• FAO report cites heterogeneous approaches and multi-layered rules as main reasons
• Asks Sindh govt to examine its land and water resources
• Says Crop Reporting Service requires improvement
• Terms integration of lakes, dams and drainage networks significant for irrigation

ISLAMABAD: Observing that water and land management in the province has become complicated, a United Nations report has advised the Sindh government to take careful stock of its land and water resources, including all available water sources such as rainfall, groundwater, canal diversions, lakes, reservoirs and direct flows from rivers.

In a study titled ‘Water and land accounting in Sindh: Quantifying water availability and uses’, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said water and land management in Sindh has become complicated, with multi-layered regulations of the physical systems and heterogeneous approaches to actual water supply and access for multiple uses.

It says the traditional seasonal irrigation water allocations and canal operations, which were regulated by intermittent flow based on capacity limits, have been replaced by a new water regime focused on availability and access.

Limited domestic supplies, previously dependent on irrigation canals, have been supplemented by dedicated urban supply structures. The integration of lakes, local dams and drainage networks for multiple uses is a significant addition to the traditional irrigation system.

The report says public sector data gaps and inaccuracies can lead to inaccurate water accounting profiles, influencing decision-making and the selection of development priorities. The most problematic is the Crop Reporting Service (CRS) data, which urgently require improvements to be useful. Land boundaries, crop survey methodology, sample selection and district coverage all need to be revisited.

It was pointed out that the irrigated areas identified by CRS do not align with the canal command areas reported by the Sindh Irrigation Department. The CRS does not show a significant increase in well-irrigated and rain-fed areas over time, nor does it provide clear information on the cropping patterns in these areas.

The gap between formally allocated water and actual water access and use is increasing. There have been significant investments in the drinking and industrial water infrastructure and local water storage, but these are not reflected in the operations and monitoring of the system.

Similarly, irrigation from the lakes and storage facilities is permitted but not recognised in the allocation and reporting systems. The operations of the local storage facilities and small dams play a positive role in winter irrigation, but no data is available.

The operational capacity of the vast drainage system which has multipurpose uses is an important missing factor in accounting for the return flows and water quantities leaving the system, points out the FAO report.

The report says standard operating procedures are no longer adequate to manage current water supply operations. The traditional operations and maintenance (O&M) and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) procedures were designed for single-use, gravity-fed canal systems.

However, the modern irrigation system now includes additional components such as local water storage and the lifting of water using pumps — either from watercourses or higher-level surface water storages — requiring updated operational approaches.

The report advised the Sindh government to take careful stock of its land and water resources, including all available water sources such as rainfall, groundwater, canal diversions, lakes, reservoirs and direct rivers.

Taking stock is needed for the use of water and land resources in key sectors like agriculture, urban areas, industry and the environment like wetlands and mangroves; and unused components, including surface and subsurface drainage outflows; and assessment and allocation of resources.

The report says a holistic approach is needed to shift the focus from conveyance losses to regional and sectoral water use efficiency. An efficient approach to integrated water resources management (IWRM) must consider all water resources, users and infrastructure.

The Sindh government should establish a mechanism for producing regular annual and seasonal sector-based provincial water accounts and water balances to address emerging challenges that include the total volume of water available at both provincial and sectoral levels; the nature of water stress or surplus faced by different sectors; inter-sectoral and regional water transfers; unaccounted-for water uses; the role of rainfall and groundwater in overall and local water management; and climate-induced changes, especially shifting weather patterns and heavy monsoon rains.

The report presented an analytical framework for sector-level water accounting using on-the-ground data, and offered a comprehensive assessment of the demand and supply sides, which needs to be discussed, improved and used in decision-making.

The report further pointed out that unirrigated agriculture barely exists in Sindh.

Official reports on water use in rain-fed and well-irrigated areas are often contradictory. This indicates that more than 50pc of cropped land is rain-fed or well irrigated, while less than two million hectares is canal irrigated. Yet canal water demand is routinely calculated for five million hectares of irrigated land. Additionally, there have been large supply schemes in the rain-fed and sailaba (riverine) areas.

The report says there is a need to define the boundaries of these areas; to establish a formal monitoring and reporting system for official water supply systems, such as dams, tube wells and other water sources in the well-irrigated and rain-fed areas; and to record irrigation diversions from the urban water supply systems as means to track emerging trends in the large cities.

Low land and water productivity has been more often linked with low yields than with water use efficiency. There is a huge gap between average and progressive yield in Sindh, which calls for serious farm-level investigation.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2026