Daily Times

Highly vulnerable to climate change and desertification, Pakistan is being faced with looming water crisis due to lack of rains and snowfalls besides fast melting of glaciers putting lives of millions people at risk due to emerging food security challenges.

Being the most water stressed country in world due to shortage of dams and runner of the river (ROR) projects despite plenty of suitable sites for construction of water reservoirs in northern parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, the country’s water availability has been consistently declining due to mismanagement of water resources, unchecked car washing stations, deforestation and climate change. “Pakistan is mostly relying on glaciers for its water needs. However, the lack of rains and snow falls this year in winter signified the country’s water vulnerability that may create food security challenges besides energy crisis in years ahead if we do not construct run of the river dams being cost and time efficient”, said Tauheedul Haq, former Conservator of Forests while talking to APP.

Referring to the National Water Policy 2018, he said that per capita surface water availability has declined from 5,260 cubic meter per annum in 1951 to a significant 1000 cubic meters in 2016 and feared that this quantity would likely to further decrease by about 860 cubic meter in next few years if deforestation and population bulge continued and water of rivers were not stored through better water management.

With glaciers retreat, he said more glacial lakes would be formed especially in Chitral and Swat besides Gilgit-Baltistan with high chances of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GOLF) as evident at Attabad lake GOLF that necessitated more runner of the river dams in Rivers Swat, Kunhar at Kaghan, Naran and Punjokora Dir Upper most suited for these kinds of hydel projects besides averting flash floods.

Dr Professor Zilakat Malik, former Chairman Economics Department, University of Peshawar said that climate change, 240.954 million population bulge and technological advancement started exerting pressure on energy resources in the country that was already facing about 7,000 megawatts (MW) shortfall affecting GDP growth.

He said the promotion of run-of-the-river (ROR) hydroelectricity would be required to bridge the widening demand-supply gap of electricity besides fulfilling the pressing demands of affordable energy of the consumers increasing with each passing day in the wake of mushroom growth of IT and agriculture sectors.

He said that the energy consumption share of industries has increased by 28 percent during July-April 2022 from 26.3 percent recorded in July-April 2021 while the share of the agriculture sector jacked up to nine percent from 8.9 percent during the same period. The 2022 devastating floods have adversely affected the country’s agriculture, economy, livestock, and energy sectors as scores of mini micro-hydel stations were swept away by the gushing water that inflicted over USD 40 billion in economic losses to the government kitty.

“We need to adopt the culture of construction of small water reservoirs and ROR projects being cost and time-efficient and is very popular in developed countries to avert water crisis”, he said.

Dr Zilakat Malik said China had constructed about 98,000 dams, India 5,324 dams and only 150 dams by Pakistan. He said despite the huge 30,000 MW hydel potential of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, not a single dam was constructed in Pakistan after the Tarbela dam was built on River Indus in 1984 with an estimated cost of USD1.49 billion.

Citing examples of ROR dams in the world, he said that Canada is generating about USD 140 million annual revenues from Niagara ROR dams attracting over one million tourists every year. Similarly, Hoover RoR dam on the Colorado River generates about USD 250 annual revenue for the USA and the Three Gorges ROR Dam on Yangtze River contributed USD 1.5 billion in tourism revenue in 2019 to the economy of China.

Engr Zahoor Hussain, Director of Projects Wapda said that ROR hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided for electricity generation.

He said ROR hydroelectricity was considered ideal for rivers and streams that could sustain a minimum flow or those regulated by a lake or reservoir upstream. He said a small dam was usually built to create a head pond ensuring that there is enough water entering the penstock pipes that lead to the turbines which are at lower elevations.

Engr Zahoor said ROR was a prime source of renewable energy that does not produce greenhouse gases and can easily be located in remote areas where other forms of energy generation were not feasible besides these could be built quickly and required less investment than conventional dams.

He said Chitral, Kohistan, Upper Mansehra, Dir, and Swat in KP, Northern Punjab, Azad Kashmir, and Gilgit Baltistan (GB) rivers were most suited for ROR dams. He said the Grand Coulee dam at Washington USA and the Itaipu dam on River Parana between Brazil and Paraguay were the world’s largest ROR projects that generate electricity from the natural flow of the rivers.

Engr Zahoor said that the construction of ROR hydroelectricity projects in these areas would help provide clean, renewable, and affordable energy to the local population that could be a valuable addition to the national grid. However, ROR dams can harm the environment and ecology such as disrupting fish migration and altering water quality.

Engineer Muhammad Luqman Khan, Chief Planning Officer, of KP Energy Department said that under the power generation policy 2015, an inclusive strategy has been adopted for promoting the culture of ROR dams in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Under the strategy, he said the focus was being made on awareness campaigns for educating people about the significance of ROR dams and their role in clean energy generation, water resource management, and economic development.

He said ROR could be achieved by offering financial incentives, tax breaks, and a speedy approval process under public partnership mode. “Faster collaboration with international organizations and countries that have experience in ROR projects was a key area of the government strategy to promote such culture in the country and especially in the province for socio-economic development of people besides averting the looming water crisis”, he concluded.