by Ahmad Rafay Alam
The writer is an advocate of the high court and a member of the adjunct faculty at LUMS
The word “riparian” has been appearing in the media far too frequently for my liking. It’s usually preceded by the adjective “lower” and usually followed by an irrational rant about how the “upper riparian” is taking advantage. This is unsettling because, as one knows, when the word “riparian” becomes part of one’s day-to-day vocabulary, it means water has become a major issue. And it should be. As has been foretold, water is becoming, if not already is, the mother of all political issues.
At Partition, we are told that Pakistan had water resources in the region of 5,000 cubic meters per person. Now, we are told this resource has fallen to close to 1,200 cubic meters per person, a figure the UN warns is close to when a country is said to be “water scarce”. That may sound alarming but, as someone once said, there are lies, damn, lies and then there are statistics
Nevertheless, the fact is that Pakistan’s water resources are fast dwindling. But before someone panics, they need to understand that, more than other things, we are becoming water scarce because of the remarkable job we’ve done at breeding: it’s the increasing population that’s one of the reasons our per capita water resource statistics are falling.
There are other reasons why Pakistan’s water resources are falling. There is, for example, the remarkably outdated and inefficient irrigation system we currently have in operation. Over 90 per cent of Pakistan’s water resources are used in irrigation (with somewhere near 3 to 5 per cent servicing drinking water requirements and the remainders servicing specific industrial purposes), and over 40 per cent of irrigation water is said to be “lost” because of evaporation and theft. Then there’s the world famous Pakistani work ethic: in today’s day and age, farming is a science and economical yields simply can’t be achieved if sowing and harvest dates are left subservient to the whims of lazy farmers (with due apologies to the many hard-working members of the agricultural sector).
Pakistan’s water resources aren’t just threatened by inefficient irrigation and farming techniques. There is also the spectre of climate change. Almost all of Pakistan’s water resources originate from glacial melt off of Himalayan glaciers. Increases in global temperatures resulting from climate change are expected to affect the rate of glacial melt: At first there will be widespread flooding and then, as the glaciers melt away, there will be no water resource. This is expected to happen within the next century.
The 2003 Government of Pakistan Initial Communication on Climate Change indicates that global warming will affect every one of Pakistan’s cash crops. This will affect our agriculture — the current backbone of the national economy — and rural livelihood. As things stand, poverty in Pakistan — and nearly 30 per cent of the population hovers near the poverty line — is a rural phenomenon. The economic effects of a shortage of water will affect rural livelihood and only exacerbate the conditions of poverty that increasing numbers of children will be forced to experience.
Water shortages have affected inter-provincial relations. The waters of the Indus Basin are regulated within Pakistan by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), which itself was created by the inter-provincial Water Accord of 1991. Sindh regularly accuses Punjab of not providing it with its share of water. Punjab, on the other hand, claims nothing more than its rightful share of water under the Water Accord. With crop productivity affected in both provinces due to water shortages, IRSA hasn’t been much successful in resolving the increasingly antagonistic positions being taken by these opposing provinces. This has the potential to affect inter-provincial harmony and, by extension, the balance of power in government.
If these factors don’t qualify water to be a pre-eminent political issue in this country, then surely the international repercussions of water will.
Just as the lower riparian Sindhi is a vicious critic of the upper riparian Punjabi, the lower riparian Pakistani holds a deep amount of scepticism of his upper riparian Indian. The flow of water in the Indus Basin is regulated by an agreement between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan: the Indus Basin Treaty, 1960. Under the treaty, the rights over the water of the three Eastern rivers (Sutlej, Bias and Ravi) are given to India and the use of the waters of the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab) is given to Pakistan. Recently, and there has been further proof that water is an pre-eminent political issue of our time–India has been accused of “stealing” Pakistan’s share of water. Even if Pakistan had the latest means to accurately measure the flows of water–and thereby substantiate its claims–this accusation cleverly hides the fact that, on account of climate change, there are circumstances of drought along the Indian side of the western rivers under Pakistan’s control.
Pakistan and India need to sit down to examine the issue of the management of their shared resource of the Indus Basin. Pakistan can only do this if it has a strong opening bargaining position vis-à-vis India, else it stands to lose even the precarious ground it holds under the Indus Water Treaty. This is a point that the proponents of “revisiting” the treaty on the grounds that it does not envision the impact of climate change must keep in mind.
Water also has security repercussions. It is my understanding (and I stand to be corrected here) that one of the reasons the Pakistan Army maintains the troop levels it does on the eastern border (when the fighting is so obviously along the western border) is because water is considered a security issue. If India gains control of the western rivers of the Indus Basin, it will have the advantage to literally shut off Pakistan’s water resources. In addition, since the canal irrigation system also provides security against a ground attack, Pakistan’s ability to charge these canals will determine some of its defence capabilities. Unlike other political issues in Pakistan, water is not just one- or two-dimensional. Water is multi-dimensional. No other political issue affects the Pakistani economy and society, creates internal migration, is directly linked to climate change, places stress on inter-provincial relations, has security repercussions and involves negotiations with India all at the same time.
At the moment, the types of voices that are filling the debate are unsettling. Over and above the clichéd upper and lower riparian antagonism, the debate is often fuelled by anti-Indian sentiment. One senior journalist has gone as far as offering himself as a human bomb against Indian dams. For once, I wish he would carry out his threat to prove to others who share his worldview: This is not how things are resolved.
In water, the mother of all political issues, Pakistani politics faces a great challenge. For better or worse, the full attention of the Pakistani people is soon going to focus on water-related issues. This is the time for forward and out-of-the box thinking on never-before- encountered problems. Solutions to water-related issues are hot topics globally and all eyes are fixed on how a democratic Pakistan is dealing with the issues water is throwing at it. We must not let the debate and our actions on water be hijacked by unproductive jingoism. In today’s world, Pakistan must constructively deal with its problems. If this can be done, water can be an issue on which Pakistan can be an example to the world. www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=228545
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