Daily Times

Experts have been raising the alarm over the very real dangers of water scarcity for more than a decade. Indeed, many have warned that this century’s major wars will be fought over water rather than oil. The upshot being that while energy security remains crucial — water has no known substitute. Indeed, the US National Intelligence Estimate Report (NIE) 2014 warned of the climate change fallout; including hydrological warfare. It even went as far as confirming that water scarcity poses as serious a threat to global security as WMD proliferation, terrorism and cyber attacks on critical infrastructure. And then there have long been rumours that gaining control of Libya’s $25 billion Great Man-Made River (GMR) and Nubian Sandstone Aquifer is what prompted the West’s overthrow of Col Gaddafi.

Here at home, it seems that this country has been slow to wake up to the threat of water scarcity. A study released by WaterAid back in March, The Water Gap — The State of the World’s Water 2018, ranks Pakistan the world’s ninth in terms of lowest access to clean water. It finds that some 21 million (of the total population of 207 million) have no access to clean water. Just a year before, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) cautioned that the country was on course to approaching “absolute scarcity” in terms of water levels by 2025.

And while industrialisation, urban expansion and climate change have all played a part in leading the country to the current scenario — India looms forever large in the foreground. In fact, it tops the WaterAid list of low accessibility. And there are those who have long pointed out that New Delhi has, almost from the very beginning, been engaged in hydrological warfare against Pakistan. This leads us back to Kashmir. Those with ties to the military establishment have long admitted, at least in private, the dispute as one over water; not religion. After all, Pakistan’s main river headlocks fall in Indian-held territory. Thereby subjugating the entire agri-economy.

Had Pakistan focused solely on water security — it may have, some 70 years on, made headway on the matter of having the Chenab River as the natural boundary between the two halves of Kashmir. Something that India has resisted all along. Yet by framing the conflict in religious colours, Islamabad might have undermined the water issue. For all this has done is to allow New Delhi to cast it in the role of regional sponsor of terrorism. All the while deflecting from the latter’s own flawed policies.

Be that as it may, time is running out. Pakistan’s policymakers urgently need to come up with feasible recommendations. Conserving water consumption at the household level is but a short-term measure that speaks of citizenry responsibility. It is time for the state apparatus to do its bit. To avoid a more destructive war that any of us have ever seen.  *

Published in Daily Times, June 3^rd 2018.