An Assessment of the Pakistan Water Apportionment Accord of 1991

Abstract

The Water Apportionment Accord (WAA) of Pakistan was instituted in 1991 to allocate Indus River water among Pakistan’s provinces. This paper assesses the performance of the WAA in terms of the accord’s ability to meet the barrages’ and environmental demands in the Lower Indus Basin. Use of metrics as assessment tools in water security and climate adaptation is an important field, with the potential to inform sustainable management policy. Reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability are used as indicators to define the system’s performance against supply. The results indicate from the pre-Accord period to the post-Accord period, the reliability of Guddu Barrage (the upstream-most barrage in the study) is not changed. However, at Sukkur and Kotri, the most downstream barrage in the study, reliability has significantly decreased. The Results reveal the high vulnerability of the Indus delta in Rabi season when the flows decline and the majority of the water at the Kotri Barrage is diverted.

Analysis of Operational Changes of Tarbela Reservoir to Improve the Water Supply, Hydropower Generation, and Flood Control Objectives

“…The acceptable quality of data was recorded and documented but not verified, and the uncertain quality of data refers to data not documented or verified by WAPDA. As the WEAP model of Tarbela is demand-driven, it was very important to have accurate inflow, demand, and physical data of the reservoir [37]. The daily inflow and demand data were of verified quality.…”

Future upstream water consumption and its impact on downstream water availability in the transboundary Indus Basin

“…Other lower Indus sub-basins with surplus local water resources may positively affect water availability in other sub-basins. On the other hand, intra-national water sharing treaties, such as the Pakistani Water Appointment Accord, do ensure that upstream water distribution throughout the lower Indus Basin is not determined solely based on the independent self-interest of each downstream region (Hassan et al, 2019). The results of this study thus provide quantified insight into general trends of lower Indus water availability and the times and areas most likely to be affected by changing upper Indus wateruse activities from an intrinsic upstream-to-downstream perspective, instead of fully disaggregated quantifications of future water distribution in the lower Indus Basin.…”

“…Water allocation between the provinces of Pakistan is consequently arranged via the Pakistan Water Appointment Accord, which distributes available flow roughly by order of water demand over the four Pakistani provinces (Basharat, 2019). This framework has been shown to work well in high-flow periods, but intranational disputes have occurred in years of drought, with downstream regions claiming to receive consistently less water than what should be allotted to them (Hassan et al, 2019). Other regions of the Indus Basin are not governed by transboundary treaties.…”

Water management in Pakistan's Indus Basin: challenges and opportunities

“…Since then, the pattern of the water demands of the provinces has changed due to the increase in population and the irrigated area. Therefore, in Pakistan, the gap between water supply and water demand has considerably increased (Hassan et al, 2019). As the provincial water entitlements stated in the water apportionment are fixed, mathematical models (Bankruptcy Methods and Nash Bargaining Solution), as proposed by various authors such as (Safari et al (2014); Degefu et al (2016); Fu et al (2018); Qin et al (2019) and Janjua et al, (2020)), are needed for water allocation among the provinces in order to cope with the changing supply and demand.…”