Pakistan’s new big threat isn’t terrorism — it’s water

[third eye]

Pakistan

NEW YORK: In a report released last week by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Pakistan was pinpointed as “one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, not far from being classified, ‘water-scarce’.” As water demand exceeds supply in the South Asian country, more and more water is being withdrawn from the nation’s reservoirs, leaving them in a critically precarious position. According to the ADB, Pakistan’s storage capacity, the amount of water it has on reserve in case of an emergency, is limited to a 30-day supply — far below the recommended 1,000 days for countries with similar climates. Without meaningful action, a water crisis could push the country into further chaos.

Consider what a water shortage means for Pakistan. The last several years have seen the country plagued by chronic energy scarcities. Power outages lasting up to 18 hours a day are routine throughout the country, and they have had damaging effects on the economy and on the wellbeing of Pakistanis.

Citizens frequently take to the streets, demanding a solution from their government in protests that often turn violent, worsening an already tumultuous political environment. Deficiencies of another precious natural resource, such as water, have the potential to intensify the already unstable situation in the country.

Early signs of the potential imbroglio that could transpire are already beginning to take shape. Late last week, residents in Abbottabad vowed to hold mass demonstrations if the local government was unable to address rampant water shortages in the city. The city has lacked sufficient water for the past month, with over 5,000 homes impacted in the hottest months of the year.

At a conference organized around water shortages in the province of Sindh earlier this month, leaders of political parties and various trade organizations blamed a wide array of individuals, including former Pakistani heads of state, other provinces in the country, and even Pakistan’s neighbors, for the nation’s water woes.

Extremist groups, of which there is no dearth in Pakistan, have also weighed in on the matter, using it as an opportunity to garner support for their movement. Hafiz Saeed, the founded of the militant group, Lakshar-e-Taiba — the organization behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks — has unequivocally blamed India for Pakistan’s water crunch, accusing its government of committing “water terrorism.” By evoking an issue that is sensitive to millions of Pakistanis, Saeed’s rhetoric demonstrates the potential of militant groups to exploit this issue.

The country’s demographics make it seem as though this trend will only worsen over time. Pakistan’s population has grown exponentially over the past several decades. With two-thirds of the population currently under the age of 30, the nation of 180 million is expected to swell to 256 million by the year 2030, and demand for water will only grow. Meanwhile, climate change, which has reduced water flows into the Indus River, Pakistan’s main supply source, will continue to shrink the available water supply.

The response to any crisis is likely to play out, in part, through Pakistan’s foreign policy. For starters, the government has been pushing to redefine the terms of the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 — the water-sharing plan struck between India and Pakistan that outlines how the six rivers of the Indus basin would be shared. Pakistan has recently contested the construction of Indian dams on rivers that begin in India but flow into Pakistan, arguing that the dams would restrict Pakistani supply.

The dispute, which is currently being reviewed by the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, will clearly impact the relationship between the two historic rivals, as water demand increases in both countries.

But with pressure mounting from various groups within Pakistan, and the likelihood of instability increasing due to shortages, the Pakistani government may find itself in a difficult position when negotiating with India — it will have limited bargaining room against an Indian government that may be reluctant to renegotiate a treaty that has been in place for 53 years.

There are other ways, outside of India, for Pakistan to alleviate the problem. Requiring and enforcing updated, modern farming techniques is a start. Pakistan’s agriculture industry is notorious for its inefficient irrigation and drainage processes, which have contributed to the scarcity. The government will also need to reach out beyond its borders to create solutions. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Karachi Water and Sewage board and the China International Water and Electric Corporation, which strives to make Karachi self-sufficient in water supply, is one example of how deliberate international efforts can help the situation.

Water deficiency, and how Pakistan responds to it, has the propensity to shape the country significantly over the next several years and decades. Without any meaningful action, the future looks alarming. A growing population without the resources it needs to survive, let alone thrive economically, will throw the country into a period of instability that may be far worse than anything we see today. — Monitoring report

 

[F-16 Viper]

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-24314-Pakistans-new-big-threat-isnt-terrorism-—-its-water

Lakshar-e-Taiba — the organization behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks

Correction.... The government of India was behind Mumbai Attacks...

And its all because of India that we are facing these problems because you have made dams illegally on our water...

we'll find a solution to the problem.. u just sit back and have a banana....

 

[naveen mishra]

Correction.... The government of India was behind Mumbai Attacks...

And its all because of India that we are facing these problems because you have made dams illegally on our water...

we'll find a solution to the problem.. u just sit back and have a banana....

good ..........................

 

[third eye]

Correction.... The government of India was behind Mumbai Attacks...

And its all because of India that we are facing these problems because you have made dams illegally on our water...

we'll find a solution to the problem.. u just sit back and have a banana....

This is interesting .. which problem have you found a solution for in so many years - New Dams anywhere, de silting existing ones / Re lining canals to prevent seepage ? If a physical threat is being suggested - be my guest.

India abides by the IWT - Pak has found out each time the tribunal has given a verdict.

 

[Lalashersingh]

funny how things work, India has the second most water in the world after Canada, yet Pakistan has one the lowest

 

[indiatester]

funny how things work, India has the second most water in the world after Canada, yet Pakistan has one the lowest

Where did you get that data?

 

[Backbencher]

Correction.... The government of India was behind Mumbai Attacks...

And its all because of India that we are facing these problems because you have made dams illegally on our water...

we'll find a solution to the problem.. u just sit back and have a banana....

Yeah yeah we the evil hindoos
How foolish can you get ??

 

[F-16 Viper]

This is interesting .. which problem have you found a solution for in so many years.

Don't forget we have solved the biggest issue of our 65 years journey...
when India invented the Atomic bomb and became a nuclear power in the year 1974 our Prime Minister was forced to invent the atomic bomb and we invented that and tested it in 1998 and became a nuclear power.
The same Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exploded these nuclear tests in the year 1998, today If this issue increases then see the same pressure will build up on our PM to solve this issue, if we can become a nuclear power then why not we can solve these issues, the fact is that the government should be sincere in solving the issues...

 

[third eye]

Don't forget we have solved the biggest issue of our 65 years journey...
when India invented the Atomic bomb and became a nuclear power in the year 1974 our Prime Minister was forced to invent the atomic bomb and we invented that and tested it in 1998 and became a nuclear power.
The same Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exploded these nuclear tests in the year 1998, today If this issue increases then see the same pressure will build up on our PM to solve this issue, if we can become a nuclear power then why not we can solve these issues, the fact is that the government should be sincere in solving the issues...

Indeed ?

A valiant attempt.

The world feels AQ khan did it, Which PM of Pak was smart enough to ' invent ' a bomb ?

 

[danish_vij]

@third eye, @naveen mishra, [MENTION]indiatester [/MENTION], [MENTION]Akash A[/MENTION]
new biees jumping coming to pdf after watching zaid hamid videos....indians dont bother themm....everything has a different meaning for some pakistanis......just blame india for evrything.........im afraid that tommorow they dont blame indians took our electricity & oxygen....
if they r so concerned about dams they should go to international courts...whats gonna happn by jumping here
nd evn whn their own prime minister agreed for 26/11 even then some sahmeless coming to conclusion of zaid hamid........

 

[Kloitra]

Don't forget we have solved the biggest issue of our 65 years journey...
when India invented the Atomic bomb and became a nuclear power in the year 1974 our Prime Minister was forced to invent the atomic bomb and we invented that and tested it in 1998 and became a nuclear power.
The same Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exploded these nuclear tests in the year 1998, today If this issue increases then see the same pressure will build up on our PM to solve this issue, if we can become a nuclear power then why not we can solve these issues, the fact is that the government should be sincere in solving the issues...

That's amazing. Indian PM hardly has any time left after politics and governing. Pakistani PM doing all that still found time to 'invent' the atomic bomb! And Pakistan was generous enough, to teach rest of the world, this 'invention'. How else would the world have known about this 'invention'.

And that fool Nawaz Shariff. He 'exploded' the 'nuclear tests'. All the hard work of his predecessor.

And you are right. The same way Pakistan 'invented' nuclear bomb, it can 'invent' solutions. And the way Nawaz Shariff 'exploded' the nuclear tests, he would 'explode' away all the problems. My best wishes.

 

[F-16 Viper]

Yeah yeah we the evil hindoos
How foolish can you get ??

you are devil no doubt about that.... relax and take my banana advice.

 

[Kloitra]

Where did you get that data?

India has entire Indian ocean. This grants India second most water after Canada, which claims the Pacific.

 

[F-16 Viper]

Indeed ?

A valiant attempt.

The world feels AQ khan did it, Which PM of Pak was smart enough to ' invent ' a bomb ?

That's amazing. Indian PM hardly has any time left after politics and governing. Pakistani PM doing all that still found time to 'invent' the atomic bomb! And Pakistan was generous enough, to teach rest of the world, this 'invention'. How else would the world have known about this 'invention'.

And that fool Nawaz Shariff. He 'exploded' the 'nuclear tests'. All the hard work of his predecessor.

And you are right. The same way Pakistan 'invented' nuclear bomb, it can 'invent' solutions. And the way Nawaz Shariff 'exploded' the nuclear tests, he would 'explode' away all the problems. My best wishes.

Sorry typing mistake... atleast u should have "COMMON SENSE" to understand the meanings, not to divert the attention to another thing.

 

[Kloitra]

Sorry typing mistake... atleast u should have "COMMON SENSE" to understand the meanings, not to divert the attention to another thing.

My sarcasm wasn't directed only towards your 'typing' mistake.

Your belief that the same way as Pakistan made the bomb, it would do away with all the problems. Pakistan has raised the issue of Indian dams in international forum. Never was it able to prove that India has broken the IWT. Not even during the wars.

Your own officials admitted that problem is on your side.
Go through the entire article, instead of just the part I quoted. Search, you would find more articles.

Water Security Initiative trains a new generation of multitalented specialists | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2012

Trapping and Taming the Waters

The student project Briscoe set up in Pakistan is related to his work with the Asian Development Bank, for which he leads the analysis of water issues as part of a group with a “rather Orwellian name,” he notes: “Friends of Democratic Pakistan.” The funding countries are “not so friendly with the government of Pakistan, and Pakistan is not so democratic,” he points out, but the aim is a good one: to “stabilize the country both for their own good and for our good” by addressing its “major existential issues.”

His students visited six regions of Pakistan, meeting with stakeholders ranging from farmers to technical experts in flow modeling to private sector interests; Nestlé, for example, which collects milk from 190,000 farmers every day, has a vested interest in improving yields and therefore in more effective water management. The students also met with government officials involved in water regulation and visited sites of major importance to the country’s water infrastructure.

They saw first-hand that there is much room for infrastructure improvements, because Pakistan depends not only on one river, but on one major dam—the second largest in the world by structural volume. Tarbela Dam is managed for one purpose: agricultural irrigation. The group visited to gather data and study its operating rules—a subject they had learned about earlier in the summer during a trip to the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Dams can be operated “to store water; to generate hydropower; or to mitigate flooding,” explains the Harvard team’s Yousuf—but a single dam cannot prioritize all three at once, and a dam’s flow parameters are chosen to serve the primary purpose for which it has been designated. In Pakistan, for example, “where there are two cropping seasons, one in summer and one in winter, most of the water flow comes in the summer, so you must store as much water as you can in that period” to have enough for the winter season. At Tarbela, that means filling the dam as much as possible during the summer. “By August,” Yousuf explains, “the dam should be full,” which is why “when the floods came in the summer of 2010, there was very little storage available to attenuate the flood peaks.” Because there are “no redundancies in the system,” he continues, “you can’t manage the dam for flood control during the summer. People need water for irrigation in the coming dry winter season.”

“The only solution,” says Kasuri, “is a very big dam.” Perhaps more than one. Pakistan clearly needs more agricultural-storage capacity, more flood-control capacity, and more electrical generating capacity. Only 14 percent of its economically viable hydropower potential has been developed (compared to more than 70 percent in advanced economies).

The country’s current plight, Briscoe says, is at least partly due to the fact that internationally, loans to developing countries for infrastructure projects have given way to funding for social goods such as healthcare and human rights. He considers that a mistake. No rich country has ever developed without first building its basic productive capacity, he argued in a recent interview with the journal Water Policy. “Not only is this the path that has been followed by all presently rich countries,” he said, “but it is the path followed by the countries who have, in recent decades, pulled their people out of poverty—like China, India, and Brazil.” (He has scant patience for critics of dam construction in developing countries. “The enlightened Californians” who argue for no dams in Pakistan “are on treacherous moral ground,” he argues within banking circles, “because they have no intention of following those recipes that they are telling everyone else to live by. I tell them, ‘Guys, for every Californian you have 9,000 cubic meters of water in storage. For every Pakistani, it is 30 cubic meters. Take yours down from 9,000 to 30, see how you do, and then decide if you want to tell them that.’ It drives me nuts—this telling other people how to live when you don’t live, couldn’t live, and have gotten rich by living in a completely different way. All they want is to be like you.&#8221

But lack of funding—the billions of dollars required to invest in solutions—is not the only problem in Pakistan. The country has no shortage of expertise (both Yousuf and Anjali Lohani ’08, a Nepalese student now in a master’s program at the Kennedy School, remarked on the talented water technocrats they met everywhere), yet the biggest source of the nation’s water problems, in Yousuf’s view, is “lack of political will.”

His observation is less a criticism of politicians than of the implementation of the legal framework governing the allocation of water, the group’s second focus of the summer, following the hands-on practicum. The Water Accord of 1991, a document of just two pages that was supposed to enhance cooperation among the provinces, has achieved much, the students wrote in an analysis later presented to government officials and representatives. But ambiguities of interpretation that govern the distribution of water during shortages have heightened mistrust, preventing or delaying the construction of mutually beneficial dams: no province, for example, wants to participate without knowing what its allocation from a new dam might be. And the accord could be more comprehensive in several other respects, says Sattar, the lawyer. For instance, it privileges agriculture, and even though that is sensible for a largely agrarian country, there are other national challenges for which the provinces need to find a workable mechanism. “Hydroelectric storage, for example, is not mentioned. Flood control is not mentioned.” Nor is there a mechanism for resolving conflicts between provinces in the courts, or through consensual negotiation and arbitration rather than by political mechanisms.

But the students by now have also learned that even if the bureaucratic impediments to development were removed, no engineering solution alone would solve every water problem in Pakistan. Dams and dikes and better floodplain management can help prevent sudden disasters, but then, downstream in the populous and flood-prone delta, the supply of essential sediment will be choked off. Yet there are steps that can be taken to improve human lives and also ensure that adequate flows of water reach the sea. “I don’t think any water system can ever be perfect,” says Kasuri. “You have to face new problems. Always, problems will remain.”