Balochistan is constantly losing its potential and productivity due to extreme arid climate and numerous desertification processes by human and livestock. Over-grazing and woodcutting are resulting in sheet and gully erosion in the range lands.
Besides, the loss of topsoil and natural nutrient content of soil are reducing the watersheds, resulting in runoffs and floods. These damage life, property, and fertile agricultural lands.
Water plays an important role in the province's economy. Resources are being limited due to population growth and industrialization. Conflicts over water are quite frequent.
In Balochistan where water has always been a scarce commodity, the constant abuse of natural resources since the last many decades is posing a challenge to environmentalists. Exploitation of limited resources are causing depletion of water table at an alarming rate in many natural aquifers.
Disposal of raw and untreated industrial, domestic, and municipal wastes in drains has become a common practice. The indiscriminate and extensive use of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers on agricultural lands is polluting good aquifers, which are used for drinking water.
The irrigation practices pay little regard to actual water requirements of crops and soil conditions. The flooding of lands with water is widely practised resulting in 40 per cent losses.
Conveyance and farm channels are mostly unlined with seepage losses amounting to over 30 per cent of the flow. From recent past there appear signs of positive change in the outlook of farmers towards water and its efficient use.
Not only the conveyance channels are being lined to prevent seepage losses but the field layouts are also being improved on scientific lines to avoid application losses.
The issues: Water problems arise more from poor governance and lack of interest and commitment by the public and private sectors in solving the issue. Social problems here have mostly been traditional and persistent.
Institutional constraints: Different cells of the irrigation department lack well-qualified, trained and experienced personnel. The existing staff is mostly busy in the operation and maintenance of the ongoing schemes thus finding little time to conduct technical surveys, and plan and design new projects. The department relies on out-dated equipments. Library facilities and computerized access to data are non-existent.
The federally administered research centre is deficient in trained manpower and lack of equipment and laboratory facilities. The Hydro-geology Directorate of Wapda, an institution working in groundwater investigations and development has also been closed.
In the absence of strong institutions for data collection, investigations, surveys, project planning and execution, project monitoring, and research and extension in water cannot be visualized.
Lack of project monitoring and evaluation: The province does not have an effective and organized mechanism or infrastructure for the monitoring and evaluation of the performance of the completed or on-going projects. Such a mechanism is of utmost importance to help identify the problems and assess the success and failure of a project.
Lack of inter-sectoral coordination: Water development has followed a pattern of undertaking small isolated schemes to develop surface and/or groundwater resources.
Efforts are not made to follow an integrated approach. Each department acts in isolation with little understanding for the other's work. This leads to inefficiency in the planning, execution, operation and maintenance of viable projects. Integration and a joint approach is required among water, forestry, livestock, public health, environment, and agriculture sectors.
Poor cost recovery: Financial constraints make operation and maintenance of projects difficult, resulting in failures. The root cause is poor/low cost recoveries from the project beneficiaries.
Role of the private sector: The lack of understanding among the government agencies about the importance of community participation and the role of private sector, particularly the NGOs, in developing water sector and educating and user communities is another impediment. No policies have been devised on promoting the relationships between the two.
Technical issues: The soil and climate of the province are ideal for achieving high yields of grain and fruit crops. Lack of safe and potable drinking water is the most serious problems in the rural areas where majority of the population lives. Groundwater is now a diminishing resource and cannot be relied upon to meet the growing demands.
Indiscriminate development of tube wells, with no control over their operation, has resulted in a rapid decline of water table in many parts, where horticulture is practised and electricity has reached.
Declining water table is giving rise to seriously affecting the aquifers. It is both technical and legislative to control the installation of tube wells. Political interference and lack of commitment on the part of the government departments impair enforcement of the authority.
Lack of data: The network of collecting data on temperature, rainfall, wind speed and stream flows etc., does not meet the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standards.
The data generated is scanty and has to be often guessed or extrapolated in the design of water development projects. This is one of the major constraints in estimation, scientific planning and sustainable development of water resources in the province.
Floods: Due to topography and variety of land systems the problem of flash floods has always been a potential source of threat to land, property, lives, and ecosystem. These floods have been a cause of revenue loss, besides damaging the irrigation and drainage structures.
The unique socio-political set-up is characterized by tribal system, low literacy rate, and extreme poverty. Generally, the powerful Maliks, Sardars or the MPAs are consulted before initiating any development activity.
They their own priorities and interests related to the project. Thus a development project, instead being based on technical, socio-economic, environmental, or physiographic considerations, is designed to suit only a single person's interests. Community interest is ignored which results in the failure of a project.
Illiteracy is a big handicap in promoting the rational use of water. Farmers overuse and the general public is ignorant about the misuse of water. This creates problems for the planners and development agencies in convincing them of the importance of water saving. Following measures need to be adopted to increase water availability:
* Metering of water supply to all domestic and industrial consumers in and around urban areas and rationalizing water charges.
* Running mass awareness programmes.
* Constructing storage dams around Quetta to store flood water.
* Improving watersheds of dam sites to reduce siltation and increase life of these dams.
* Installing hand pumps in rural areas where feasible and providing low cost water filtration and treatment plants (rapid and slow sand filters) with reservoir facilities for storage in areas where surface water is available.
* Installing community owned tubewells in suitable areas with their participation and active involvement.
* Rehabilitation and improvement of Karez system wherever possible.* Limiting installation of tubewells to areas where there is potential for groundwater development still available.
Following measures need to be taken to increase irrigation efficiencies:
* Establishing well-maintained and designed demonstration plots of appropriate size on farmers' lands with their participation to demonstrate the effectiveness of advanced and more efficient irrigation technologies and field layouts.
* Devising policies and developing incentives to encourage farmers desiring to lay high efficiency irrigation systems on their fields.
* Encouraging the establishment of local industries in manufacturing essential components of high efficiency irrigation systems.
Following measures need to be taken to meet the challenge of groundwater mining:
* Constructing more recharge dams at suitable locations.
* Complementing construction of delay action dams with watershed improvement measures including series of check structures in streambeds.
* Legislative measures to ensure that undesired drilling of tubewells is discouraged in the stressed areas.
* Updating technical criteria for issuing permits for tubewell drilling and the mechanism for evaluating the need and practicability of the tubewell.
* Replacing flat rate of electricity usage for tubewell operation with metered system. Anticipated stiff opposition to the policy due to political reasons can be overcome by giving subsidies in rates. The subsidy may be withdrawn in phases.
* Trying recharge measures not tested earlier. These include installation of injection or gravity wells at suitable locations particularly in the beds of existing dams.
Improving governance and capacity building:
* Establishing/improving monitoring and evaluation system for ongoing and completed projects
* Creating an effective mechanism to achieve coordination between the local government and rural development, agriculture, public health engineering, forest, and irrigation and power departments.
* Encouraging involvement of private sector and civil society organizations in need identification, design, planning and implementation phases of projects.
* Regular training of technical personnel of line agencies including research and extension through organizing short refresher courses
* Establishing a Water Quality Monitoring Directorate with three well equipped and staffed water testing laboratories with mobile units - one each at Quetta, Khuzdar, and Loralai. to facilitate the monitoring system.
* Following a combination of top-down and bottom-top approach in project identification, formulation and execution
* Providing regular monitoring and technical assistance to communities after their taking over projects.
* Improving cost recovery system of completed water development projects and making water charges more rational and realistic.
Improving watersheds:
* Constructing small earth dams equipped with in-stream infiltration devices or recharge basins and gabion type structures in main streams.
* Forestation of watershed areas with suitable varieties of trees/bushes, which are shallow rooted and drought resistant.
Improving data collection network and use:
* Undertaking a study to delineate the deficiencies in the existing data collection system (network density, operation and maintenance, and training needs of data collection staff) and to suggest ways and means to improve the same.
* Undertaking improvements in the network as suggested by the above study.
* Computerizing analysis of the data and undertaking mathematical model studies for all river basins of the Province.
Preventing and reducing pollution of water bodies:
* Enacting and enforcing legislation to reduce the incidence of pollution of water bodies by industrial and other polluters.
* Regular monitoring of water quality, at critical locations, of all water bodies including rivers, streams, lakes, natural springs, groundwater, and man-made reservoirs.
* Establishing water quality standards specifically for conditions prevalent in Balochistan.
