THIS refers to the news report on water (Jan 1). The report listed seven water challenges, including inadequate storage, lack of water efficiency, lower crop productivity, unchecked ground water extraction, lack of rational water pricing, canal inefficiency and dilapidated irrigation structure.

The report indicates that Pakistan has 908 meter cube of water per person per year. Thailand has 844, Spain has 809, India has 644, the Netherlands has 641, Japan has 639, Australia has 629, Malaysia has 544, France has 512, China has 414, Brazil has 305 and Israel has 281 meter cube per person per year.

The Netherlands just became the second biggest food exporter, while Israel invented modern drip irrigation system. It also has the world’s biggest desalination plan. China has built 85,000 dams. The Netherlands uses cutting edge technology in agriculture and most of it is done in greenhouses.

China is on the dam building spree. After making the Three Gorges dams, it is now making five huge dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo River (Brahmaputra river) in Tibet and planning to divert its water to Beijing some 2,500km away.

We can’t overcome all seven challenges listed in the report, but we can take a start by working on watercourse lining. We lose 12.8 million acre feet (MAF) through our watercourses.

For comparison, the combined storage capacity of Mangla and Tarbela dams is about 14 MAF and Kalabagh’s planned storage is just six MAF. By lining our watercourses with locally-produced PVC sheets or converting these into plastic pipes, we can save two Kalabagh dams worth of water every year.

S. Nayyar Iqbal Raza

Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2018