Pakistan today faces a double-barreled water emergency: first, the drying up of surface storage; and second, the relentless depletion of groundwater resources. The country is frequently cited as facing severe water stress, with an estimated storage capacity of only about 30 days compared with an international benchmark of 120 days.
In March 2025, Tarbela and Mangla reservoirs fell to or near dead level, and Sindh faced about a 50 per cent water shortage at the start of the kharif season; the Indus River System Authority described depletion to dead levels as a common or usual occurrence in that season.
Geopolitical treaty tussles aside, a major challenge in Pakistan’s water sector is that within its own borders, institutional paralysis, siltation of the dams, and huge losses in conveyance are sucking the country’s freshwater into the sea.
Nasa’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment identifies the Indus Basin as one of the world’s most stressed aquifers, and the rate of depletion is fast, particularly in central Punjab, due to unchecked extraction, climate stress, and failure of regulatory bodies.
Pakistan’s vanishing water buffer has resulted in storage gaps and aquifer depletion that impacts small farm holders the most
The impact is overwhelming. Driving aquifer depletion places smallholders in a cycle of debt and poverty, and their forced dependence on heavily polluted groundwater leads to chronic illness, child mortality, and the erosion of human capital.
Agriculture, which contributes almost 24pc to Pakistan’s GDP and employs more than one-third of the workforce, is the primary driver of water stress, fueled by inefficient canal networks and over 1.3 million unregulated tube wells. Pakistan’s agricultural economy is based on suboptimal and unregulated pumping, which is leading to unsustainable aquifer depletion and aggravating the country’s critical storage problem, making it uncompetitive in the international market.
The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics’ research shows that the industry’s demand for water rose by 20pc in the past decade, particularly in the textile, tannery, chemical, and cement sectors. Over 90pc of the industrial plants in Punjab and Sindh operate without regulation, accelerating the rate of groundwater depletion and saline intrusion into important freshwater aquifers.
The qualitative deterioration of the country’s water supply is severe, as only a small proportion of wastewater is recycled, and industrial hubs such as Karachi, Faisalabad, and Lahore dump raw chemicals, dyes, and toxic waste into water bodies, thereby constantly polluting domestic groundwater. Without treatment, these toxins can percolate down into the underlying aquifer and directly contaminate the drinking water source for millions of people.
The domestic sector accounts for only 4–5pc of total freshwater withdrawals, yet some cities face water shortages; however, governance failures and uncontrolled aquifer mining have direct impacts on municipal access. Consequently, women and young girls suffer from water poverty, spending countless hours walking long distances in rural and peri-urban areas, giving up education, health, and economic independence.
The lack of trust and water disputes between provinces undermine national cohesion. Trust among the provinces in the Indus Basin has been fractured by disputed formulas for sharing scarce water and unreliable telemetry data. The reduction in freshwater availability due to climate stress is causing ecological collapse downstream of Kotri, with effects on agricultural GDP, industrial development, and national cohesion, leading to bitter political conflict with the upstream provinces.
Stronger provincial environmental protection agencies, backed by strong political will, with clear timelines and dedicated funding, are also critical components of a stronger national and provincial water framework to address policy gaps related to weak targets, neglected water quality, and poor integration with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Pakistan also has a plethora of policy documents, such as the National Water Policy (2018) and the provincial water policies (the Punjab Water Act 2019 and the Balochistan Groundwater Ordinance), which provide clear guidelines on water storage, groundwater regulation, and efficient irrigation. However, performance remains poor.
If a water security task force is unable to carry out six key imperatives — increasing storage capacity, improving efficiency, managing groundwater, implementing digital telemetry, strengthening climate resilience, and centralising national funding — these policies are unlikely to deliver results.
Sustained investment and planning have resulted in higher levels of reserves in other countries, such as Australia (600 days) and Morocco (700 days); Pakistan remains constrained by decades of underinvestment in storage, irrigation modernisation, and wastewater treatment infrastructure.
To solve Pakistan’s water problem, there is a need for comprehensive reforms to groundwater recharge, the efficiency of water storage systems, and strong water management policies.
The solution to Pakistan’s water crisis requires a combination of policy instruments, such as volumetric pricing of groundwater, non-compliance fines for auditing water-consuming sectors, and subsidised adoption of drip irrigation, and water infrastructure investments, such as small delay-action dams and co-financed industrial effluent treatment plants.
Strategic public–private partnerships among industry, donors, and civil society are also critical to rapidly scaling up the use of high-efficiency water technologies. Extensive water depletion and mismanagement not only deplete Pakistan’s aquifers but also cause the loss of flood runoff. Aquifer recharge must be achieved on a large scale. In the short term, farming efficiency has to be improved and surface storage enhanced to secure the nation’s water future.
Water is life, but unchecked abstraction and inadequate storage are a direct threat to Pakistan’s survival. However, with good governance, judicious investment and political will, Pakistan can still ensure its hydrological future—because the cost of inaction outweighs the cost of reform.
Dr Abida Naurin is an assistant professor and member of Macro Policy Lab at Pide.
X: @abida_15, email: abida@pide.org.pk.
Muhammad Mohsin Elahi is an intern at Macro Policy Lab.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, August 3rd, 2026