February 27, 2006	Monday	Muharram 28, 1427

THE policies and practices to manage water resources in Pakistan are debatable, being still far off from the initial stage. The country has good soils, abundant sunshine and excellent farmers. There is a lack of coordination in management of water reservoirs, both surface and underground. It is being misused by poor distribution system and over pumping and over irrigation. There are no new reservoirs being built.

When there was plenty of water, barren lands and deserts were converted into green fields. Failure to conserve the available resources has made us a water stressed state.

Ours is irrigated and barani agriculture with the former depending on canal and tubewells for growing crops. Its share is 80-90 per cent in the farm economy.

Barani agriculture is totally dependent on rainfall, a scanty and unreliable source with a share of mere 10-20 per cent. Irrigated agriculture uses both surface and ground-water resources.

About 77 per cent of its total area falls in Punjab, 20 per cent in Sindh and Balochistan, and three per cent in the NWFP.

The population will double by 2025 and the only option to cope with it is to increase vertical crop yields with an efficient use of the existing water reservoirs. The present cropping practices give only 20-25 per cent water use efficiency.

The country has to rely on surface-water and ground-water resources. The main source is Indus River and its tributaries having origin in mountains. The sources of water supply to these rivers are glacial melt, snowmelt, seepage from geological formations and the run-off generated by seasonal rains in the watershed areas. These water sources also recharge the groundwater.

The Indus Basin is formed by alluvial deposits. Out of 15 million acres surface of water aquifer about 79 per cent area is in Punjab and 28 per cent in Sindh is underlain by fresh water. This is used as supplemental irrigation water and pumped through tube-wells.

The annual flow of water in the Indus River and its tributaries is 154 MAF. This includes 144.9 MAF from three western rivers and 9.14 MAF from the eastern river. This is used in agriculture out of which 50 per cent is lost through evaporation, seepage and spills during floods before reaching the farm gate.

Rainfall in Pakistan is variable and the occurrence and distribution is two-third concentrated in the months of July- September. The mean annual precipitation ranges from 100–750mm.

Water usage and needs are changing substantially as a result of climate changes, agricultural diversification, urbanization and industrialization. There is a need to bring drastic changes including scarified distribution of water where reallocation will let more for those who need it. Better water management is a key to improving productivity.

If we look into water economy over the past several decades, there is an unmanaged and over pumping of groundwater by farmers, municipal and industrial tube-wells. The large-scale tube-well pumping for irrigation started in early 60s. Ground-water table in Lahore has gone 25-30 feet deep.

Our dilemma is that the annual pumping of water from canal commanded area is 42 MAF by over 600,000 tube-wells. More than 70 per cent pump unfit water that deteriorates soil and human health. The result is that groundwater is over pumped than recharge in many areas particularly in Balochistan, central and southern Punjab where hundreds new tube-wells are installed during the past five years.

This poses serious problem as upper layers of groundwater are being pumped out and reaching to geological-water in many areas. The policy should be revised to overcome the problem by making sure that groundwater pumping does not exceed recharge, so that water table does not go too deep.

The irrigation water shortage is more serious in arid and semi-arid regions. To save the country from drought threat, Pakistan has to erect at least two water storage reservoirs capable of storing 30 MAF water.

The existing two dams have a storage capacity of 20 MAF which can supply only for 30 days during off water peak periods. Keeping in view all this, we should redesign our distribution system and build big dams on the Indus River.

Pakistan being at the downstream should get great benefit. In addition, the government should educate people to change their usage pattern as drinking water is used for washing floors and clothes. Leakages should be stopped.

Besides, researchers should introduce drought-tolerant crop varieties by developing crop raising methodologies involving less water use. Technologies developed by some progressive farmers to raise high value crops with minimum water could be introduced to small farmers too.