• steady decrease in per capita water availability;
• financial inefficiency of agriculture, especially services;
• increasing need and demand for drinking water and sanitation;
• competitive water-related business (agriculture, industry); and interest of donors.

1. Technical solutions are formulated and proposed by different public sector institutions and donors considering multi-disciplinary factors and constraints;
2. Solutions are formally approved by the administrations and legislation at the national and/or at the provincial levels on the basis of priorities and compromises; and
3. Decisions are administratively implemented.

1. provincial river water sharing from the gross pool and during water shortage periods,
2. development of a new reservoir,
3. protection of the Indus delta, and
4. potential for water saving and increased efficiency Emerging issues at the national scale but less debated:

• shortage of water required for agriculture;
• groundwater depletion in intensively cropped areas and urban centers;
• drinking water supply and water quality hazards, and
• pollution of the water bodies: river, lakes and groundwater.

On the first set, technical and institutional opinions are different, not only between Punjab and Sindh, but also across the country. There are different opinions among the media and public groups. No technical solution seems possible because all given solutions are controversial and the justifications diverse. The river water transfer approach adopted in the Indus Basin, estimation of total water availability and mode of water use are strongly linked with these issues. The second set of issues is less debated, but more basic and critical in nature. These are the real challenges faced by the water shortage and non-optimum performance of the water systems. In fact, these shortages are to be addressed with a long term planning, integrated and priority based choices, to avoid adverse future impacts.

River Water Transfer and Implications
The water transfer from a bigger to a smaller river had been adopted as early as 1905, to support agriculture on physically suitable and populated areas of the Basin. The river commands of the Eastern tributaries benefited the most from this approach. Sindh objected to each upstream project as the lower riparian of the Indus river, especially those which would reduce winter flows in the lower Indus. Historically, regional conflicts of interests were represented by the institutions, and addressed by the technical and judicial committees formed by the central governments. The five committees formed during 1916, 1925, 1932, 1939, 1945 suggested technical solutions. Principally, all mainstream and local political institutions supported the development of irrigation schemes while defending their existing uses and water access. The tedious negotiations between the Bahawalpur State and the British Government show the conflict of regional and central interests. With the development of Sukkur Barrage scheme in 1932, irrigation rights were provided to the vast area of Lower Indus, to be developed over a long period of time.

In 1947, the water sharing issue acquired a new intensity, with the division of the basin between the two countries, cutting the upstream reaches of the tributary rivers of the Indus. The whole country became lower riparian. Pakistan, being at the neck of the rivers, had limited choices, especially from the Eastern Rivers. The Radcliff line dividing the two nations was drawn so hastily that 'there was not sufficient time to divide the Indus waters or the assets’. After 13 years of negotiations and international mediation the Indus Water Treaty was signed between Pakistan and India on September 19, 1960. The Treaty is an internationally appreciated and well-quoted example of successful trans-boundary agreements on river water sharing. However, it was signed after a high-level political agreement between the two countries, only 'After long, intensive, and difficult discussions'. The World Bank and the Consortium of donors had to persuade the president and prime ministers of Pakistan and India. Kirmani and Rangeley conclude that 'they differed too sharply in their views to pursue joint planning.'
The Treaty brought major changes in river water availability and sharing.

• A shift from the Basin to the Dominion level water development planning.
• Annual average of 29 million acre feet (MAF) water from three Eastern Rivers was allowed to be fully used by the India. A number of dams, barrages, and link canals have been built to distribute water from the eastern Indus tributaries to the Indian Punjab and neighbouring states.
• The construction of replacement works included inter-river link canals to transfer water from the Western Rivers and a reservoir (Mangla on Jhelum) to store water for the Rabi (winter crop) irrigation. Pakistan started another reservoir to transfer water from the summer flood flows to winter. On an average 10 MAF water is transferred (from the Indus and Jhelum rivers) to the Eastern Rivers systems, which is bound to increase as supplies from India are becoming nil after 1995.
• Between 1947 and 1978, Pakistan extended canal systems to divert 70 per cent more canal water and irrigate 29 per cent more area.

Provincial Water Accord
With the development of reservoirs, winter water availability increased and provinces started to count their volumetric share from the gross storage. Practically a mix of design authorised discharge and seasonal volume sharing evolved new regulation of the network. The Water Allocation Accord (1991) was another success in the regional water sharing. Each province is provided a volumetric share and 10-daily reference allocation to share the daily flows. However, the developments of 1960-78 could not continue satisfying the water demand of the increasing population and agriculture and differences on the interpretation of WAA increased.

Further storage of summer water was once more rejected by the Sindh. The four year drought made the situation worse, strongly indicating the need for sustainable water supply to highly arid areas. The current debate on further water development is extremely important as the water left in the basin is at a minimum level while agriculture and drinking water shortage is maximum.

Existing Water Scarcity
Agricultural sector use has reached 70 per cent of the river inflow, more than 95 per cent of the developed water and more than 90 per cent of the groundwater pumped. During a dry year, the percentage of river water used goes to 90 per cent (PWP 2000). No government or political institution can deny that the whole riverine belt (called Saila area in the upper and Kacho area in the lower basin) has become heavily well irrigated and cropped. Officially five million acre riverine cultivation is reported in the country (WAPDA 2000). The water used by riverine agriculture is around 20 MAF (Habib 2004). Like other developing countries, Pakistan has the land potential to expand agriculture, while existing agriculture has become highly groundwater dependent. Every farmer will prefer to have and use more canal water; this is partly due to irrigation practices and groundwater quality.

The existing canal system can divert 20-30 per cent more water. Because of economic pressures and modernisation, the cropping intensities are increasing with future demand further increasing. The basic question is: Do we have sustainable water availability to expand agriculture? A big technical failure of the public sector institutes is to realise this basic water shortage and communicate it to the users. The political handling is even worse; all political institutions (within the government or outside) advocate or promise extension of agriculture. Notwithstanding the political value of such slogans, it is a dangerous path of thinking and planning.

The groundwater table is depleting around the urban centers and intensively irrigated areas, because of higher extraction than recharge to the aquifer. It is being evaluated since 15 years (a nation wide NESPAK study was carried out in 1991). The control of groundwater pumpage is a difficult problem to be addressed, because it has become a major source of supply for the domestic and industrial uses, livelihood agriculture and riverine areas.

Unfortunately, technical and institutional failure of the public sector to protect the regenerative nature of alluvial water supply system is the least understood issue. Rather, there is continuous advocacy for the canal lining (projected by the media and politicians as capable of saving water equivalent to few surface reservoirs). It is not only 40 maf pumpage (WAPDA vision 2001), its leaching character is ignored. A very basic contribution of the shallow drinkable groundwater is the dependence of more than 70 per cent population on it. The physical works are always the choice of the engineering institutes. A lack of understanding of the environment friendly regenerative water and land systems of the basin can cause permanent damage to the system. It will further accelerate groundwater depletion and quality deterioration.

Drainage and effluent management systems are other areas of technical and administrative failure. The drainage projects proved short-lived despite maximum investment across the country, (SCARP Projects, LBOD). Most of the vertical drainage is replaced by the irrigation tube-wells; surface drains have no effluent and could not be maintained. About 80 per cent of the total area is waterlogged in the saline zone. The mega LBOD drain has a major problem of direct seawater back-flows and has to share fresh river water below Kotri. Another technical and institutional failure is to control the water loss to the saline aquifer. The much advocated lining projects are hardly implemented in the saline Lower Indus (Sindh). It is unfortunate that the technical organisations cannot put together the failure of watercourse lining in the high water use saline areas and push it forward for political reasons. A common explanation is that the system has deteriorated so much in Sindh that watercourses cannot be lined.

In reality, a new water use system has evolved in Sindh, canals and watercourses are governed by new regime, tail-ends of the channels have gone lower than the ground level and water is pumped for irrigation. The vested interests of the large land holdings are understandable, but the bigger political issue is the high vulnerability of this system. In case of shortage, some areas quickly lose access to water, a higher probability for the small land holdings, and a general drinking water shortage for the millions of people relying on the river water. The low performance of water conveyance and distribution systems in Sindh is linked to the low performance of the irrigation department and vested interests of the big land holding.
There should be no doubt about emerging drinking water problems in Pakistan. All big cities are facing shortage of potable drinkable water. The drinkable water supply to big cities -- Karachi, Islamabad and Quetta -- has forced an increasing percentage to shift to bottled water. The access of millions of rural users to safe drinking water is considered critical. It has increased the common public's vulnerability to scarcity of water.

New Surface Storage
Pakistan has a shortage of water in all areas, with higher vulnerability in the saline and more arid areas. The agriculture of the lower Indus mostly depends on the surface storage, which is depleting. The question arises as to why there is a big resistance to the new storage in Sindh. To some extent it is mistrust, but there is a more sound background to this opposition, which needs to be understood and addressed. The lower Indus has been the major recipient of Indus waters before the irrigation development and has always claimed its riparian right on its water. It is now a shareholder in the developed water used for irrigation, vulnerable to drinking water shortage, sea intrusion and having a greater percentage of the unaccounted water uses. Water experts from Sindh have the dual task of protecting bigger gross share and securing a sustainable water supply. The water shortage is more dangerous because the majority of the population uses canal water for domestic purposes as well.

At the national scale river-regulation cannot be allowed to move backwards, which is happening with the depletion of existing surface storage. The gross available river inflow is expected to decrease in the future with water management schemes on Chenab, Jhelum and Kabul rivers in the upstream countries. The climate change can have longer dry spells. These challenges have forced the president of Pakistan to campaign for water storage development. However, due to shortcomings of the water management institutes and apprehensions of the provinces, the techno-political process remains weak. Some of the factors not properly understood/conveyed are:

• There is a growing need to manage water demands, as the water available for development is limited. The claims to develop many reservoirs are misleading.
• The water needs outside agriculture are critical and are bound to increase because these uses are informal and highly stressed. There must be an allocation for all uses to secure them.
• The reservoir site has a critical link with the gross and minimum availability of water. This point is understood by the technical institutions (WAPDA) but not conveyed to the politicians and common people.
• All provinces of Pakistan have adopted a water use system based on river regulation. Each province is to protect its systems depending upon natural inflows or flood pattern (highly unreliable with decreasing probability at the current level) with the help of an efficient use of regulated flows. Intensive negotiations at Indus River System Authority (IRSA) are proof of that.

Institutional and Political Failure

The issue of below Kotri is the most serious example of the failure of technical and management system of the public sector institutions. It is a much debated and politically controversial issue, but the national and provincial water management organisations have not addressed it. With any new development of water infrastructure, the annual gross quantity passing below Kotri (limited to couple of weeks) has been decreasing. There is an inevitable increase in water uses upstream and a part of flows are shared with the drainage system (LBOD). It is amazing that the basin famous for the engineering interventions could not move for a solution here. There is also a lack of discussion on the solutions suggested by the Sindhi engineers (Panhwar 2002). Political sensitivity of the issue is the obstacle to technical debate. However, it will be highly unfortunate to postpone solutions for the below Kotri management and to continue focusing on the water demand. Some recommendations made in the past show that the scope of this debate should be widened. Another barrage below Kotri could ensure and control the supply downstream, the sea intrusion through the groundwater table is caused by the depletion of sweet water layer, which is also linked with the irrigation and drainage practices. Human efforts and modern science need to be applied to preserve the Indus delta.

Water Policy and Politics
The practiced and legally accepted relation between water and its users is a key factor in shaping the communal and institutional water interests. A major policy challenge is to protect the future water security. This can be achieved only by ensuring livelihood-oriented water availability for future generations and by conserving and improving existing water resources of the country. As is obvious, it is a complicated political and institutional task. Since the country is trying to do business as well, we cannot avoid political influence of the donors, vested local interests and decay of water management institutions (WAPDA) in their desired functions. The political dialogue is still weak and superficial in the country. Politicians and major political parties continue promising water without prior thinking. The water issues of Pakistan and selective political sensitivity show the need to go down to the community and users levels and make an inventory of the challenges faced by them, then up-scale their issues to the national level with a futuristic vision. No correct political process and vision on water policy issues could be suddenly evolved but more aware techno-political debate is towards filling the gaps. Three water policy approaches globally discussed are given in the annexure-1.

The water management institutes have played a strong role in the national and provincial water politics as well as authoritative control on water resources development. Both roles have declined with the evolution of new historical realities. It is important to realise that water politics cannot be contained within the old boundaries and the new water policy should go for strategic changes.

(Dr Zaigham Habib is an expert on Pakistan's water issues)

Bibliography

• Z. Habib, Scope for Reallocation of River Waters in the Indus Basin, ENGREF Montpellier France, 22nd September 2004.
• P. H. Gleick, ‘The Changing Water Paradigm – A look at the Twenty-first Century Water resources Development’, Water International, Vol. 25, no.1, (International Water Resources Association, 2000). pp. 127-138
• WSIPS -- Water Sector Investment Planning Study, Vol. I - IV, (Islamabad: Federal Planning Cell, WAPDA, 1990).
• David Aubin and Frédéric Varone (AURAP - UCL) March 29, 2002 European Water Policy.
• WAPDA 2001, Water Resources Hydropower Dev Vision 2025.
• Michel Arthur Alloy, The Indus Rivers -- A study on the effects of Partition, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 594.
• Lisa Widawsky, The Integral Role Of International Actors In Solving Riparian Disputes: A Case Study On The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.
• M. H. Panhwar, Water Requirements of Riverine Areas of Sindh, (Sindh Education Trust Hyderabad, 2002).
• Thomas, 48. 90 Kirmani and Rangeley, 4.
• Ayoob, 57. 91 Gulhati, 97.
• Hussein A. Amery and Aaron T. Wolf, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), p. 210.