This opinion piece was originally published in Global Village Space on 20 June 2023.
Water scarcity is a global crisis — shaped by climate change, pollution, and poor resource management — but in Pakistan it carries a particular urgency. Agriculture alone, contributing 22.7 percent to national GDP, is entirely water-dependent; hydroelectric power generation adds a further dimension of energy security to the water equation. Dr. Mohey-ud-din opens with a striking data point: according to the WAPDA Chairman, per capita water availability in Pakistan has collapsed from 5,650 cubic metres annually in 1951 to just 908 cubic metres in 2022. Pakistan retains only 10 percent of its annual river flows, against a global average of 40 percent — placing it among the top seventeen countries facing severe water stress.
Yet the article resists a counsel of despair. Drawing on a World Bank analysis debunking five persistent myths about Pakistani water, Dr. Mohey-ud-din argues that the problem is fundamentally one of management and conservation rather than absolute scarcity. Pakistan actually possesses more renewable water resources than 35 other countries; the challenge lies in the within-year fluctuation between monsoon floods and seasonal droughts — a storage and distribution problem, not a depletion problem. Large-scale glacier melt in the Indus basin is not expected to substantially reduce river flows before 2050, and basin-level irrigation efficiency is projected to exceed 80 percent under improved management. The persistent flooding of monsoon season alongside dry-season droughts is the clearest symptom of this mismatch.
The article lays out a practical short-term water resource management agenda. Rather than waiting for politically contentious large dam projects, Dr. Mohey-ud-din advocates: constructing small-scale storage structures — ponds, tanks, and check dams — to capture rainwater, prevent soil erosion, and recharge groundwater; launching a nationwide water conservation campaign promoting drip irrigation, sprinkler systems, soil moisture preservation, precision irrigation, and climate-smart agriculture; modernising water supply and distribution infrastructure to reduce conveyance and application losses and deploying leak detection technologies in municipal networks; and prioritising sustainable groundwater extraction through rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge, and aquifer storage and recovery processes to reverse the dangerous decline in groundwater levels.
The conclusion is pragmatic: Pakistan can transition from water-insecure to water-secure through immediate, technically feasible actions — not by waiting for political consensus on mega-projects. Decision-makers must prioritise investment in modern water management, conservation advocacy, improved irrigation, loss minimisation, and groundwater recharge as a coherent, actionable programme.
Read the full article on Global Village Space: