The fact that this even needs to be said is
embarrassing, to say the least.

Just consider a few questions that arise when trying to use voluntary donations to fund
the Diamer-Bhasha dam, whose cost has been given as Rs1.450 trillion. This figure is
taken from a briefing given by water and power officials at a hearing of the Senate
Standing Committee on Planning, Development, and Reform. The cost of reservoir
construction was given as Rs650 billion, and the rest for power turbines and associated
infrastructure, and land acquisition and resettlement.

Now let’s do some math on this. As of writing, the total amount deposited in this
account was Rs32 million. Since the account is shown as being open since July 6, let’s
assume only three of those days were functioning; that comes to almost Rs10m per
day. Next let’s assume this will pick up the pace since tacit pressure has come to apply
on banks to raise funds from their employees (in a meeting held on Tuesday). Exactly
how ‘voluntary’ the contributions will be is a separate conversation. For the moment, if
we assume that on average, the account sees an inflow of Rs20m per day (which is
highly optimistic), then it will take 72,500 days to reach the target or 199 years.

Wait a minute, some people will say. All the money does not need to be available up
front in order to begin work! Fair enough. Consider another angle. For next year, the
amount allocated for construction of the dam part of the project alone is Rs23.68bn as
per the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) document on the Planning
Commission’s website.

Now do the math. At Rs20m per day, it will take 1,184 days to reach the target of
Rs23.68bn, or 3.2 years. Meaning even next year’s PSDP allocation (for the dam part
alone) will not be possible to meet the amount.

You can change the assumptions. Let’s say the contributions come in larger than what
I have assumed (which, mind you, is generous). Let’s say it’s double the size. That cuts
down the period by half, meaning it will take more than a year and a half to reach next
year’s target alone.

Let’s say instead that the contributions are not meant to pay for the entire dam, but
only to supplement government allocations for the project. Even then, a year’s intake
of Rs7.3bn (assuming a Rs20m per day average contribution for the year) will not even
be enough to pay for a portion of the resettlement cost of the project.

Public finance is not a joke, the state cannot be run like a charity, and infrastructure
finance cannot be crowd-sourced like this. Mind you, the calculations here assume an
average contribution rate of Rs20m per day, every day, for years and years on end.
How long will the momentum behind this endeavor sustain itself? Weeks? Months?

Before people are asked to contribute their hard-earned money for any cause, they are
entitled to ask a few basic questions. What will this money be used for? Who will have
the authority to transact these funds? What rules will govern its distribution? How
much of an impact will my contribution have?

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Perhaps these questions ought to be answered first. For example, will the money from
the account be disbursed directly to the point where the costs are coming from, or will
it simply be handed to Wapda, the water and power division, or the finance ministry?
If it is the former, then let’s take one example. If a technical consultant needs to be
retained to advise on what type of cement to use given the extremely large annual
temperature variation in the region, and the attendant expansion and contraction that
the dam structure will undergo in a typical year making the choice of concrete quite
crucial, who will decide which consultant is most suitable for the job? What criteria
will be used to make the selection?

There are thousands of such decisions that have to be made in mega projects of this
sort. What are the rules of business according to which these funds will be distributed?
If the plan is to simply hand them over to Wapda, who will supervise the funds to
ensure their proper utilization? How much expertise and experience does that person
have in the execution of giant, highly technical projects of this sort?

This is not the first time that a joke has been made out of a very serious matter. After
the earthquake of 2005, Pervez Musharraf launched a similar fund called the
President’s Relief Fund. Once launched, similar tacit pressure tactics were used to get
people to pay up, and one by one various companies lined up saying ‘we are pleased to
contribute’, and the amounts were a million here, two million there, until interest dried
up and everyone moved on.
Likewise, Nawaz Sharif launched a ‘qarz utaro,*mulk sanwaro’ scheme in his second
term, in the late 1990s, in an effort to get donations to help pay off Pakistan’s external
debt. That too ended in an embarrassing whimper.

A similar scheme by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his last year. The television ads asked
everyone to contribute one rupee a day, which the ad promised would be used for
development purposes. The visual used to illustrate ‘development’ was a cement
elevator. And that was also that.

Fact is, modern-day public finances cannot be run in this way, least of all when it
comes to infrastructure finance. It’s time to grow up and face the facts: until we fix our
water-pricing regime, there is no way out of this crisis.

Essay#3:*Water Crises in Pakistan | Complete Essay

The almost drought-like situation in many parts of the country at the start of
the*Kharif*sowing season is cause for serious alarm.
There is a tendency to treat such conditions with an air of resignation as if we are
totally helpless before the vagaries of nature; in fact, some people, in view of the
scarce water available for our agrarian needs, start talking, reflexively, about building
the*Kalabagh dam.

Given that we are likely to face similar situations in the future, with weather patterns
becoming more erratic, it is vital to move beyond these simple positions. Pakistan’s
food security, as well as its industrial base, is largely built on the irrigation system
bequeathed to us by the Americans, working through the World Bank in the wake of
the Indus Waters Treaty.

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This country is, at its roots, a hydraulic society, and water, especially for irrigation, is
its most important natural endowment, upon which is based our entire social structure.

According to the*Indus River System Authority, the body tasked with managing the
allocation of the country’s irrigation water, somewhere between 9 MAF to 10 MAF of
water is usually released during the Kharif crop sowing season. This year, the amount
that has been released is 5.8 MAF, a near-disastrous shortfall due to diminished
inflows in the dams. But the real story is that of this amount, nearly 1 MAF has been
lost, ie it was released but never reached the command heads further downstream.
Some losses are normal, due to seepage and evaporation, but*Irsa*says the figure is
unusually high this year. This loss is south of*Taunsa Barrage.

Reports of widespread black marketing of water, which is pumped out illegally using
pumps and then poured into tankers which are sold to farmers at a steep price, are
widespread across Sindh.

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Tail-end farmers*on the*Nara canal, which feeds large parts of Mirpurkhas Division,
for example, claim they have counted more than 800 pumps operating upstream while
their watercourses are parched.
Can this sort of theft be possible without the connivance of the provincial irrigation
department?
*On top of this, there is the matter of poor water practices on farms, where large
landowners still use antiquated flood-irrigation techniques, resulting in much wastage,
instead of investing in modern irrigation technologies to conserve and make judicious
use of a scarce resource.
Until these problems — theft and waste —are adequately addressed, it would be futile
to talk of Pakistan’s water crisis in terms of quantity alone.

Drought is indeed a natural phenomenon that humans can do little to reverse. But how
we adapt to it is in our control.
---------------
Essay#4:*Drought a Ticking Time Bomb
By*Saad Gul

Coupled with the general effects of global warming, Pakistan is facing a certain water
emergency. It lacks a water management policy and deficiently handles its available
hydel resources.

Water is vital for agriculture, human life, industry, and energy generation. Globally,
agriculture accounts for over 70 percent of freshwater consumption. Industries make
the second largest claim on the world’s water bodies, accounting for nearly 25 percent
of global water use. Water used by households, schools, and businesses account for
less than a tenth of global water use today.
Originally Published in*The Express Tribune, June 3rd, 2018.