PAKISTAN’S water crisis is often framed in terms of scarcity. Increasingly, it is also a crisis of contamination. Irsa’s warning about deteriorating water quality in the Indus Basin Irrigation System is worrying in terms of the impact on public health, agriculture and food security. When rivers carry untreated waste, salinity rises and lakes become unfit even for irrigation, the damage reaches far beyond the water sector. The signs are troubling. The Ravi and Sutlej in eastern Punjab are reported to be severely polluted. In the south, Sindh’s Manchhar Lake is unfit for drinking or irrigation. To the north and northwest, degradation in the Kabul and Swat rivers is fast becoming a public health risk. In the lower Indus, growing salinity is weakening water quality. Foaming and foul odour at major barrages point to chronic neglect. The situation worsens in dry months, which is cause for concern in a country where nearly 90pc of irrigation depends on the Indus system.

Pakistan has laws, agencies and overlapping mandates, but enforcement remains weak. Untreated municipal sewage, industrial effluent, and poorly regulated waste disposal enters rivers with little consequence. Pollution control remains low on the priority list, even as water quality directly affects crop yields, soil health and disease burdens. Irsa has rightly called for coordinated federal and provincial action. But advisories alone will not reverse decades of degradation. Provinces must enforce wastewater treatment requirements, monitor industrial discharges and penalise violators. Effluent treatment plants, especially in urban and industrial centres such as Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, must become operational. Water quality monitoring data should be made public for increased accountability. Protecting water means protecting the economy, health and food security. A country already facing water stress cannot afford to poison what remains. Pakistan’s rivers are not drains for untreated waste. They are lifelines. Treating them as such requires regulation that is enforced, not merely announced.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2026