Pakistan Entering Drought Phase

LAHORE - Sep 3/04 - IRIN -- Pakistan has entered a drought phase, the South Asian country's water authority said on Thursday, citing critically low water levels in major reservoirs. The Indus River System Authority (IRSA), which allocates water to the provinces, said that the country's water reservoirs at Tarbela, near Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Mangla, 100 km southeast of the capital, Islamabad, contained only half the water they should in the Rabi or winter sowing season, for the first time in the country's history.

The two giant reservoirs, which are supposed to regulate the flow of the river and provide extra water in lean times, are nearly empty because of the lack of rains. "We will not have much water for the wheat crop," said IRSA spokesman Sohail Ali Khan. He described the situation as critical.

Most of Pakistan's water comes from remote glaciers in the Himalayan and Karakorum mountain ranges, which border China and India, and the Hindu Kush, which borders Afghanistan. The Indus river system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's 21.5 million hectares of farmland, through a network of canals. The other 20% is fed by rainfall, especially during the monsoon season from July to September.

The country's main rivers are flowing at very low levels, compared to the same time last year, because the IRSA has kept water releases from the two reservoirs to a bare minimum in a desperate bid to maintain water levels. The authority will hold a crisis meeting on Saturday to plan a strategy. It is likely to cut more than 40% of the four provinces' share of irrigation water for wheat. This shortfall could have a major impact on the price of grain in coming months.

Mehmood Siddiqui, an irrigation consultant, told IRIN the country was facing a water crisis primarily due to lack of rain. Pakistan has already revised its wheat output estimate for the 2003/04 crop, down to 19.7 million metric tons (MT) from a target of 20 million, after a dry summer hit yields in central Punjab, which produces over 80% of Pakistan's wheat.

Agriculture ministry officials say a government committee will meet next month to review the water situation and set a target for the next crop. "We will have to adopt such a way to save the cotton and rice crops and ensure cultivation of the wheat crop," Siddiqui said.

However, some weather experts blame water managers for the serious shortfall. Meteorological Department chief Shaukat Awan told IRIN that monsoon rain patterns varied year by year. "It is up to water planners to save water when it rains in the catchment areas, and release it in the dry season. Blaming monsoon rains does not help anywhere in the world," he said.

Sindh and the Punjab provinces, which already look at each other with suspicion, will be facing a shortage of irrigation water that would adversely affect major crops, especially wheat. Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan, would be entitled to get less than half its requirements and Sindh even less.

Punjab provincial irrigation secretary, Javed Majeed, told IRIN the country was now trying to save every drop of water. "It is time another big dam was built to save water," he said.

The availability of water in the country has been adversely affected by below normal rains since 1998. A previous drought in Pakistan three years ago had pushed around 4.6 million people below the poverty line, with the impact largely concentrated in Sindh and Balochistan provinces. These hungry people were added to the one-third of the country's population, around 17 million, already living in poverty before the drought.

The World Bank has shown its readiness to fund small reservoirs in Pakistan at a recent meeting in Islamabad and a parliamentary committee is calling for the construction of a major dam in the country.

President General Pervez Musharraf has called for the construction of new reservoirs to meet growing water needs, since silting has reduced the capacity of Tarbela and Mangla reservoirs. "We have to construct new water reservoirs to meet water requirements otherwise we will confront an unending water crisis," he said. But disputes over where the reservoirs will be sited may delay the projects, analysts say.

The water issue is beginning to dominate relations between Islamabad and New Delhi. Although Pakistan and India signed the Indus Waters Treaty, a river-sharing agreement, in 1960, the pact said nothing about what would happen if the two states faced serious water shortages.

"It is time to approach India - already locking horns with Pakistan over some of its storage schemes on rivers allocated to Pakistan - on the coming water crunch. This issue could be more important in the coming years than Kashmir," said an editorial in the English-language daily, the Times, this week.

Copyright (c) 2004 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs