New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 48

Water Disputes between Punjab and Sindh: A Challenge to Pakistan

Why Water Disputes?

W

ater disputes among the provinces are a challenge to the federal government.
They cannot be easily managed, and it is very difficult for states to take a
side; yet the federal governments, across the world, are alleged for being
bias toward one or the other units. In matured democracy, this biasness is based on
the consideration of number of political representatives a province elects to the
upper or lower house of a country or the weightage of the votes from the units. In
non-democratic system, the reason for biasness is the support the leader draws from
a unit, and the degree of authority people from an administrative unit has over the
institutional machineries of the state. As Pakistan, over the decades, has witnessed both
forms of governance, the administrative units have experienced favour or ignorance
due to both circumstances.

Primarily, Pakistan’s economy is based on agricultural activities, which
contributes about 24 percent in its gross domestic product (GDP); about 48 percent
of overall labour force is employed in this sector and; 70 percent of Pakistani exports
depend on agricultural products (Ahmedani 2014). This has been possible because it
has the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world, which provides the backbone
to its agriculture-based economy (Ali 2009). This entire agriculture activity depends
on two major river systems: rivers flowing into Arabian Sea and Endorheic river basin.
The former comprises: Indus river basin, Lyari river, Hingol, Hub rivers, and later
includes: Mashkal, Siastan basin, Indus plain, etc. Among all, it is river Indus which
along with its tributaries forms Indus River System (IRS) , and is considered to be the
“hydrological lifeline” of Pakistan. As river Indus flows across Pakistan, all provinces
and federal administrative units want to use maximum quantity of its water for
agriculture, industries, and domestic consumption. This leads to competition, tensions,
and disputes among the provinces.

Inter-state and also intra-state disputes over shared rivers are very complex,
where many reasons are tenuously intertwined. In Pakistan, main reasons for the interprovincial water disputes are as follows.
Water stress: The term water stress was developed by Mallin Falkenmark, who
also developed Water Stress Index (WSI) (Falkenmark 1990). According to WSI,
Pakistan is already water stressed country and by 2020 it will fall in a category of
countries with acute water shortage. The per capita availability of water in Pakistan
was 5,210 m3 in 1951, which reduced to 1,100 m3 in 2006 (http://www.wapda.gov.
pk). In 2010, it was 1,038 m3 and is being projected to be around 877 m3 by 2020
(Xinhua 2010, also see PIDLAT 2011). Some global warming projections have
estimated a decrease in the water availability in the IRS to a staggering 40 percent
by the middle of present century, which if it were to happen would threaten the
very survival of a population already swollen beyond sustainability (Ali 2009).
Phenomenon of climate change: The dispute over water is not only due to water
stress, but also because of release of more than the required water, and occurring
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