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Water management in Pakistan's Indus Basin: challenges and opportunities
The Indus River System is a major source of life in Pakistan. A vast array of Pakistan's agricultural and domestic consumption needs are critically dependent on the Indus River System. The Indus River contributes towards 25% of the country's gross domestic product, providing water for almost 90% of the food production in Pakistan. Linked to the water security issues, Pakistan is potentially at risk of facing a severe food shortage in the near future. The World Bank report of 2020–2021 estimates that the water shortage will increase to 32% by 2025, which will result in a food shortage of almost 70 million tons. Water shortage could also result in confrontation between the provinces as river sharing has always been a source of problem for Pakistan. According to recent estimates, siltation and climate change will reduce the water storage capacity by 2025 to almost 30%. As for the per capita water storage capacity in Pakistan, it is about 150 m3, which is quite meagre in comparison with that in other countries. Irrigated agriculture will soon be adversely affected due to the reduced surface water supplies and the consequent increase in groundwater abstraction. To make matters worse, over the past decades, a great deal of distrust has developed among the provinces of Pakistan regarding the water distribution issue, and the successive federal governments have failed to formulate a cohesive inter-provincial National Water Policy. Along with the shortages and increasing demand for water, administrative corruption also plagues the water sector and is quite common. The beneficiaries of this water reallocation system are not only the rural elite, for example the large and politically influential landlords, but also the small and medium capitalist farmers. If not properly addressed, these complications of decreasing water resources could result in serious political and economic hostility among the provinces. If it wants to harness its potential to increase storage capacity, Pakistan must improve its water-use efficiency and manage its groundwater and surface water resources in a sustainable way. Strengthening the institutions and removing mistrust among the provinces are the key elements for maintaining a sustainable irrigated agriculture in the Indus Basin.
Journal Article
Global challenges in water governance : environments, economies, societies
This book presents a historically situated explanation of the rise of global water governance and the contemporary challenges that global water governance seeks to address. It is particularly concerned with connecting what are often technical issues in water management with the social and political structures that affect how technical and scientific advice affects decisions. Schmidt and Matthews are careful to avoid the pitfalls of setting up opposing binaries, such as 'nature versus culture' or 'private versus public', thereby allowing readers to understand how contests over water governance have been shaped over time and why they will continue to be so. Co-written by an academic and a practitioner, Global Challenges in Water Governance combines the dual concerns for both analytical clarity and practical applicability in a way that is particularly valuable both for educators, researchers, decision-makers, and newcomers to the complexities of water use decisions.
Book
The Economics of Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most water scarce region in the world.This report uses an economics lens to understand the institutions through which scarce resources are allocated and managed across competing needs.
eBook
Water policies in MENA countries
The book provides an overview on national policies and regulations related to water resource management in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA), where water scarcity problems are critical. The physical/natural constraints, socio-economic and political circumstances make the MENA region a sort of 'laboratory' for natural resource management and particularly water management. The book provides a good comparison on how neighboring countries with quite similar natural constraints and cultures are addressing water problems in different ways. It enlightens water resource specialists on successful experiences around the region and show cases the reforms undertaken in the water sector to meet the challenges posed by urbanization, food security, water pollution and climate change. The book constitutes nine chapters, seven of them with content from the main MENA countries. It starts with an introductory chapter that provides background information on the region's water resources with descriptive statistics and historical developments of the water sector. It ends with a chapter that summarizes the policy implications and main conclusions on the way forward for sustainable management of water in MENA countries.
Book
Balancing water resource conservation and food security in China
China’s economic growth is expected to continue into the next decades, accompanied by sustained urbanization and industrialization. The associated increase in demand for land, water resources, and rich foods will deepen the challenge of sustainably feeding the population and balancing agricultural and environmental policies. We combine a hydrologic model with an economic model to project China’s future food trade patterns and embedded water resources by 2030 and to analyze the effects of targeted irrigation reductions on this system, notably on national agricultural water consumption and food self-sufficiency. We simulate interprovincial and international food trade with a general equilibrium welfare model and a linear programming optimization, and we obtain province-level estimates of commodities’ virtual water content with a hydrologic model. We find that reducing irrigated land in regions highly dependent on scarce river flow and nonrenewable groundwater resources, such as Inner Mongolia and the greater Beijing area, can improve the efficiency of agriculture and trade regarding water resources. It can also avoid significant consumption of irrigation water across China (up to 14.8 km ³/y, reduction by 14%), while incurring relatively small decreases in national food self-sufficiency (e.g., by 3% for wheat). Other researchers found that a national, rather than local, water policy would have similar effects on food production but would only reduce irrigation water consumption by 5%.
Significance Agriculture represents the largest water-consuming sector in China, while industry and cities are growing competitors. To sustain a rapidly increasing population with richer diets, high levels of food production have come at significant environmental costs, such as groundwater overdraft and soil degradation. As socioeconomic growth and the associated pressure on water resources continue to increase, it is crucial to evaluate the effects of water-saving measures on agriculture, food trade, and water resources. This article estimates China’s future food trade patterns and associated water transfers and quantifies the effects of targeted irrigated land reductions on water consumption and food self-sufficiency, accounting for production displacement and local water productivity. Our findings provide important insights to policy-makers on trade-offs between environmental and agricultural objectives.
Journal Article
Delineating of groundwater potential zones based on remote sensing, GIS and analytical hierarchical process
The delineation of favourable areas of water potentials and their management must be based on rigorous scientific studies. Thus, geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) techniques are extremely important in predicting and mapping favourable groundwater zones. This paper aims to map potential areas of groundwater in Waddai region, eastern Chad. A region which has experienced successive droughts over the last two decades, causing the drying of most of the rivers in the area. This study focuses on combining GIS, RS, and analytical hierarchy process; in addition to the factors controlling the movement and retention of groundwater. Six factors (rainfall, slope, land use/land cover, drainage density, lineament density, and lithology) were used to integrate the spatial analysis of areas likely to hold groundwater. The results indicate that potential groundwater areas are unevenly distributed throughout the study area. For instance, the northwestern part is characterized by a low groundwater potential. This low potential in this part of the study area as well as a small portion of the eastern area is explained by a low density of lineaments and drainage, the presence of moderate precipitations, and a semi-permeable lithology (alternating hard rocks and loose sediments). While every low and moderate area occupy most of the middle of the region, good ground water reservoirs occupy a large part of the region. This distribution is explained by good fracturing, permeability, lineament density, high drainage, gentle slope, and precipitation. Therefore, areas of the northwestern part are highly suitable for groundwater exploration and exploitation. Hence; these results would be a guide for future explorations and will maximizes the economic efficiency of the ground water exploitation processes. Furthermore, this map will be useful as a guide in decision-making and on water policy planning.
Journal Article
Water governance in the face of global change : from understanding to transformation
This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of multi-level water governance, developing a conceptual and analytical framework that captures the complexity of real water governance systems while also introducing different approaches to comparative analysis. Applications illustrate how the ostensibly conflicting goals of deriving general principles and of taking context-specific factors into account can be reconciled. Specific emphasis is given to governance reform, adaptive and transformative capacity and multi-level societal learning. The sustainable management of global water resources is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century. Many problems and barriers to improvement can be attributed to failures in governance rather than the resource base itself. At the same time our understanding of complex water governance systems largely remains limited and fragmented. The book offers an invaluable resource for all researchers working on water governance topics and for practitioners dealing with water governance challenges alike.
Book
Siren song
Increasing scarcity, conflict, and environmental damage are critical features of the global water crisis. As governments, international organizations, NGOs, and corporations have tried to respond, Chilean water law has seemed an attractive alternative to older legislative and regulatory approaches. Boldly introduced in 1981, the Chilean model is the worlds leading example of a free market approach to water law, water rights, and water resource management. Despite more than a decade of international debate, however, a comprehensive, balanced account of the Chilean experience has been unavailable. Siren Song is an interdisciplinary analysis combining law, political economy, and geography. Carl Bauer places the Chilean model of water law in international context by reviewing the contemporary debate about water economics and policy reform. He follows with an account of the Chilean experience, drawing on primary and secondary sources in Spanish and English, including interviews with key people in Chile. He presents the debate about reforming the law after Chile's 1990 return to democratic government, as well as emerging views about how water markets have worked in practice. The resulting book provides insights about law, economics, and public policy within Chile and lessons for the countries around the world that are wrestling with the challenges of water policy reform.
eBook