Groundwater Challenges and Pakistan

United Nations has lined up Pakistan among the water hotspots of Asia-Pacific Region, declaring that the country faces high threats of increasing water scarcity, high water utilization, deteriorating water quality and climate change risk. The world overdraws 200 km3 of its global groundwater every year. Probably more than 20% of this overdraft occurs in Pakistan placing this country's food and livelihood security at great risk. And if the situation continues, then the destiny of Pakistan will certainly be none other than the drought, hunger, poverty and darkness as the prosperity lies in building new reservoirs in the country.

Due to lurking water crises, World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has positioned Pakistan in red zone, categorizing it as water-stressed country which is likely to face an acute water shortage over the next five years due to the lack of water availability for irrigation, industry and human consumption. If the downward trend prevails, ground water table will possibly drop more and in the result, per capita availability will touch 800 cubic meters by 2020.

The ground water is rapidly running out on fast speed as per capita availability of water drops to 990 cubic meters in 2013 as compared to 5,650 cubic meters in 1947. Whereas India is gifted with 1,600 cubic meters of water per person per year while major European countries have up to twice as much ranging from 2,300 cubic meters in Germany to 3,000 cubic meters in France.

According to Punjab irrigation department, Pakistan’s important government body that monitors the level and quality of water before 1947 warns that water table is dropping down at the fast ration of 3 feet per year. Quoting the example of Lahore, most urbanized and densely populated city of Pakistan, it is said that 20 years back water was extracted at the depth of 20 or 40 feet but now drilling is done at the ground depth of 800 feet to reach the water due to unchecked installation of tube wells motivated situation.  As per estimates, there is a continuous increase in the development of groundwater irrigation by tube wells. In the country the numbers of public and private tube wells installed (as per the source of Economic survey of Pakistan) in 2000-01 were 659,278 while in 2012-13 the amount of tube wells installed rose to 1175,073.  With this phenomenon annual extraction of water has swelled up to 51 million-acre feet of water.

Responsible authorities of Irrigation Research Institute (IRI) warn that there are multiple reasons accounted for the water depletion. The major one reason is over-extraction or over-pumping of ground water without any planning. Water is being rapidly sucked out but recharge system that refill the ground water is not in place or mismanaged. Total discharge (withdrawal) of ground water is at 37 Million Acres Feet (MAF) against recharge (refilling) at 30 MAF, it shows that a big gap exists between discharge and recharge system.

Another vital cause for water scarcity is poor planning to store water. Pakistan has just 3 dams and scores of small barrages as compared to china having 22,000 and India 4,200 small and big dams. “Pakistan’s total storage capacity is just for 30 days, whereas India has the ability to store water for 120-220 days. Meanwhile, Egypt has 1,000 days water storage capacity only on River Nile, America 900 days on River Colorado, Australia 600 and South Africa has the ability to store water for 500 days on River Orange.

Per capita storage capacity in United States stands at 6,150 cubic meters, in Australia it is 5,000 cubic meters but in Pakistan it is just 132 cubic meters that show how vulnerable 180 million Pakistanis are in terms of water availability. Sedimentation is also adding the existing problem. The WAPDA document discloses that Pakistan has lost its capacity to store water by 27 percent (4.37 million feet of water) from 16.28 MAF to 11.91 MAF because of sedimentation, as 4.99 MAF gets stored in the Mangla Dam alone.

Tarbela Dam was built in 1974 with the storage capacity of 9.69 MAF, which has now reduced by 31 percent (3.02 MAF) to 6.77 MAF in 2011. Mangla Dam that was built in 1967 with the capacity to store 5.87 million acres feet of water, is witnessing reduction in its storage capacity by 15 percent (0.88MAF) to 4.99 MAF. Likewise, Chashma barrage was built in 1971 with the ability to store 0.72 MAF water but owing to the sedimentation, its storage capacity has dwindled by 65 percent (0.47MAF) to just 0.25MAF.

Some official documents also predicts that Pakistan will lose more capacity to store water by up to 37 percent (5.95MAF) in 2025, if water managers of the country did not correct the policies and rapidly do not build the dams on Pakistan rivers. Unfortunately, the top political leadership and establishment are not paying heed towards improving the water storage capacity of the country.

Directorate of Land Reclamation, a part of Irrigation Department of Punjab, considered custodian of water strongly recommended the construction of Kalabagh dam as the only solution to resolve water storage and its infringe benefits in terms of rising groundwater table in Pakistan.

Cropping intensity is another factor playing its role towards drastic reduction of water table. Earlier we used to cultivate crops once in a year and farmer’s need of average water to irrigate lands cropping intensity was 66 percent.  But now cropping intensity has rose up to 150 to 200 percent showing the fact that in one year more than 3 or 4 crops are cultivated and to meet growing demand of water, excessive water is extracted. In Pakistan Punjab, more than 50% of crop water requirement comes from groundwater, producing majority of food crops in Pakistan. If irrigated lands continue suffering water shortage, Pakistan will have to face massive food insecurity.

Fundamental reason for water table decrease is non-existence of legislation. Ground water makes up 55 percent and surface water accounts for 45 percent of total water. It is shocking fact that there are lot of rules and regulation for surface water but to regulate ground water, no law does exist. None of successive government bothered to evolve even a basic infrastructure for groundwater.

Over extraction and exploitation of ground water has caused fast depletion of aquifer which has raised alarming levels of bacterial, chemical and toxic contamination. Though, the surface water is available, but due to ill planning and mismanaging about the cheaper sources of surface water, there is a horrible need of switching from ground water to surface water, now with realization; Pakistan has been blessed with abundance of available of surface and ground water resources of 128300 million m3 and 50579 million m3 per year respectively.  At this time, over 45 percent of Pakistan’s population does not have access to safe drinking water. Since quality of drinking water supply is poor, with bacterial contamination, arsenic, fluoride and nitrate, incidence of water-borne diseases is increasing rapidly. High population growth rate, urbanization, industrialization and new environmental constraints are aggravating the problem.

According to the annual report (2011-2012) by Ministry of water and power water was excessively wasted at houses, offices, markets and factories. Fresh and drinking water is used for washing, gardening and other non-drinkable purposes. Besides wastage, rapidly increasing population, climate change, lack of water reservoirs and manipulation of Jhelum and Chenab rivers by India are other key factors squeezing water availability in Pakistan.

WAPDA official also believe that in 2010-11, around 54.5MAF water went down to sea, which demonstrates the demand of the erection of huge dams on the River Indus. The government needs to become proactive for timely required financial releases.