Quetta’s water Crisis

Balochistan’s government has declared a state of ‘water emergency’ in Quetta. This

announcement should not surprise anyone keeping an eye on recent developments
in the province. Many parts of the capital have been without water for months.
Households have to rely on costly private tankers, which are known to exploit the
water scarcity situation. This Eid, for instance, tanker companies were reportedly
charging up to Rs5,000 for a single tank of water. Unfortunately, with drought-like
conditions, rising temperatures and power shortages, residents have little option but
to pay up. A few kilometres away from the city, Hanna Lake — its turquoise waters
once hydrating the cantonment area and preventing the flow of rain and floodwater
from the mountains to the city — is now a dry stretch of land. Trees that lined the
valley are barren. In other regions, almond trees had to be cut down due to the
amount of water they required.

How did we get here? The crisis can be attributed to natural factors (cyclical
droughts), but also manmade conditions: poor water management, deforestation and
population growth. Groundwater, the main water source for domestic and
agricultural use, is said to be depleting at 0.884 metres annually. And despite a ban
on the unauthorised installation of tube wells, their rampant (and illegal) use
continues. Environmentalists warn that if concrete steps are not taken, Quetta will
witness large parts of its population displaced in the near future. Climate-based
migration has already been identified in GB and Sindh. The previous government
proposed a Rs 40bn project for allocating water from the Pat Feeder canal, but
nothing came of it.
 Dams: To be or not to be

If the water bureaucracy of Pakistan and Prime Minister Imran Khan are to be
believed, the question of building dams has come to have the same import as its
Shakespearean equivalent. To be or not to be was the question that Hamlet, the
prince of Denmark, contemplated in the eponymous play as a choice between life
and death. But is the choice really that stark as far as building dams is concerned?
Can a piece of infrastructure, and that too as mundane as a wall in a river, be a matter
of life and death for a country as large and diverse as Pakistan? My favourite analogy
about the dam debate is the choice of transport between, say, Rawalpindi and Lahore.
One could travel by airplane, train, car, bus, horse, foot and so on. In such a scenario,
to declare that anyone thinking about traveling by any other mode but an airplane is
an anti-development traitor and an Indian agent is simply madness. A madness that
Pakistani society at this time is partaking in with a lot of gusto.

Every Pakistani should have adequate water to ensure their health and hygiene. The
entire country should have enough water to support its food security and economic
prosperity. But if the objective is to ensure water security, a dam is one instrument
besides many others which can be applied to achieve this objective. Obsession with
a single pathway to achieve water security, that is, dams, may not only be stupid but
also downright expensive and counterproductive.

Many of the arguments supporting large dams are predicated upon a number of
fallacies. Let us review the most salient of them. The first argument is that large
dams are essential for water storage. It is not true. There are three types of water
storage: glaciers, groundwater storage and surface water storage (through dams).
From among these three types of storage, human beings cannot do anything about
glaciers. Of the remaining two, surface storage is most expensive and wasteful
because of evaporative and seepage losses as well as financial and environmental
costs. Groundwater storage, on the other hand, is the most efficient and demand
responsive. It is little wonder then that in the United States alone hundreds of dams
are being decommissioned and water storage for the past 30 years has almost
exclusively been undertaken in groundwater mode.

Pakistan is very fortunate to have vast aquifers underlying the Indus planes which
provide up to 80 per cent of the crop water requirements in those areas where fresh
groundwater is available. Wise management of those aquifers, and not
mismanagement as is the case right now, could ensure up to 54 million acre feet
(MAF) of stored water as compared to seven MAF that Kalabagh Dam could store
in a year. So, the dam argument does not work as far as water storage is concerned
because there are cheaper and more efficient ways of storing much more water.

The second argument in favour of dams is that we are running out of water and that
we have to store water for when we have less of it. This also does not hold water.
Firstly, we are not running out of water. There is no natural or physical process
through which we can run out of water. The same amount of water we have had for
thousands of years will be around for many more years. We just have to use that
water wisely. Even after taking climate change into consideration, there is no
scientifically legitimate scenario under which we run out of water. Also, dams do
not create water; they store whatever water there is. If in another universe we were
running out of water, dams would simply be empty in that case.

The third argument is that every year we waste 35 MAF of water that goes to the
sea. For people in Karachi, it might be useful to visit Gharo and Keti Bandar to see
what lack of water in the Indus delta does to land and lives. Water going to the sea
is not wasted; it is essential for the ecology and livelihoods of people living in coastal
areas. Also, a brief look at the amount of water flowing below Kotri Barrage tells a
whole different story. For eight out of the past 10 years, the average annual flow of
water below Kotri has been under 10 MAF; sometimes even less than five MAF. It
is only in the flood years that enough water flows below Kotri Barrage to make up
an average of 35 MAF over 10 years. Average flows are the most irrelevant number
in the water sector, something that our engineers cannot seem to get their heads
around. The upshot is that there is simply not enough water in the system for a large
dam, the size of Kalabagh Dam or Diamer-Bhasha Dam, to become viable. If one
cannot fill a dam for 75 per cent of the time over a decade, how does that make that
dam financially or functionally viable?

The fourth argument is about energy: dams deliver cheap electricity. But given their
capital cost, as researcher Hassan Abbas has calculated, a 100 watt bulb run on
electricity produced from a dam will cost 100,000 rupees. We have abundant solar
power potential using which means the cost of electricity can be 20 times cheaper
than what we will pay for electricity from the Neelum-Jehlum project, for example.

Lastly, Diamer-Bhasha Dam is not so much a water storage dam as it is a

hydroelectric dam with a projected cost of 14 billion US dollars which is likely to
double over its construction period. All that one does with hydroelectric dams is to
build an artificial waterfall. At the likely cost of 28 billion US dollars, Diamer-
Bhasha Dam will probably be the most expensive artificial waterfall in the world.
And that too on one of the most silt rich rivers and in the most seismically active
zone in the world. The consequences of the dam’s failure in this case are too terrible
to contemplate. It will mean the end of every infrastructure on the Indus and
hundreds of thousands of lives. Do dams get built in seismically active zones? Of
course, they do. But such dams, for example those built in California which are
seismically active, tend to be of lower height, around 100 feet, to protect against
their failure. We are instead proposing to build the highest dam in the world, at 933
feet, in a deep gorge. The foolhardiness of the proposal is simply stupefying.
The real cost of building Diamer-Bhasha Dam is likely to be 10 per cent of our Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). Few countries in the world would spend 10 per cent of
their GDP on a risky proposition.

Is there a water crisis in Pakistan? And what do we do about it, if not to build dams?
There is certainly a water crisis in Pakistan and it is a lot worse than we think it is.
And it has been around for decades. Children die of renal failure in Pakistan today
due to lack of clean drinking water. In parts of Karachi, people have not received
water in their taps for more than a decade. The crisis is urgent and it is here. The
remedy suggests itself in the simple statistic from Pakistan’s water distribution
policy — that 97 per cent of water in Pakistan is devoted to agriculture.

All human habitations combined in Pakistan, including large cities like Karachi,
Lahore and Rawalpindi, can only lay claim to about two per cent of the available
water. Industry also uses one per cent of the total water. Meanwhile, Pakistan is the
second biggest exporter of cotton and one of the major exporters of rice and
sugarcane. All three crops are major consumers of water, and all three, generally,
are produced by large farmers. Simply removing subsidies on agricultural electricity,
I would argue, will solve the problem of water waste in the agriculture sector in one
go. Sensible crop choices could, furthermore, quadruple the amount of water
available for the all-important domestic water supply sector.

To be or not to be, is not the question. Neither should the question be to dam or not
to dam. The question should be: how do we give every Pakistani equitably access to
water? How do we use water efficiently enough to get maximum economic benefit
from it? How do we meet multiple expectations from water for our ecology, culture,
economy and society? The biggest water crisis in Pakistan is its unjust distribution.
Golf courses and exotic plants never face scarcity of water in big cities; only the
poor have no water. Large sugarcane farms have plenty of water; small farmers do
not have enough to grow food. These are the features of the water crisis that deserve
immediate attention. And along the way if one needs to build a small dam here and
there, to address the water crisis, then so be it.

Small Dams, Big Problems

A report, titled Pothohar Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project, was prepared
in 2016 by four private national and international consulting firms in collaboration
with the World Bank and local authorities. It stated that agriculture in the Potohar
region – that consists of Rawalpindi, Attock, Chakwal and Jhelum districts as well
as the federal capital, Islamabad – could benefit enormously if small dams and other
man-made structures were built here to conserve rainwater during the monsoon.

The Potohar plateau, according to the report, covers nearly 7.5 per cent of all
cultivable land in Pakistan and includes some of the most fertile parts of the country.
But, in the absence of small dams and other similar structures, only “less than 14 per
cent of the total [rainwater is captured in the region] to support irrigation systems”.
Consequently, merely 11 per cent of the cultivated area in the region was “equipped
with irrigation systems” as recently as two years ago.

The rest of the farmland in Potohar remains rain-fed with very low crop productivity.
“The agricultural yield of wheat, barley, maize and mustard [in Potohar is] roughly
59, 29, 367 and 66 per cent lower, respectively, relative to canal irrigated regions in
the Punjab,” read the report.

The authors of the report then looked at existing dams and other irrigation-related
infrastructure in the region and came up with shocking revelations.

“Roughly 50 per cent of available small dams in the region” irrigate less than 95 per
cent of their command area, the report said. Another 25 per cent of the local dams
provide water to less than 80 per cent of the land they are supposed to irrigate, it
added and cited canals damaged by bursting, leaking pipelines and poorly
constructed water outlets among the reasons for the below par performance of small
dams in the region.

Consequently, the report concluded, 54 different dams in Potohar irrigate only

34,000 acres of land — almost half of the 67,892 acres they are supposed to be
irrigating.

The situation on the ground is perhaps even worse. As many as seven small dams
were found to be totally dysfunctional. Built with a total expenditure of 1.26 billion
rupees and located at Dharabi, Uthwal and Lakhwal, Jammergal, Fateh Pur, Lehri,
Jamal and Khai villages, these are not irrigating even a single acre of land. Most of
them have been non-operational since their completion.

Seven more dams have never provided water to more than 10-15 per cent of the land
they are supposed to irrigate. Another 12 dams have been irrigating 50 per cent – or
even less – of their command area.

The report was originally prepared with the aim to seek money from the World Bank
for the construction of 25 more small dams in Potohar but the World Bank refused
to provide money for them, citing “some serious concerns” about the pathetic
condition of those structures that already exist in the region.

The Small Dams Organisation, set up in 1960 with the specific purpose of
constructing and running small dams in Potohar, cites major institutional and
financial constraints as reasons for the large-scale failure of small dams. Syed
Tasneem Shah, who works as a project director at the organisation, complains of
shortage of both human resources and money needed to maintain and rehabilitate
existing dams in the region.
Since its establishment in 2008, Fatehpur Dam in Jhelum district has not irrigated an
inch of land. More than half of the sanctioned posts of different ranks at the
organisation have been lying vacant for many years, he says. The current number of
its regular staff is 612 even when it is allowed by the government to hire as many as
1,231 officials in regular category.

Money is perhaps an even bigger problem. “As many as 29 dams – out of a total of
60 built by the Small Dams Organisation in Potohar – have not received any money
for their upkeep since their construction,” he says. This is because, he argues, his
organisation receives less than half the money it requires each year to keep all the
dams under its jurisdiction in working condition. “The amount of money we need
annually for the purpose is 304.964 million rupees but what we receive from the
provincial government on this count is 112.607 million rupees a year,” he says.

Not all of this money gets spent on the maintenance and rehabilitation of dams either.
Around 30 per cent of it is paid as salaries for workers temporarily hired to overcome
staff shortage at the organisation.

Water Security

PAKISTAN depends heavily on its neighbours for most of its surface water. Many
of our rivers originate in other countries; yet relations with most water neighbours
are estranged. And we have yet to develop a coherent narrative and consistent policy
to protect our long-term water interests. Instead of laying a foundation for sound
water relations, we are allowing our water interests to become subservient to
temperamental political relations.

It is imperative for Pakistan to have mechanisms in place to discuss the development

of neighbouring countries’ water infrastructure, with or without formal treaties. We
need regular, ongoing discussions with our neighbours on infrastructural
development, surface water flows and diversions. This includes Afghanistan that is
planning feasibility studies of about a dozen dams; China for developments in Tibet
where the Indus originates; and India that is home to the upper reaches of Indus and
its numerous tributaries. An exchange of information and increased cooperation on
water issues, therefore, needs to become a standing item in our bilateral agendas with
our neighbours as well as with other development partners (Australia, the EU, UK
and US).

It is for Pakistan to initiate water negotiations with all our water neighbours in order
to respond to the growing population, projected economic growth, receding glaciers
and water flows — now made uncertain by climate change. For a water-secure
Pakistan, domestic water-sector reforms must be complimented with a new regional
diplomacy.

A fresh and simple approach is needed for a policy that is based on three basic
principles. First, have a clear policy for water security. Since water is the lifeline of
our economy and ecology, ensure it is at no point hostage to volatile political
interests. In fact, we need to use water relations to build and improve political and
economic relations. Our present policy is lopsided. We ignore water relations with
Iran, thinking that water quantities shared with it are too small or seasonal, but forget
that Iran and Afghanistan have been in discussions over the Helmand River for
almost 100 years.

Likewise, as an upper riparian, China has a strong bearing in future water flows
downstream in the Indus and Brahmaputra. In fact, given evolving data-sharing
mechanisms between India and China on Brahmaputra, China may assume a unique
position in shaping, if not brokering, Pakistan-India water relations. But water is not
a formal agenda item between China and Pakistan, notwithstanding some
preliminary explorations of the Indus Cascade. This project in the upper reaches of
Gilgit-Baltistan is potentially larger and more important than CPEC.

With India, we have reduced water relations to only conflicting interpretations of the
Indus Waters Treaty, compromising our interests on many old and emerging issues
not directly covered in the treaty: transboundary water pollution loads; information
on aquifer movement; climate-induced cloudbursts and cross-border flooding; joint
management of early warning systems; and changing patterns of monsoon and
precipitation that influence regular and seasonal flows. This growing list offers
opportunities for enhanced bilateral collaboration.

Second, invest in research and development. Articulating policies based on

perceived instead of evidence-based interests has made negotiating positions zero-
sum. Our interest lies in equitable benefit sharing, which requires research and policy
engagement. We recently damaged our case in the international court primarily
because we cited little scientific information to back our claims. As we move to
implement our National Water Policy, experts and thought leaders must be brought
together to undertake collaborative research and analysis. Scores of experiences of
transboundary negotiations and agreements need to be analysed for their relevance
to our complex contexts.

Third, find friends and takers for our policy. Though detrimental to our interests, and
adding to mistrust and information gaps, Pakistan has unnecessarily shied from
engagement. Proactive regional engagement to win friends will help us develop the
social capital necessary for exercising soft power. We can still initiate the process
by picking some of the threads from the Friends of Democratic Pakistan report,
shelved almost a decade ago. It is time to assess how best to re-engage those nations,
the World Bank and institutions that have traditionally taken a keen interest in
regional water diplomacy, investments and institution-building.
In all, we need to focus on developing a new generation of leadership in water by
investing in a cadre of decision makers from across the provinces, sectors and
disciplines. They need to be trained and capacitated for reimagining and re-
envisioning regional water diplomacy.

Rhetoric and Reality

BETWEEN April and October 2016, I was conducting a study on Chashma Right
Bank Canal that runs through Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It
was during the height of the frenzied and much-hyped ‘billion-tree tsunami’ by the
ruling party of the province.

In May, I witnessed men planting hundreds of conocarpus and eucalyptus trees along
the canal. I also saw thousands of eucalyptus trees in the stream bed of the Gambila
river somewhere in the vicinity of Lakki Marwat.

Both are extraordinarily thirsty trees. A mature eucalyptus (native to Australia) can
soak over 100 litres of water a day. This was determined by the very competent Dr
Ashraf Bodla in 1989-90, then working for the Nuclear Institute of Agro-Biology in
Faisalabad. Every eucalyptus planted on our soil is a non-stop tube well depriving
us of groundwater.

The conocarpus, on the other hand, grows in several parts of the world and was
imported from the UAE by Karachi’s then mayor Mustafa Kamal in 2005. This
allergen-broadcasting, water-conduit destroying tree is now grown across the
country in unaccountable numbers. Having discovered its malevolence, the UAE has
eradicated it.

The authors and executors of the ‘billion-tree tsunami’ had no idea what they should
be planting.
I believe the authors and executors of the ‘billion-tree tsunami’ had no idea what
they should be planting: they were misguided by corrupt forest department officials,
who knew both species survive because no grazer touches them. For foresters and
politicians in a hurry to show ‘results’, this was the only way to go. I made some
noise on the criminal choice of trees, but my voice was drowned out by cultists
screaming: ‘We are better than you because we are at least doing something.’

To most of them, it meant nothing if this ‘doing something’ would wreak havoc upon
the environment, ecology and general health of the population. It mattered nothing
that conocarpus would be the next major cause of rhinitis after our love affair with
paper mulberry trees imported from China to green Islamabad in the early 1960s.

And now we have another tree tsunami inflicted upon us. This time, it is ‘10 billion
trees’ in five years. Let’s begin by doing the sums: the per annum figure comes to
2bn trees or just under 5.5 million trees per day! The only silver lining in this
madness is that the government has broadcast a list of all the indigenous trees that
will be planted. It has no mention of eucalyptus or conocarpus. That is
commendable. But there are questions. Where will the daily supply of 5.5m saplings
or seeds come from? And that — unfailingly — over the next five years?

In order to get anywhere near the vaunted figure, youngsters, who may not know
much about ecology and can be easily misguided by corrupt forest officials and
politicians, will end up planting undesirable species. The math shows that, even then,
the target will escape them. Pakistan has suffered such foolishness in the past.

In the early 1980s, denuded hillsides in Swat, Bajaur and Buner were planted
wholesale with eucalyptus. From a distance the trees looked like pine, but they were
poison: thousands of freshwater springs dried up. Though eucalyptus eradication
campaigns were undertaken in the early 2000s, the blight remains.
In Lahore, there are two nurseries (that I know of) managed by the Forest
Department rearing local species. Right now, their total output will not be more than
3,000 at the most. In order to replenish, they need to prepare cuttings, which will
take over six weeks to sprout — and this only between March and October. Even if
there was a miraculous shower of hundreds of billions of seeds from the sky, the
new plants will not be ready anytime soon.

However, the man in charge of the nursery in Green Town informed me that the
department encourages rearing of conocarpus saplings too. That, he said, was being
done at the nursery at Jallo. Of course, the ubiquitous eucalyptus is found at both
nurseries. Putting together the total output of all the nurseries of Pakistan, it will still
be impossible to raise 5.5m saplings daily over the next five years. There is no magic
wand that can turn a stick into a tree. The requisite number will simply not be
available.

Additionally, most native species are browsed upon by animals. Therefore even if
motivated young people perform the miracle of planting, say, 100,000 trees across
Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, most of these will be lost to grazers:
the survival rate of indigenous species is about 15 per cent. In a word, the target of
10bn trees in five years is a pipe dream — dreamt under the influence.

Climate Change and Population (water)

FEW will contest that global climate change is a serious threat to the future of human
welfare. And there is a plethora of suggestions regarding potential interventions to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as switching to renewable energy sources
and making energy use more efficient. But the international climate community is
largely silent about the potential role of reducing population growth as a policy
option that can improve the environment and bring many other health and
socioeconomic benefits as well.

This silence may be understandable in the more developed countries that have seen
sharply declining birth rates and where issues like aging populations are now of more
concern. But it has no place in developing countries like Pakistan, where
environmental sustainability is threatened not only by growing climate risks, but also
by the pressures of a large and still fast-growing population. With 208 million
people, we are the sixth most populous country in the world, and at an intercensal
growth of 2.4 per cent, our population growth rate is the highest in South Asia.

At the same time, we rank seventh among countries most adversely affected by
climate change. Rising temperatures are disrupting rainfall patterns, melting
glaciers, intensifying floods, and causing extreme weather events. But perhaps the
most frightening environmental stress to emerge is water shortage. We are already
water scarce and the situation is projected to worsen over the next 20 years. Already,
large parts of the country are affected by drought, which could spread and intensify
with devastating consequences.

The alleviation of scarcity would be short-lived unless the number of consumers also
stabilises.

For now, the government’s response seems focused on expanding water storage
capacity. The Prime Minister and Chief Justice of Pakistan Fund for Diamer Bhasha
and Mohmand Dam is a good initiative for improving our water security, but in the
longer run, the country must adapt in a way that ensures equilibrium between future
consumption and projected supply. Water conservation in all sectors, domestic,
agricultural, industrial, etc, is an important second avenue to prioritise. But even if
we were able to implement and enforce good practices in time, the alleviation of
scarcity would be short-lived unless the number of consumers also stabilises. Urgent
efforts to reduce unplanned pregnancies and slow population growth must comprise
the essential third prong for tackling the water crisis in Pakistan.

A few simple calculations confirm this. Total availability of water resources in

Pakistan is currently estimated at around 178 billion cubic metres (BCM). With our
current population size, this translates into 860 cubic meters (m3) per capita, a level
indicating scarcity. At an annual growth rate of 2.1pc, our population will expand to
246m by 2025 and over 300m by 2035. Unless we improve our ability to store and
conserve water, per capita water availability will fall to 730m3 in 2025 and 590m3
in 2035. Assuming we succeed in building the Diamer-Bhasha dam in time, it will
add a precious 9.9 BCM to our water availability, but even then, due to population
growth, per capita availability will only improve to around 770m3 in 2025 and
630m3 in 2035.

Regrettably, Pakistan’s population programme has shown very slow progress in this
area. The results of the 2017 census indicate only a negligible decline in population
growth over the last two decades, and the latest Pakistan Demographic and Health
Survey 2017-18 results show hardly any change in fertility between 2007 and 2018.

A major factor in the neglect of population growth in climate change policy is the
common perception that birth rates are not the responsibility of the government and
cannot be changed by its intervention. This outlook, which is especially prevalent
among economists (including prominent experts in Pakistan) assumes that birth rates
reflect actual demand for children, which is not the case. Each year about 89m
unintended pregnancies result in 30m unplanned births in the developing world
among women who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using effective
contraception. The Population Council estimates that there are 4m unwanted
pregnancies each year in Pakistan alone. Reasons for non-use of contraceptives
include lack of access to services and the high costs of modern methods. Fear of side
effects of methods, disapproval of husbands, and reluctance to violate social norms
are also significant barriers to use.

Voluntary family planning programmes can reduce these obstacles by increasing

access to contraceptives, providing subsidies, and expanding method options, thus
contributing to sustained declines in fertility. The potential impact of such
programmes — and the fact that population growth can be reduced substantially, not
through coercion, but simply by avoiding unplanned outcomes — is illustrated best
by comparing Bangladesh and Pakistan. The two countries had almost the same
population size in 1980 when Bangladesh implemented one of the world’s most
effective voluntary family planning programmes. In contrast, Pakistan’s programme
has until recently been relatively feeble, lacking government funds and most of all
commitment. Not surprisingly, the population trajectories of the two countries have
differed sharply since 1980. By 2100, Pakistan’s population is projected to be 178m
more than Bangladesh. This difference will be attributable squarely to the success of
the Bangladesh family planning programme.

In the international discourse on climate change mitigation and adaptation,

developed countries may be excused for wanting to avoid the awkward role of
promoting voluntary family planning in developing countries: after all, it is the
developed world that is primarily responsible for causing the climate to change
through its excessive emission of greenhouse gases, and entering into a population
policy discussion in the context of climate change might appear to blame the poor
countries for problems created by the rich ones. But countries like ours, which are
already facing the brunt of climate change, must focus urgently on what is a viable
and affordable policy option for adaptation.
All of us who care about alleviating Pakistan’s water crisis, and ensuring its
sustainable and equitable development — especially the new government — must
prioritise the most obvious and inexpensive solution: focus on population welfare as
a key to dealing with climate change stress.

Ground Water Rights

THE Supreme Court has initiated suo motu proceedings regarding the
excessive and unregulated extraction of groundwater by bottling companies. To
be fair, the court is driven by a genuine desire to conserve our aquifers but
because judges are not perceived as well suited to handling questions of policy,
the focus thus far has been on short-term fixes only. A proper resolution of the
issue requires us to address the structural problem first.

Groundwater is a scarce resource and every time a state is confronted with conditions
of scarcity, it must undertake the process of resource allocation. This effectively
means that when there are multiple people with competing claims over the same
resources, society must devise a mechanism to determine how those limited
resources are to be distributed amongst the claimants and which claim is to be
prioritised over the other. Property law serves that function. It helps allocate limited
resources and then provides a framework through which those resources can be
transferred between people once the initial allocation has taken place.

Our structural difficulties with the regulation of groundwater extraction start here
because we have never managed to do the initial allocation of rights in groundwater
correctly. If property rights in groundwater are not properly delineated, it is simply
not possible to regulate its use effectively.

A mechanism is needed to resolve the distribution of limited resources.

Consider the case of Punjab where groundwater is subject to the overlapping control
of a number of different bodies. Under section 11(i)(a) of the Wapda Act, 1958,
Wapda has “control over the underground water resources of any region in a
Province”. A verbatim reproduction of this text can be found in section 8 of the
Punjab Irrigation and Drainage Authority Act, 1997, which gives the Irrigation
Authority “control over … underground water resources within the Province”. This
creates a situation where groundwater in Punjab is under the control of two separate
bodies: one federal and the other provincial.

But that’s not all. Section 62-A of the Irrigation and Drainage Act, 1873, mandates
the provincial government to take all steps for the “proper management of the sub-
soil water to protect the aquifer”. That’s the third piece of legislation empowering a
different entity to conserve, control and manage groundwater. Furthermore, in cities
to which the Punjab Development of Cities Act, 1976 ,or the LDA Act, 1975, apply,
the concerned authority for each city has the “exclusive right to use groundwater
resources” in its area. There is the further question of how these authorities interact
with local governments in an environment where they enjoy identical functions and
powers under the law?

To be sure, one can look at this with some nuance and argue that these laws apply in
different contexts and there is room to interpret them harmoniously, but that should
not obscure the larger point that is being made here: our delineation of property
rights in groundwater is shoddy. Unless this is clarified by legislation, we cannot
move towards the effective regulation of groundwater, and thrashing out a policy
solution through courts — no matter how good the intentions might be — will offer
only temporary respite. Any steps taken to protect the aquifer will be of very limited
effect.
Where the courts can play a major role though is in developing jurisprudence on
property law and user rights once the legislative changes are in place. For instance,
section 7(g) of the Easements Act, 1882, still gives each land owner the right to
“collect all water” under his land. This is based on the archaic notion dating back to
Roman law where “whoever owns the soil, holds title all the way up to the heavens
and down to the depths of hell”. With the advent of aircraft, courts now recognise
that an owner’s rights to the airspace above his land extends to reasonable use only.

Corresponding changes, however, have not taken place — at least in our

jurisprudence — with respect to the use and ownership of resources under land.
Groundwater is still subject to the ‘rule of capture’ where a person owns whatever
he extracts from the aquifer. The rule encourages excessive extraction. Alternative
legal rules include the reasonable use doctrine and the correlative rights doctrine that
can be used in conjunction with a metering system. These rules can be developed by
the judiciary once cases are litigated under the new legislative framework.

One such attempt was made in Sindh Institute of Urology vs Nestle Milkpak where
the court held that groundwater was held on public trust by the state but the
Easements Act was never brought to the court’s attention in that case. More clarity
is still needed and that will have to come from the legislature first. That is one area
in which the new government can push its agenda of reform.

Seismic Costs

WHEN considering investment in an infrastructure project, responsible investors or

donors would ask: what is the need? What are the financial, social and environmental
costs? What are the risks and the unknowns? Is the project likely to yield higher
costs than benefits? Is the project the best option to address the need?
Pakistan’s judiciary and government have called upon Pakistanis to invest in the
Diamer-Basha and Mohmand Dam Fund, and yet they have insufficiently addressed
these questions. The Supreme Court’s online appeal is not accompanied by a
feasibility study. From the outside looking in, this is a red flag.

The court explained the need in uploads to its website related to Petition 57 of 2016:
a) Pakistan faces an issue of water scarcity, and b) it sees water reservoirs as essential
to the survival of Pakistan’s people and economy. The Pakistan Council for Research
in Water Resources corroborates the former claim. The argument for reservoirs rests
on the premise that insufficient storage capacity causes water shortages. These
assumptions merit scrutiny.

Is it necessary to target water storage capacity when water can be used more
efficiently? Agriculture accounts for more than 95 per cent of Pakistan’s water
consumption, and it is being used suboptimally.

For a start, distribution losses can be as high as two-thirds along unlined

watercourses. These can be curbed with lining at a fraction of the cost. Secondly,
Pakistan’s portfolio of crops needs to be rethought. The government should
incentivise a shift away from water-intensive crops towards drought-resistant strains
and species.

A mega dam in an earthquake zone could cause huge loss of life.

If optimising water use is insufficient on its own to solve Pakistan’s looming water
crisis and additional storage is needed, would construction of the Diamer-Basha and
Mohmand dams be the best way of addressing that need? What would be the shortfall
if existing dams were desilted, maintained and rehabilitated? What would be the
shortfall of capacity needed if instead of mega dams, smaller dams, with their smaller
risks and costs, were built? Savvy impact investors would need these questions
answered in a publicly available feasibility study.

Among the social costs of the Diamer-Basha dam foreseen by Wapda in 2011 in a
document once made available online were the dislocation of over 30,000 people,
the submersion of over 2,500 acres of agricultural land and the loss of many of the
33,000 prehistoric rock carvings that cannot be relocated. As a remedy to the social
costs, nine model villages with amenities were envisioned for the displaced, and
selected rock carvings would be moved to a museum in Chilas. Environmental costs
were not mentioned.

For these, in the absence of a published feasibility study, we turn to Engineer Bashir
Malik’s opinion published in The Nation in 2012. Described by King’s College
geographer Daanish Mustafa as a former adviser to the World Bank and UN and
“one of the most ardent supporters of dam-building in Pakistan”, Malik first
distinguished Diamer-Basha from Tarbela and Kalabagh as “not a natural site for a
storage dam”. He then proceeded to illustrate the seismic risks that the roller-
compacted concrete Daimer-Basha dam would face as well as cause. The dam would
be “vulnerable to cracks and leakage”.

A serious risk factor, Malik wrote, is reservoir-induced seismicity due to the

immense weight of water stored behind the unprecedentedly high dam in the middle
of an earthquake zone. The dam, in other words, could trigger tremors. “India’s
Koyna dam induced [a] magnitude 6.4 earthquake killing 180 people in 1967 [...]”,
while the Zipingpu mega dam may have been responsible for triggering a 7.9
magnitude earthquake in China in 2008, which killed 80,000 people.

Professor of Geological Sciences Shemin Ge of the University of Colorado Boulder

and her co-authors have suggested the same. Greater than any other financial,
economic or social cost is the chance that the Diamer-Basha dam, by virtue of being
a mega dam in an earthquake zone, could cause loss of life on a catastrophic scale.

If the Diamer-Basha dam were the miracle that it would have to be to justify all the
risks and costs, why would CPEC or development banks not finance it? Could it be
that they read the feasibility studies?

Mega projects are inherently political, according to Andrew Edkins, UCL professor
of the management of complex projects. Harvard international development
professor Lant Pritchett predicts that policy advocates withhold information about a
project’s effectiveness when they believe this information would deter support; they
instead use emotive rhetoric to hoodwink prospective supporters.

One cannot doubt the sincerity of the new government or the judiciary. One does
wonder, however, at the politics of the policy advocates. Pakistanis should demand
answers to hard questions before they part with their money