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| August 30, 2003 | Saturday | Rajab 1, 1424 |
Pakistan needs pro-poor water plan: UN
ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Pakistan needs a water management strategy comprising pro-poor, affordable technologies such as small-scale water harvesting instead of the conventional focus on formal irrigation systems, says the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in a report.
The report, “Freshwater for Agriculture”, prepared in connection with the International Year of Freshwater 2003, observes that global food production will have to increase by 60 per cent to fill nutrition gaps resulting from the growth in population over the next three decades.
To meet this requirement, water withdrawals for agriculture are expected to go up by some 14 per cent, representing an annual growth rate of 0.6 per cent. Much of the increase will take place on arable irrigated land, forecast to expand globally from some two million sq km to 2.421 million sq km.
For Pakistan, the FAO sees broad scope for policy intervention to help “re-invent” agricultural water management. It has recommended a strategic approach to develop available land and water resources in order to meet demand for food products and agricultural commodities and a broader awareness of the productivity gains that can be achieved through the use of water wisely.
Individual farmers and households need to be assured “stable engagement” with land and water resources, that is, land tenure and water use rights that are flexible enough to promote comparative advantage in food staples and cash crops, observes the report.
Those rights, it further stresses, must be matched by access to rural credit and finance and dissemination of technology and good practices in water use, particularly, through technologies which redound to the well-being of the poor.
Terming the existing command-and-control systems of irrigation, the report calls for measures that would transform these into much more “flexible service-delivery” systems.
It adds that agriculture should— and can— shoulder its environmental responsibilities much more effectively by minimizing the negative environmental impacts of irrigated production and seeking to restore the productivity of natural ecosystems.
The report goes on to stress the need of a government policy that facilitates investment and helps local markets for agricultural produce to become more effective in meeting local demands. “This means investment in key public goods such as roads and storage as well as institutional capacity, but will also demand a more progressive role for large-scale private investment.”
To ensure the economic use of the available water resources for sustained agricultural productivity, the FAO has proposed a number of measures by the government, civil society and other stakeholders under the captions, “Modernisation”, “Participation” and “Investment”.
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