Crafting Spaces for Good Water Governance in Pakistan

Abstract

The most significant investment in improved water governance for Pakistan in recent decades—irrigation management transfer under the PIDA Act of 1997—ended with repeal in 2019 in the province of Punjab. Before embarking on the next major experiment, we wish to examine what the opportunity space for improvement in Pakistan’s water governance is. We develop a conceptual model that maps the roles of hydrology, infrastructure, management, governance, and learning in shaping water supply. We are motivated by the overarching question of where the best opportunities to improve water governance in Pakistan lie, and suggest in our analysis that the hydraulic constraints of the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) that have previously been the basis for consideration of scale in water (irrigation) governance are inappropriate. Our key recommendation is instead to identify the key “problemsheds” for the IBIS as a vehicle for identifying scales of intervention and communities of common water interest (possibly at village, union, or tehsil administrative levels) that can allow irrigators to transcend the rigid hydraulic user groupings that irrigation channels impose, and contribute more meaningfully to good local water governance.

Full-Scale Floating Treatment Wetlands in Pakistan: From Performance Evaluation to Public Acceptance

“…8 To counteract societal fracturing, Pakistan needs to address its water distribution problems, significantly strengthened global measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and more action to improve water quality. 4,9 Prior to the devastating floods in 2022, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources estimated that the country may not have clean water resources by 2025. 10 Nationwide, little progress in wastewater treatment has been achieved over the last two decades.…”

“…First, present value cost (PVC) for the established FTW in the pit lake for six months (1st batch) was calculated as shown in eq 3. (4) Then, the CER for 6 months of operation (1st batch) was calculated by dividing PVC by the volume of treated water (eq 4).…”

“…The modern state of Pakistan is facing escalating water stress that threatens the country’s viability and future development. , Root domestic causes of the crisis are the rapid population growth to the currently estimated ∼230 million people, water management compromised by distribution inequities and infrastructure decay of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system, , and water pollution . Furthermore, the country is vulnerable to the effects of anthropogenic climate change, to which it has contributed little in total and on a per capita base, while lacking the capital means for better adaptation .…”

“…Global warming may change monsoon rainfall patterns, thereby worsening water scarcity in some years while intensifying floods in others . To counteract societal fracturing, Pakistan needs to address its water distribution problems, significantly strengthened global measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and more action to improve water quality. , …”